In the past, I would hear stories of women sadly conned out of money by romance fraudsters and wonder how they could possibly be so gullible.
That was until my ego, my trust in human nature and my confidence in online dating took a huge knock thanks to one man.
Was he a scammer? Or merely a fantasist? I still don’t know. Either way, I’m quite embarrassed I fell for it. I just hope my cautionary tale shows that if a smart, switched-on woman like me can be deceived, despite so many red flags, then it can happen to anyone.
I’m a successful businesswoman who co-launched George at Asda and held senior roles at major brands including Jaeger at M&S, Next, Dunelm and River Island.
I’ve made a career out of understanding female psychology and what women want from the High Street and was never afraid to assert my power over men in the boardroom.
And yet still I fell hook, line and sinker for a man whose life was almost certainly nothing but a lie. I met James on Tinder in August last year. At the age of 61, newly single after my 31-year marriage ended amicably, I was dipping my toe back into dating, and here was a man who seemed to tick all the boxes.
Good-looking and smiling – tick. Full-length pic with cute chocolate labrador – tick. A bio that had some character – tick. Appropriate age (55). And only 35 miles away?
Bingo! A match it was. He was open and fulsome in our chats on the app, and after just one day we exchanged numbers. ‘Wow, you’re beautiful!’, he told me on our subsequent video call, as if he couldn’t help himself, and of course I found it very flattering. As we discussed our interests, I mentioned that I painted. James was a website designer, but sold pencil portraits on the side as a hobby, and emailed me examples of his work. I was blown away by how talented he was. It was all starting to look very promising.
Fiona Lambert is a successful businesswoman who co-launched George at Asda and held senior roles at major brands including Jaeger at M&S , Next, Dunelm and River Island
Indeed, on our first actual date, at a pub, we were like a couple of teenagers, giggly, flirty, chatting incessantly, finding reasons to brush hands and, yes, eventually sharing a kiss. Afterwards, James messaged to say he had never believed in love at first sight, but now he did.
Date number two was a walk at a beauty spot and for number three, we planned a day out in London. And yet the evening before came an abrupt change in tone. Out of the blue he sent a long message saying it was never going to work out between us, that I was too successful for him and that, though he was already falling in love with me, he knew I’d find someone else and end it.
Immediately, I reassured him, sending him the famous clip from Notting Hill where Julia Roberts tells Hugh Grant she’s just a girl standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her. Looking back, this mini-drama was undoubtedly a red flag and the start of regular messages that required me to keep assuring him of my affection.
Having convinced him to come, we had the most fabulous day at art galleries, eating fresh seafood and walking in Regent’s Park. He talked about his dating history – he’d been married twice, and had three long-term relationships, the last of which had ended bitterly.
In fact, he was still haggling through the courts to get his £350,000 share of a property they’d bought together. We continued to see each other more and more, and he became a regular fixture at my home near Leicester where he’d help with chores and DIY jobs. He always came to mine – he said his 20-year-old daughter was living with him before going to university, and we both agreed it was too early to meet families. It seemed fair enough to me.
He said he’d love to take me away for the New Year, and could I free my diary from December 29 to January 3? Of course I could! How romantic was this? He said he’d need my passport details to book a flight and shared his passport with me.
I’m aware that I sound hopelessly naive. But it honestly felt as though we were both utterly smitten. He told me he loved me over and over.
After a marriage where my ex found it difficult to declare love, it was intoxicating. James was handsome and fun and, despite his slightly erratic moods, I was hooked. I thought I could help him too. Wanting to amp up his artistic career, I sent pictures of his work to a friend who worked for a company that owned some art galleries.
The deception had started on day one and had carried on building week after week. I felt horrified, scared, embarrassed and desperately sad, writes Fiona Lambert
She came back instantly, full of enthusiasm for how talented he was. But when I messaged him to share the great news, I instantly got a phone call back.
He said he wasn’t angry, but he’d signed NDAs with clients he sold work to, and I shouldn’t have sent anything without checking with him first. He asked me to delete the pictures from the chat with my friend and give him a couple of weeks to sort out work I could send…
And then things began to turn much darker.
