Dr. Heartbreak: The Surgeon Who Stole My Savings (Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

[Music] every year millions of pounds are stolen from unsuspecting victims under the guise of love [Music] the type of crime we're investigating is a confidence trick call it what you will romance scam blackmail gold digger whatever the name it doesn't begin to describe the horrific impact these crimes can have on the people who have been targeted as well as being life-changing these crimes are very much on the rise with victims losing an average of more than 11 000 pounds well we are here to stop the scammers in their tracks and as we get to the bottom of how they were able to pull off some of the most audacious cons we'll have everything you need to know to make sure you and your money stay safe coming up we uncover the truth about the so-called surgeon who broke this woman's heart and stole her money too we believe you've taken around 1400 pounds from susan and you're now trying to extort a further 250 pounds from her what'd you say to that perry our business contact ended up conning this woman out of thousands at that time he knew he got me and he felt that i would do anything for him and how this man battled back after what seemed like his dream woman took away his cash and his confidence my heart had just dropped out of my body i just felt like getting in the car driving to the end of the road and ending my life so we've been contacted by a lady called susan she suspects she's being scammed by a man called perry powell let's take a look my daughter always said that i should meet somebody else so she set me up on a dating site when i saw perry powell on the site i thought he was attractive he was very charming he said i don't have any access to my own money i feel embarrassed that i fell for somebody who sort of feel i feel it has made a fool of me i'd really like to meet this person who i so fell in love with to me that sounds like she still believes that that is a genuine person with susan half hoping the man who scammed her could still turn out to be for real i need to find dr perry powell and fast so she isn't persuaded to hand over any more money while ashley cracks on with that i'm in bristol to find out more about retired care worker susan and how she met her man hello i'm kim nice to meet you after her husband died one of susan's daughters suggested that a way to rebuild her life might be to try internet dating she said mum we need to get you out and about go out on some dates yeah even if it's only a coffee or a meal and you just meet people so you were quite comfortable to do this yes yeah yeah i know lots of people that have met people on dating sites and living happily ever after almost immediately after signing up to the site susan was contacted by dr perry powell who told her he was 67 and swedish born but living in london perry also said that he was divorced since his ex-wife left for his best friend so what was that he said he did for a living he told me he was a surgeon a surgeon in a hospital in israel and did he tell you why he was in israel he told me he was working for the united nations he'd been posted out to israel it wasn't long before perry moved their chats off the dating website and onto the phone messaging service whatsapp and so the kind of conversations you were having were quite normal conversation for a man and a woman to be having at the start of a what is potentially a relationship that's right he sounded exactly as he portrayed himself actually yeah um he was he sounded a real gentleman over the next couple of months they became very close texting sometimes 20 to 30 times a day always said good night always said good morning i know it sounds awful but i sort of fallen in love with somebody i hadn't even met just sounded so perfect yeah with christmas around the corner and dr perry powell apparently unable to get home for the holidays susan sent him some presents to israel he said he was a very avid reader so i bought some books i bought him a silk tie nothing extravagant yeah i think the whole total came to about 50 pounds but fearing the relationship was too good to be true susan began asking perry to take some more recent photographs or selfies i kept asking him to send me a photograph of himself because i just wanted to prove who he was i must have asked him a hundred times how do i know you're real okay and he didn't send you a selfie no he sent me photographs okay but they weren't selfish perry eventually updated her with one photo that showed him holding one of the books she had bought him and not long after that he called susan with some news he said he'd been given some gold from a wealthy patient whose life he'd saved but in order to bring it back to the uk legally he'd have to pay the duty on it and there was a reason why he needed susan's help with that he asked me for uh 470 something pounds for a certificate from israeli customs seeing he had no access to any of his own money did you suddenly think why haven't you got access to your own money because presumably that kind of a job you might think would be quite well paid yeah would it not yeah he kept making excuses and they were quite convincing excuses actually and it would only be alone and i sort of swallowed it then and i believed him okay and there seemed no reason not to believe him as perry very quickly sent susan a receipt and a custom certificate for the gold so did you tell anybody at this point like did you tell any of your family or friends no everyone knew i was taxing him okay but i never told anybody that he'd ask me for anything i don't know i just went with my heart instead of my head whilst kim has been finding out more about susan's romance i've been checking out some of the finer details on the paperwork sent from perry dci gary miles is an economic crime specialist with the met police and has agreed to look at some of susan's evidence in more gary how are you doing nice to meet you nice to meet you starting with the importation documents in