A B.C. woman whose brother was found dead in his apartment shortly after they reconnected says she's convinced an online romance scam is to blame.
Roger Smith, 60, died in his Surrey home in February 2020. His sister is convinced he took his own life after losing tens of thousands of dollars to an elaborate online romance scam. SURREY, B.C. -- Barb Smith and her brother, Roger, had finally reconnected after years of distance.But before she could make the trip from Vancouver Island to visit him at home in Surrey, a police officer knocked on her door.“I thought it was some kind of joke,” Barb Smith remembered about that day in late February.
Her name was "Amanda," Porter said. She was going to be flying up from Los Angeles for a visit, and she had sent photos. “I didn’t know what to do,” she said. “I believe I said something to him like, are you sure it’s legit?” “I’m sorry, this is the only way out of my mess,” it read in part. “I cannot live like this anymore.”“We opened his tablet, started scrolling through, and were horrified,” Smith recalled.
In one, timestamped Feb. 18, Smith, speaking to an “Amanda” and “Rachel” says he has nothing to live on, and can’t even pay the trustees for bankruptcy, because they, meaning Amanda and Rachel, had taken all his money.“I was completely devastated,” Barb Smith recalled. “The humiliation and the shame and the hurt he must have felt.”Dozens upon dozens of used iTunes and prepaid Vanilla cards, and a stack of moneygrams, also dating back to 2017.
“I was in disbelief. I mean it’s so bizarre. My brother is an intelligent man,” Smith recalled, as she tried to reason her way through it.No matter who was on the other end, they began with romantic and sometimes explicit exchanges, and were followed by an ask for money.“Why am I being so generous with stuff I don’t have?” Smith wrote in chat with "Amanda Philip," who said she was from California.Amanda's response: “I really love you so much.
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