There are many reasons for creating ‘catfishing’ profiles where money is not the motive, you can read about this here.
Sometimes, these profiles will come offline and be in person, sometimes the person will be using their own face and name all along and sometimes there will be a financial gain intent.
In extreme cases, and with career criminals, they will get names changed by deed poll or the equivalent to match the story they have told (a public case is that of the Tinder Swindler, Simon Leviev who was born Shimon Hayut. Leviev is the name of the diamond mogul Lev Leviev and his family.)
The connection, as with all romance fraud, starts with grooming and love bombing. You can read about these here. It continues with trauma bonding and coercive and controlling behaviours.
Many of these individuals display narcissistic and psychopathic traits where grooming and love bombing are part of their natural behaviors.
Of course, with these in person financial frauds, it is very often the case that the abuser and criminal will also create an intimate relationship with the victim, for the purpose of ensuring the victim is entrenched in the story they have told.
Unfortunately, many victims encounter problems when they are brave enough to report this crime. Whether it is lack of understanding or lack of willingness to start an investigation, many will get turned away, being told that these matters are civil. They will be told that because they met the person it is not fraud. Given we know what fraud means and no where in legislation or guidelines does it say that romance fraud is only an online crime, we need to keep pushing through the pain points. If the money was asked for and given or loaned due to a lie to get it, it is fraud. In most cases there is an easy line of enquiry to ascertain this. Fortunately, there are some incredible forces who do, do the right thing and they are navigating legislation to ensure convictions. Some of these are below.
In Person Romance Fraud, criminal convictions:
1) David Checkley
‘He came to the attention of detectives in June 2021 after numerous reports of suspicious behaviour from women aged between 40 to 70 years old.
One of Checkley’s victims had been in a relationship with him for five years and he often stayed at her house for three days a week.’
2) Sebastian Timmis
‘HHJ Cook described Timmis as ‘cynical and manipulative’ who ’emotionally and serious betrayed’ his victims.
PC Everitt said: “These victims have shown great courage in reporting what happened to them.
“We commonly misspeak and say people ‘fall’ for scams and fraud but this is not the case. These women were manipulated by a prolific and selfish fraudster who used their kind-heartedness to make them feel sorry for him, and profit to the tune of almost £32,000.’
3) Mark Aklom
‘Over the course of a year-long relationship, Acklom promised to marry the mother-of-two and tricked her into handing over her life savings.
At the time, he was actually married with two young children – telling Ms Woods he was flying to see her from his home in Switzerland.
But before they could walk down the aisle, he vanished with the cash, leaving her emotionally and financially ruined and on the brink of suicide.’
4) Peter Berry/John Keady
‘He then persuaded his girlfriends to lend him money through extravagant lies such as needing to help friends trapped in the Himalayas.
Once he had what the money he would disappear, seeking another victim.’
5) Greg Wilson
‘For four days of every week, Wilson would leave Coleen at their home in Chester-le-Street, County Durham, claiming his work with the Fire Service meant he had to stay away. In fact, he was driving 30 miles to Darlington to be with his long-suffering wife of 13 years.
Nor was Wilson from a wealthy background. His mother wasn’t a sports agent living in the South of France, as he claimed. She was a retired nursery worker from Sunderland.’
6) Andrew Camfield
At sentencing, Her Honour Judge Kelly said: “This was a prolonged and sophisticated fraud – you engaged in a relationship, you deceived Louise through elaborate lies defrauding her out of a significant amount of money. You lied throughout the relationship making up elaborate lies stringing her along. This was a truly callous and calculated set of actions which breached her trust.”
Louise said: “I was so in love with Andrew I didn’t see any warning signs or red flags.
These are but a few.