Unlike many victims of online dating scams who want the
criminal prosecuted, Maria Grette boarded a plane to see the Nigerian
419er and forge a new relationship with him.
She had fallen in love with a 58-year-old Danish man, only to
find out that he was actually a 24-year-old jobless Nigerian graduate.
“The most terrible thing was not that he had cheated me, but
that he had lost his innocence,” the 62-year-old woman tells BBC. She
then was consumed with the need to “make a difference to the people of
Nigeria“.
She met Johnny through a dating platform where her friends had
created a profile for her. Johnny described himself as “a Dane raised in
South Carolina, USA; a civil engineer working on a contract in England;
a widower with a son in a Manchester university.”
Their relationship kicked off. He called her using a UK number and she couldn’t place his accent.
“I wanted to meet him because I liked him,” she tells 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.”
He got her to speak with his ‘son’ Nick over the phone, and
then told her that they were travelling to Nigeria for a job interview.
He called her, claiming they were at Heathrow Airport, and later, that
they had landed in Nigeria. The next call she got from him, he claimed
they were mugged in Lagos; his son was shot in the head and he didn’t
have the €1000 requested by a hospital for treatment because his bank
has no branch in Africa.
“I will never forget how I rushed to the Western Union office,
trembling while I did the transfer,” Maria Grette says. “All I could
think of was to get the two persons in Nigeria out of danger.”
The request for money increased and with time, she came to her
senses. She stopped responding to his messages. Three weeks later, he
called to confess and revealed his identity. He had fallen in love with
her and had been fighting guilt. He described himself as the devil.
Their relationship transformed and he never asked her for money again. In 2009, she traveled to Nigeria to meet him.
“When I saw him at the airport in Abuja, tears fell over his face, and I knew I had known him all my life.”
Eventually, she sponsored his trip to the United States, paid
his tuition. They never met again but he let her know of his growth,
including when he got a job in an oil firm.
Now, the 69-year-old Grette travels all over Africa, improving the lives of young artists.
“Johnny has given me more than he took,” she said, “Without him, I would not have met Africa.”
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