SLIDING INTO A DARK HOLE
When asked, she’s unsure if having autism played a part in her giving most of her life savings to someone she had never met in person.
But she knows for sure that she was particularly vulnerable and lonely when her marriage ended and she had to navigate her cancer diagnosis and treatment alone.
She recalled becoming quite obsessed with finding love again, swiping endlessly on the dating app and even paying for a premium dating account to improve her chances of success.
“I mean, there are so many people in the world, right? I don’t believe I couldn’t find someone who could care for me, accept me for who I am. So, I was swiping like crazy … I didn’t have boundaries in a sense and just chatting with everyone,” she says without a tinge of emotion.
She met men who were cheating on their wives, cross-dressers and those looking for one-night stands.
Eventually, she landed on possibly the worst match – a scammer. He appealed to her religion and to her goodness in helping others in need. They chatted every single day and he showered her with what she needed most: attention.
Slowly, she found herself withdrawing larger and larger sums of money to transfer to his account for all kinds of “urgent” requests straight out of a well-worn playbook including that his business had gone under and he had no cash for survival.
When her savings ran out, she cashed out her insurance policies.
I gasped when she revealed this: In less than four months, she had sent him about S$700,000.
She smiled ruefully and said: “Yeah. The cost of an HDB flat, right? Looking back, I guess I was too trusting.”
Finally, when her well ran completely dry, she turned to her parents who called the police. Unfortunately, the case was closed with no arrests or recovery of funds or who the scammer really was.
Her parents were understandably upset but she was “masking” with them too.
“In front of them, I pretended that I was ready to move on. And we didn’t talk about it,” she said adding that she spent most of her time holed up in her room.
How did she feel about being a victim?
She didn’t give me a straight answer.
“I asked a friend recently if it would be more heartbreaking to lose love or lose money,” she said.
“My friend chose money. But to me, I don’t know actually.”
