Types of Romance Scams - The Celebrity Love Scam

You're new to online dating, and you come across this handsome, slightly younger, engineer. He's got 2 kids, is divorced, and living about 45 minutes away from you. Of course you swipe right, his profile is great! Within an hour you start chatting. He's British and is living in the States with his boys. He also has a house in England, which he is leaving for in a couple days, but will be back in 2 weeks. He's excited to connect with you, and wants to keep talking while he's gone so you can get to know each other better. That sounds great, you're already very interested, so what's a couple weeks?

Your first phone call is the next day. He may have the most beautiful voice you've ever heard, you are swooning. He has a confession to make to you, he's a retired boxer, focusing on engineering now as that is what he went to school for. Okay, that's interesting, but you don't follow sports so you've never heard of him. He tells you that you can see his fights on YouTube if you're interested, so you look him up while you're on the phone.

You are blown away by the amount of information out there on this guy. He's not just a retired boxer, he held 2 belts. He was a big deal in the boxing world! You laugh at him for downplaying his celebrity, and he asks if you're still interested, which of course you are. But you are not interested in getting to know him from Wikipedia, so you tell him you're not interested in the celebrity, just the real man, so he has to tell you what he wants you to know, which he happily agrees to.

You text everyday, which soon leads to talking everyday as well. You had switched to Skype as it would be easier to communicate there and have video calls too while he's away. He's such a sweetheart, and he is fascinated by you, you talk for hours on end. He doesn't give too much detail about his life, but you can understand that he's used to being very private, so you let it slide. After the first week there he's got something serious to talk to you about, another confession.

He's actually back in England because his bank account has been frozen due to fines he owes the government for some bad behavior, as well as the settlement for his divorce. He has to come up with a way to pay the fines without taking the money from his account. He is devastated by the situation he has found himself in, and is embarassed to ask you to borrow some money for him to get by while this gets sorted. He has you log into his bank account so you can see the millions he has in there, and so you know he's good for it.

So you wire him $2000 to help him out. This was made easier by the butterflies in your belly that went apeshit everytime you heard his voice. He tells you he's falling in love with you, and this is so unlike him, he's been alone for years. You're ecstatic, this man already had such a grip on you. You haven't been in love for years either, so maybe this was meant to be? Maybe this is just how love goes sometimes?

As the second week draws to an end, you get a sinking feeling in your gut. He hasn't been talking about returning to the States and his banking issues are not getting any better. He tells you he has to stay longer because of this, but that he will be with you as soon as he possibly can be. He wants to hold you and kiss you and stare into your eyes, surely you must be able to understand how hard this is on him? Of course you do, you can't wait for the same things.

This goes on for 2 more weeks, and still no developments. He has to ask you for money again, but you have no more to spare at the moment. So he asks if you can just get him an iTunes giftcard so he can keep his computer working. Sure, a $100 gift card you could swing, so you get it and send him the code. In these two weeks though, you have both fallen completely in love. he trusts you more than anyone else on earth, and you feel the same. You know he's the one you're going to spend forever with.

You talk about your future together, and he tells you that he has decided to come out of retirement to make the money he owes the government. He says it would only take one fight, but he had to start training again, in England. This was tremendously disappointing news, you ached to be together with him. But this was the ony way that could happen, so you suck it up and try to be as supportive as possible. He asks again if you have $1000 to spare to help him get by. This time you do have it, but it will make things a bit tighter for you to give it to him. And will this keep happening?

What do you do?

What did I do?