Woman Loses $70,000 to Online Dating Scam
Hopkins, S.C. (WLTX) - It's a love story with a very sad ending for a Midlands woman after she gets scammed while looking for her soul mate online.
Lonely after the death of her husband of 14 years, Sherry Bailey decided to look for love online on websites such as Match.com and OkCupid.com.
"This gentleman started corresponding. His names was Kelvin Nelson,"says Bailey. She says the two started an online relationship writing and phoning each other.
"He would send all kinds of love poems and love letters,"says Bailey. He should be coming home from Nigeria soon. He was an independent contractor."
But before he could come back to the states, he had to pay his workers. "He had a check for $2,000,000 he couldn't cash over there because it was a U.S. check,"says Bailey.
So Bailey says she agreed to take out a loan to help out. "A title loan against one of my trucks so I could send him $5,000," she says.
Weeks later, Nelson asked for more money to get home. So Bailey took out another loan, this time on her home. Over the next four months, she sent more than twenty Western Union and MoneyGrams to Nigeria.
"$49,620.52 that I'm out,"says Bailey.
Disillusioned but still looking for love, Bailey found another beau online.
"After the second one I said 'okay, this is a pattern here,'"says Bailey.
She was scammed again by someone professing his love and wanting to come home to marry her.
It was almost the same story repeated. The second man claimed his name was Jeff Smith. He told her he was an independent contractor needing to pay his workers before he could return to the U.S.
She told him she didn't have any money to send him. "He said I have a bank in the U.K. that can send you money to your credit card and you can withdraw the funds and send it to me that way,"says Bailey.
So she gave Smith her credit card information. Bailey says the card had a limit of $8,500, but several days later, Bailey says her credit card account was overdrawn by $27,000.
In total, Bailey lost more than $70,000. She says the only thing she suspected early on was the way the men spoke on the phone.
"Why do you say you're from New York or Boston when you've got this foreign accent," Bailey says she asked them.
Now she knows there's only one way to get back on her feet. "The only way to get out of this problem is to sell my home."
News 19 searched online for the name Kelvin Nelson. We found numerous websites that referenced the name with Nigerian dating scams.
If you or your family has been taken by a scammer and you want other people to know what to look for, contact us through On Your Side at 803-647-0223.