Ava Waller thought she had found companionship in her later years – what she got instead was a calculated con that robbed her of every penny she had.
Ava, a 76-year-old grandmother from Harlow, Essex, has spoken of her heartbreak and humiliation after being duped out of £67,000 by a romance fraudster who reeled her in with sweet words and fake photos – before bleeding her dry.
Speaking exclusively to , divorcee Ava bravely recounted how she fell victim to an elaborate catfishing plot orchestrated by a scammer in Nigeria, who posed as a charming American oil-rig worker named ‘David West’.
In reality, ‘David’ was using stolen photos of a real man whose image has often been used by scammers – Dr Mark Smith, a chiropractor in Indiana – while spinning tales of hardship, delayed flights and desperate emergencies that Ava felt compelled to help with.
‘He told me he was in an oil rig in the middle of the sea somewhere,’ she said. ‘I’ve since learned that’s a favourite job for these people to pretend they have.’
What began as a harmless online friendship in 2018 – sparked when he complimented her photos on Facebook – soon turned into a daily lifeline. Ava, a mother of two with three grandchildren, divorced and grieving the loss of her mother, admitted the attention became a comfort.
‘I think we’d been talking maybe six months and then he was coming home,’ she recalled. ‘And he told me he got stopped at the airport – something to do with his drilling equipment – and needed money to sort himself out.’
Desperate to help the man she believed was flying back to start a new life with her, Ava sent her first payment of £250.
Of course, it was only the beginning.
‘The first problem he needed money for was to get his equipment off the rig. He told me he was coming home to America shortly.
‘My mother had just died and left me her house, and for once I actually had some money in the bank. That was great timing for him, of course.’
Soon, she was transferring thousands via the bank, after staff at her local Post Office in Harlow, Essex – worried about her visits – refused to process her payments.
‘I was very upset about that,’ Ava recalled. But she added that even though she was in denial, she knew there was something not right about the situation.
‘I then started sending the money via banks, different ones so I wouldn’t draw attention. My daughter is a bank manager but I never used her bank because I knew she would stop me.
‘I was stupid. I probably knew in my heart of hearts that what the people at the Post Office suspected was true, but I wanted David to be real and for the fairytale to come true, I suppose. What a mug I was!’
Unbeknownst to her, she was now deep inside a web of psychological manipulation – driven by a scammer who played expertly on her emotions. When her daughter-in-law did raise concerns, Ava confronted ‘David’. But he was ready.
‘They all say that’ he told her. ‘You’ll get your money back.’
‘He was clever, and he knew how to keep me dangling,’ admitted Ava. ‘He was good with words and there was always a really good excuse.
‘His daughter had had an accident, for example. He couldn’t afford to pay the medical bills, so would I pay?…’
Ruefully, Ava admitted that the scam went on for two years, with the biggest single payment she made to her ‘suitor’ just over £3k. The couple even had a few conversations over Facebook messenger.
‘I did think his accent sounded more African than American,’ she recalled. ‘But he had an answer for that too and told me he’d moved around a lot with his job.’
At one point David even promised he would come to England and marry her and they would buy a ‘nice big house’ for the two of them with the vast sums he was always just a short time away from receiving.
Drained of her inheritance nest-egg, Ava was even forced to take out an equity release mortgage on her home in order to buy a car.
The scam only came to light during a terrifying hospital dash in 2020, when Ava was admitted with life-threatening sepsis.
Her son Steven, by her side in the resuscitation room, noticed her phone buzzing incessantly with messages.
Opening her phone, he uncovered an avalanche of messages from ‘David’ -demanding updates about a package of money supposedly being delivered to Ava’s home.
Further digging revealed that Ava had received other such packages and made payments into various accounts, possibly unknowingly playing a role in a wider money laundering ring.
‘It was all very embarrassing,’ Ava recalled. ‘I was in the hospital ward with everyone listening and my son was saying “you’ve been paying all this money to a bloke you’ve never met!”
‘I was sitting there in tears as my pretend world was coming crashing down about my ears.
‘My son called the police, and they took away the bundle of cash which had come in the post – about £600 or so. At first the police thought they might be able to do something about it, but they couldn’t because the money had gone abroad.
‘David always asked for the money to go to “other people”, depending on what situation he’d made up. One name was Oghogho Igbinuvia and another was Beverley Rojas.’
Although she has deleted all the messages with David, Ava still has a painful reminder of her self-confessed ‘stupidity’ – the receipts for all the moneygrams she sent him.
‘I just look at all these and wonder how I could have been so dumb?’ she said. ‘If I ever get any more messages from people on social media – and believe me, I do – I look back at these and remind myself of the lessons I’ve learned the hard way.’
Now, she will check people out as best she can and has learned how to carry out reverse photo searches on Google Images.
‘I would never ever send money to someone I didn’t know,’ she said, ‘and if anyone’s reading this, they should follow that one piece of advice.
‘Once I stopped sending David the money, he became quite angry and abusive, so the mask fell away, which helped me see more clearly.
‘He would be texting me to tell me to sell the car, or my house – nothing would stop him. He even tried again about six months later, but I told him to shove off.
‘By then, I’d built up quite a different image from the handsome chap he sent me – probably an ugly old Nigerian bloke, sitting at home in a grotty flat with a list of things to say to his victims.’