A woman has spoken out about how her online relationship with a Nigerian scammer became an unlikely friendship.
Maria Grette, who is Swedish, even paid for theyoung man to study at college in the US, and has since worked with African artists to help young people.
Ms Grette, who was 62 at the time, thought she was speaking to a 58-year-old Danish man for three months after they met on an online dating site.
They arranged for him to visit her, but he explained he first had to visit Nigeria with his son for a job interview.
She told the BBC : ‘He had a way and a
sweetness I had never known in a man before. And he was innocent in a way that puzzled me.’
But in Nigeria, tragedy struck – her lover
explained that he and his son were mugged and badly injured, and his bank did not have a branch in Africa.
He made desperate, emotional pleas to her for help, and in total she sent him thousands of euros to pay the medical bills. It was then that she realised something wasn’t right – and after a few weeks of no communication, he confessed that he was a 24-year-old scammer.
Ms Grette said: ‘The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but that he had lost his innocence.’
The arts teacher, painter and arts therapist demanded that the young man tell her his true identity and about his life.
He did, describing himself as a ‘devil’ who had conned a ‘lovely woman’. She added: ‘
He said his scamming mates had
warned him about falling in love with a ‘client’, that he had ignored them because he trusted me and did not want to lose contact with me.’
But this didn’t stop her: instead of losing faith in people and giving up, she decided that the story didn’t stop there.
She wanted to the meet the man who had stolen thousands of euro from her, and ended up travelling to Africa for the first time.
‘
When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life,’ she said.
Since then, the 69-year-old has become
devoted to helping young Nigerian artists by arranging for them to visit Europe for
exhibitions and conferences.
And she is still in touch with her scammer. Though she has never seen him again, he has helped him a lot since.
She paid for him to get through college, he now works in the American oil sector, and the pair still speak regularly.
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