About three weeks into the romance, while we were out on a walk, he was suddenly in a lot of pain. White and shaking, he said we needed to get back to my house. He hadn’t wanted to tell me, but he was being investigated for bowel cancer.
Of course, this news knocked me for six. He explained he’d been having stomach problems for months and had various tests planned over the next few weeks – blood tests and colonoscopies.
I was comforting and sympathetic, but am also a great believer in not overthinking so I wasn’t going to ponder too much about the future of our budding relationship until the tests came back. As if this was not enough going on, a week later, just as I was due to go on a solo holiday in Italy, James told me his mum had collapsed and been rushed to hospital with sepsis.
All of a sudden, his messages became cold and one word only. His way of coping with difficulty was to do it alone, he told me, and if I pushed to help, he would pull away. I decided I couldn’t deal with this roller coaster of extreme emotions, from molten lava to glacial, so I told him plainly I wanted consistency and no game-playing or I’d end it.
To be fair, he took that on the chin and said he wouldn’t go chilly on me again. A few days later I left for Italy, but as I was trying to relax and enjoy the holiday, I kept getting messages about his mother. At one point she had only days to live, then she rallied, then faded again . . .
Over the next couple of weeks, he lived at the hospital, or at his sister’s nearby. He was hard to get hold of as, apparently, the signal was poor in the hospital. I offered several times to take him things he needed or to meet him for a coffee but he said no. He managed to get to mine once during this time, which he said was a well needed reprieve from all the stress.
Meanwhile, he was suffering from nausea and fatigue – and told me one of his cancer tests had come back with distinct warning signs. Would I stick with him through treatment?
The intensity of my feelings for him meant I felt torn. I am not a shallow person and yet we’d only known each other for six weeks: I wouldn’t make a promise I couldn’t keep, and could only say I’d take each challenge as it came. He responded badly to this, saying he needed to know one way or the other.
Within a week, the official diagnosis came back. It was bad news. He had the blood cancer Non-Hodgkin lymphoma and the treatment would be a very strong course of chemotherapy starting the following week.
Knowing this, he told me on a video call that we should now end or at least stall our relationship as it would be too hard for us to deal with and maintain a new romance.
Both tearful, we agreed a break but with monthly updates to see how he was.
The weekend before he started his chemo, we went all out to make it truly memorable. I bought him a book to fill with adventures we might have in the future as a way of giving us hope.
We wrote down a place per page, from Paris to Switzerland to the US. He filmed me cooking for him, flirting to the camera Nigella Lawson style.
He took lots of photos, saying he wanted to do a drawing of me as a present.
The next day I had to go out for two meetings, so I left James at my house to do some DIY jobs, then we both got glammed up for my friend’s 50th birthday party at a club. It was a joy to be together, dancing and laughing.
When we got back to my house we made the evening last as long as we could, knowing we wouldn’t see each other for months – or possibly ever again. He made sure I had his home address and email so I could post him a birthday card.
The next morning, we said a very emotional goodbye. Yet our pledge to only speak once a month did not last long. We missed each other too much, and when I suggested a weekly video call, James leapt at it, saying he was worried he’d lose me if we didn’t talk regularly.
It was during this break from seeing each other in real life, on a night out with an old friend I hadn’t seen for a while, that I first began to wonder what I’d got myself into.
Describing my relationship with James to her made me realise how many strange things had happened over the past eight weeks. Her suspicion was immediate. How did I know he wasn’t married, she asked incredulously. When his mother was ‘in hospital’, could he actually have been on a family holiday? What about his illness – was that real?
But surely no one would fake such a thing?
Even as we were talking, I got a message from James to say he’d been rushed to A&E as his blood glucose levels were sky high due to his nausea and inability to eat properly with the chemo drugs.
I decided I needed to check up on him, and the best way would be to drive up to his house and see if he had a wife.
I arranged with my father to borrow his car the following morning so that James wouldn’t recognise it.
My mind whirring, I searched Google Maps for his address –but it couldn’t be found. I kept trying and eventually discovered it was the registered address for a construction company. This seemed odd, but I knew he rented so it was possible that he rented from them.
I went to his work website to see if there was another address there . . . only to discover it had been closed down.
