By RICHARD WALKER, T&D Staff Writer Wednesday, April 21, 2010

An Orangeburg man who became the victim of an overseas bridal scam said he was trying to fill a void after his wife passed away. He was caught in an Internet scam instead.

“They used the picture of a dead girl as to who I was going to meet,” the man said. “So, I was introduced to a dead girl by a man and that’s how it started. They sent very provocative pictures.”

The man didn’t want to use his real name. He said he’s too embarrassed. He says over a period of nearly two years, the foreign scammers took him for more than $20,000.

With the heartbreak, disappointment and financial loss serving as his “medicine,” he asked to just be called “Doc.”

A college-educated man in his 50s, Doc sits in his living room with a muted TV playing in the background, a silent newscaster telling of events that matter little to Doc at the moment.

On a side table nearby, a three-inch tall stack of Western Union receipts sits in testimony to Doc’s efforts to recapture a happier, bygone day.

Doc filed a police report last week. And he didn’t even want to do that, saying he felt humiliated.

“Looking back, I was stupid, really stupid,” Doc says.

Doc’s story began long before the Internet “romance” came along. He had been happily married for more than two decades. But about three years ago, Doc’s wife died.

“I just lost my life’s mate, my wife,” he said. “And I lost my brother a few months before that. It was a bad time for me.”

In the six years prior to her death, Doc’s wife had been ill. Doc says he cherished his wife and took care of her through her last day.

In December 2007, the last page of their 22-year marriage was written.

That’s when “she” came into the picture. Doc says he was on his computer – he admits he was searching personals – when he received a message from a person purporting to be a single woman in the African country of Ghana.

He wanted and was told he had found someone like his wife: a Presbyterian, non-smoker, non-drinker, a good girl who would enjoy quiet evenings with her husband.

“I was so lonely, this was literally my first love,” Doc says of his wife. “I don’t know if I’ll ever find another. But there’s a time when you have to move on and then this person came along.”

Initially, the woman in Ghana said she was 31 and as Doc puts it, “a beautiful black girl, a model.”

Doc said he sent the woman -- she said her name was Ibrahim -- a Web cam picture of himself. She told Doc she didn’t have a Web cam that would allow her to go “live.” That was a red flag, Doc said.

From March 2008 to December 2009, Doc sent thousands of the dollars “in order to fulfill this person’s needs under the pretext that we were going to be married.”

In increments of $25, $100 and up to $1,200, money was wired for passports, visas, plane tickets, physicals, proxy weddings, even medical expenses for the woman’s mother, who was said to be very ill.

“I fell for it hook, line and sinker,” Doc said, adding that he did receive copies of fake documents showing what he had paid for. “My sister tried to warn me and I didn’t listen to her. I’m stubborn, hard-headed and I’m gullible.”

A commercial comes on his TV, a car flashes by on the screen. Doc isn’t paying attention. He looks out of a window at the drive in front of his residence.

To send Ibrahim that kind of money, he says, took the liquidation of retirement funds, IRAs. Doc took out pay day loans and received advances on his credit cards.

Several months and several thousands of dollars later, Doc says his dreams of finding another love were crushed when a woman claiming to be Ibrahim’s sister called him. The woman informed him that her sister was taking him for a ride and had no plans to marry him.

One of several stories Doc was given was his soon-to-be bride was just minutes away from getting on a flight to the United States when she was accosted. Her sister rescued her and found out the game Ibrahim was playing.

Doc then found out from this alleged sister his prospective wife’s name was supposedly Jamila. The sister sent him pictures of a mid-30s woman who was attractive but not the Ibrahim he was to meet.

At that point, Jamila “came clean,” Doc said, saying the money he’d sent her had gone to the scam ringleader. She said she hadn’t gotten one thin American dime.

Doc says the story got more complicated with the introduction of an alleged twin sister. He then found out the initial girl was an actual model from Ghana who was killed in a car wreck. A man in Ghana was sending the picture of the model while claiming to be the dead girl, he said.

Why, he’s not sure. But Doc recommenced the wire transfers after continuing communications with the person he believed was Jamila.

However, when the woman claiming to be Jamila’s sister called him again in December, informing him her sister was scamming him again, Doc ended payments once and for all.

“I was extremely hurt and humiliated,” Doc said. “This person comes along at the perfect time in my life, because I was at my lowest point.”

The woman who calls herself Jamila still sends messages. She taunts him for falling for her scheme. Then she asks for money. None is sent, Doc said.

“I just hope one day she’ll get caught and prosecuted,” Doc says. “It’ll take a long time to dig out of what she did to me.”

As for law enforcement, both the Orangeburg County Sheriff’s Office and the Orangeburg Department of Public Safety recommend you never send money to anyone you don’t know. And even some you do know.

Doc says if you’re looking for romance online, make certain you speak live with someone on a Web cam so you’ll know who you’re dealing with.

“If you can’t pick up the telephone and talk to them while they are on the Web cam, don’t send them any money,” Doc suggests. “That’s my recommendation to anyone in an online relationship.”

The muted TV newscaster continues his presentation while a musing Doc sits in his recliner in silence, looking out the front window.

“I’m still looking, I want a wife,” he says, still facing the window. “It wasn’t about the money. I just wanted the girl.”

Contact the writer: rwalker@timesandemocrat.com or 803-533-5516.