By Ian Holmes

Nanaimo woman loses $100K in online dating scam

Jan 12, 2017 | 11:27 AM

NANAIMO — An elderly Nanaimo woman looking for love online instead found heartbreak and took a huge financial hit.

Nanaimo RCMP report the woman, who’s in her early 70’s, lost nearly $100,000 after exchanging emails on the site Match.com over several months with a man who claimed to be Jonathan Lucron.

Const. Gary O’Brien says the woman signed up on the website last September and days later received emails from the eventual fraudster.

“From there it spawned, it went from emails to text messages to sporadic phone calls, and she thought she was developing a relationship with this individual,” said O’Brien.

The longtime Mountie says this is the largest amount of money defrauded from an individual in Nanaimo in an online scam that he can recall. O’Brien says the story used to part the victim with her money in this situation was quite typical.

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“He passed himself off as a civil engineer working in China working on various projects and he was traveling a lot…he needed money for funding projects,” said O’Brien.

O’Brien says Lucron told the victim that he was traveling to a nearby city and planned to ask to her to marry him. The man never arrived and O’Brien says that’s when the heartbroken victim contacted Nanaimo RCMP. O’Brien says police have been unable to find any record of a Jonathan Lucron.

Local seniors advocate Kim Slater, chair of the Vancouver Island Association of Family Councils, says this shocking story is unfortunately nothing new.

“It is heartbreaking, it’s devastating,” said Slater. “But it’s a story that’s being repeated too often.”

Slater says it’s critical for family members, friends and the community at large to keep in contact with seniors to find out if anything is out of the ordinary. He believes information pamphlets placed in venues where seniors gather would help.

Slater says B.C.’s demographics make it clear that much more will need to be done to help protect seniors from scams.

“Much of them (seniors) want to age successfully at home for as long as possible, but we’ve got to find ways so that they don’t end up being isolated and feeling lonely.”

The BC Centre for Elderly Advocacy Support averages about 300 calls a month, including scam complaints, according to executive director Martha Jane Lewis. She’s heard of cases where seniors lose tens of thousands of dollars after ignoring advice from their bank or credit union.

Lewis says their agency has been made aware of a pair of other recent cases where widowed seniors lost big in online scams.

“Two other cases where people mortgaged their homes and all of the money they could raise they sent off to a non-existent person.”

O’Brien says unfortunately, many other people in Nanaimo have fallen victim to online scams.

“Others have lost between $40,000 and $60,000 and others would have lost that money if it wasn’t for bank employees intervening and educating them that it was a scam.”

O’Brien says people can get more information on dating scams or report a scam here.