With my stomach churning, I decided to reverse photo search the art he had sent to me. The first one I searched popped straight up with a different artist’s name. So did the next. Of the 40 pieces of art he’d said were his, at least 30 were traceable to different artists.
The deception had started on day one and had carried on building week after week. I felt horrified, scared, embarrassed and desperately sad.
It was damning evidence.
The next morning, I grabbed a baseball cap and a long, dark wig from my fancy dress drawer, exchanged my car for my father’s, and set off for the address he’d given me, an hour’s drive north.
It was on a small, new-build estate, and parked on the drive was a white van and small black car – neither of which matched the two cars I’d seen him drive.
I circled around, and as I did a young man came out of the house and drove off in the van. James didn’t have a son.
I decided to knock on the door.
With heart pounding, I approached the house and peered into the kitchen window to see if it looked like the house I’d seen on video calls, but as I did three little white dogs started jumping up and barking. There was no chocolate labrador. A woman opened the door. ‘I think I may have the wrong address,’ I told her shakily. ‘Does James live here?’
‘No, no one called James lives here.’
I smiled and apologised, feeling a rising sense of panic.
As I drove home, all sorts of thoughts whizzed through my head – a few days before, I’d left someone who was seemingly a complete liar alone in my house for six hours. He had my passport details, my email, had been on my laptop, and I remembered then that my driving licence had gone missing while I’d been seeing him.
When I got home, I tried again to track him down online, but I kept hitting dead ends – no LinkedIn, no social media. As a tech expert, he had done an impressive job of hiding his traces.
At 8pm that evening, convinced I was a victim of a scammer, I decided to call the local police. They took his passport details and said not to alert him to the fact I’d spoken to them. Not long after, they rang back to say his passport was real and he had no convictions or reports against him. With this news, I felt a slight sense of relief that at least he was a real person and hadn’t faked his ID.
Still in shock and denial, I decided to confront James with the first of his lies: the undeniable fact that he had given me a false address.
I dropped him a message to say that, as he was so ill with the chemo-induced nausea, I had decided to visit him at his home. What explanation did he have for the fact that he had clearly given me a false address?
There was a long pause. His answer was another obvious lie, pulled out of the hat.
Even though just three days before he’d wanted a weekly call with me so he wouldn’t lose me, his excuse was that he had given me the wrong address on purpose as he knew, for sure, he was walking away.
He said our relationship had to end – I didn’t need his poor health and financial problems in my life. It was all to ‘protect me’, as he ‘loved me so much’.
I said how very sad that was, if that’s how he felt. I would take it as ‘the end’ – but could he still gift me the drawing he had been doing of me.
After a lot of stalling, saying it wasn’t finished or that he was too ill to get it from his office, he sent me the ‘drawing’, which was very obviously just a black and white filter on a photo he had taken of me.
If I hadn’t been so shell-shocked by the deceit, it would have been laughable. He asked for my thoughts. My thoughts at the time were still horrified that a man who had so much detail on me was untraceable. I decided I would just play along and said it looked great and looked forward to receiving it. I wanted to buy myself more time to ensure I was safe from any fraud.
I spent the next day cancelling and replacing my passport and driving licence, and changing all my bank logins. I checked my laptop for any spyware and looked back over my doorbell camera history to ensure there was no way James could have had a key cut for my house.
I might have been taken for a terrible fool, but no crime had seemingly been committed. I then cut off all contact with James.
Even now, I have no idea what his intentions really were. Did he actually have cancer? Was he after a loan towards the £350,000 he was unlikely to get from his ex? Or was he simply a fantasist who wanted to impress me?
The sad fact is I genuinely fell in love with James and, even now, I want to believe he loved me too. Though I’m sure I had a lucky escape one way or another, it still hurt enormously.
Was James just a liar or a full-blown scammer? I always want to think the best of people but I’m now convinced he was the latter.
Names have been changed.
Adapted from S.A.S. Sixty And Single by Fiona Lambert (Synergy Press, £10.99), to be published on July 8. © Fiona Lambert 2025. To order a copy for £9.89 (offer valid until July 12, 2025; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.
