He exploited her of money and emotions, but she eventually understood that it’s him who is actually the real victim and thus she left no stone unturned to pull him out of his misery.
A 62 years old divorcee from Sweden, Maria Grett, had set up a dating profile looking for a nice gentleman to share company with, and thought she’d hit it off with this 58-year-old man in Denmark. She was overjoyed when the man seemed trustworthy and so eager to start a relationship.
“He had a way and a sweetness I had never known in a man before,” she said. “He seemed so innocent in a way that it puzzled me.”
Unaware that he was actually a skilled scammer all set to play his cards, she was slowly lured into a feeling of comfort and trust.
As with every other scam story, this man showed interest in meeting her, but said that he had an urgent business job in Nigeria. Then after a while, he started claiming that he and his son had been mugged and injured, and couldn’t pay for medical bills. Already a victim of his sentimental plots, Grette sent thousands of euros to help, unaware that her trust was being exploited.
And then she got a message she never expected.
This time, though, he confessed. He was not 58, and he was not from Denmark. Instead, he was a 24-year-old from Nigeria, involved in a dating scam network.
“The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence,” she said.
“When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears ran down his face, and I felt as though I had known him all my life,” Grette said.
Grette also met some of his friends, many of whom also worked as scammers and decided that she wanted to provide opportunities for young people so that they wouldn’t have to resort to scamming.
“I asked myself what I could do to prevent a situation where healthy, good young men fall into this kind trap,” she said.
Today, some seven years after they first “met,” Grette and Johnny are still in touch. Johnny works for an American oil company, and has given up scamming for good. As for the initial scam? Grette has no hard feelings.
“He has asked me so many times to forgive him and I told him that the most important thing is to forgive himself.”
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