“Love Scamming” Victim: The Tragic Story of Isabella T.

Isabella T.* had no longer expected it. Then someone swore to her that he loved her and desired her. Although this someone also asked for money, but out of necessity. Isabella T. was always happy to help.

“She had a huge heart,” says Madleen Lörzel from the Aschaffenburg district, a close friend. When T. ran out of money, her internet acquaintance turned away from her. Then something broke inside her. In early 2022, the 78-year-old killed herself. She was the victim of “love scamming”.

Victim wasn’t naive

It sounds as if T. was naive. But the opposite was the case. The senior was considered “smart”. Above all, she was a lawyer. “She had studied law, her deceased husband was a lawyer,” says Lörzel. Nevertheless, T. transferred 30,000 euros to the fraudster. This is not uncommon, the digital form of marriage fraud is booming. According to the State Criminal Police Office, more than 600 reports of “love scamming” were reported in 2021 – the love scammers stole more than twelve million euros in Bavaria.

After the collapse, when all hopes of real love had burst, T. apparently only saw suicide as a way out. “Your shame was probably too great,” says your friend Madleen Lörzel. According to the 26-year-old student, the poverty pensioner had begun asking for money from those around her – for reasons that quickly turned out to be lies. The elderly woman ignored repeated warnings about the acquaintance. The question of why occupies Madleen Lörzel to this day.

People want to appear nice, smart, and competent

In public, people supervise each other, often unconscious social control takes place. Most people want to appear nice, smart, and competent. In the quiet little room, however, they are often completely different. It was the same with T. After her suicide, her friends discovered the chat exchange with the scammer – and were shocked.

“We met a woman who was a complete stranger to us,” says Lörzel. The intelligent, resolute senior citizen indulged in vows of love in the chats.

For Chief Inspector Günter Löffler from the Bavarian State Criminal Police Office in Munich, the elderly woman from Lower Franconia with her exuberant online emotions is not an isolated case. In many cases, the victims of “love scamming” eventually become so emotionally dependent on the love scammer that rational thinking hardly seems possible. According to the LKA, the effects are immense: “They range from high capital losses to existence-threatening financial losses and even suicide.”

Perpetrators pretend to be engineers, doctors or soldiers

Sometimes it dawns on those affected that something is wrong before the first payment is made. Of the around 600 reports received by the Bavarian police in 2021, no money had yet flowed in 120 cases. The perpetrators pretend to be engineers, architects, doctors or US soldiers online. They contact their victims via Facebook, Instagram or dating sites.

Annette Murmann from the Würzburg women’s counseling center, an institution of the social service for catholic women (SkF), knows behavior similar to that of Isabella T. from her counseling practice:

“There are women for whom a deep longing for closeness has built up over many years.”

If there is also the tendency to “meld” with another person, the risk of becoming a victim of narcissistic men or digital marriage swindlers increases.

Red flags: these men mostly don’t do well

Normally, when people get to know each other, they approach each other cautiously. Women with a “merging tendency” succeed in developing a close relationship with a man very quickly. “Something like this has to be taken as an alarm signal,” says Murmann. The expert knows from her counseling sessions that men who suddenly fulfill all their desires are usually not good for women:

“In narcissistic partnerships, women allow themselves to be humiliated, degraded and devalued.”

Isabella T. also experienced a form of relationship with highly destructive potential. “The big problem is that women like her have usually never asked themselves what a relationship with another person means, but also what a relationship with themselves means,” says Murmann. The expert explains that women who know their own desires, their needs and their inner needs are more immune to becoming the victims of a narcissistic man or a love scammer.

(* Name changed by editor.)