susan's case she was sent these certificates this one this one so the first thing that i spot is on the um the custom stance it describes it as preventive services so i'd start looking at things like to see if there is actually somewhere that government department in in existence israel spelled wrongly oh yeah oh my days it is that is so bad yeah lowercase i spelt longer it's real yeah generally speaking official documents don't contain spelling mistakes or serious grammatical errors so if you spot one of them straight away that should raise your suspicions it won't tell you 100 that it's it's a false document but it should start raising your suspicions perry had sent pictures of himself holding one of the books that susan gave him and while asking for photo evidence isn't a bad way of testing whether the person you're dealing with is genuine you need to look very carefully at whatever your scent image software like photoshop has made it easy to digitally edit and manipulate virtually any picture just instinctively looking at it that would appear that he's holding a couple or something along those lines and then they've photoshopped that book inside and they've photoshopped the face on in front yeah genuinely speaking there's there's the ability to do a reverse look up on on on the image itself and what she might have actually found was that's an image that is online on the internet and they've ripped it off and then just put somebody's face on in front sounds like i need to do a bit more digging to see if that's what's happened here and if it is find out who's really in the pictures dr perry powell will send in to susan scams like these don't always start on dating websites fraudsters using exactly the same techniques can crop up anywhere meaning any one of us could be at risk in our next case olivia willie wasn't looking for love at all she was after professional contacts to help with our business but things turned out very differently originally from the philippines mental health professional olivia willey joined business networking site linkedin to make some valuable connections for work so there seemed no reason to be suspicious when she was contacted out of the blue by a man called gary ralston it says on his profile he was a petroleum engineer he looked to me like he was from the philippines i was planning to start my own business and i thought it's good to have lots of connections according to gary's profile he was a malaysian american oil rig engineer based out of doha qatar working for the petrol giant exxonmobil he was very polite when he came to me he added me he messaged me and he was very very kind and polite gary's next move was straight out of the scammers handbook he suggested they ditch linkedin and swap phone numbers so they could continue their chats on whatsapp and it wasn't long before he told olivia he was planning to come and see her in the uk at that time it didn't cross my mind that it was going to be a relationship because i thought that he just wanted me to show him around london that was the only goal but what seemed to start as a routine business connection soon took a more romantic turn he messaged me every single day more than once a day and and he invited me to go on holiday to cyprus but i just laughed at the idea because i said i'm a complete stranger how could he trust me over time her feelings towards gary deepened but because she was only recently divorced and not really looking for love she was cautious about his intentions asking a lot of questions to reassure herself so i'm aware of scammers stealing other people's profiles and not not a lot of people put double takes of photos of themselves on their social media so i thought this looked real and it's really him because it's two takes like where would he steal photos of another person having two takes at that time he knew he got me and he felt that i would do anything for him as their relationship developed olivia suggested she book a trip out to see him in doha for later in the year something gary appeared delighted about i said to myself yes i'm going to dolja and then i bought a return ticket to doha and booked a hotel he was so excited he cannot wait for my visit and that's when gary began his scam a few days later he called olivia from the oil rig and told her he was experiencing internet problems logging onto his online bank account he needed to urgently pay a business supplier and asked olivia whether she could log on to his account and transfer the money for him he said i needed you to transfer seven hundred thousand dollars to a company to pay for an oil rig equipment i did that because he said he was going to lose his job if he wouldn't pay the supplier as soon as possible he gave me his username the password and a pin number when i logged on to his online banking i could see the balance in his account it was at that time one million five hundred ninety thousand dollars having logged into what she thought was gary's genuine bank account olivia transferred the 700 000 nearly 600 000 pounds on gary's behalf he was relieved he said i did him a very big favor i was so happy that i helped him but gary's internet issues persisted a few days later he told her he now had 24 hours to pay for the equipment shipping costs and asked olivia to log into his bank account again and this time transfer a further 6 300 pounds i said that's fine because the first one was 700 000 and i've done it why would i have second thoughts over six thousand three hundred dollars but this time the transaction didn't go through gary told her he'd find out why and when he got back to olivia he said that because his account had been accessed from an unauthorized location it had been frozen for 25 days while his bank carried out an investigation he said if we didn't pay the shipping and the taxes the oil rig equipment will be held i suggested that he contact his colleagues and his friends to pull some money for him after a few frantic hours gary told her that his friends had managed to club together most of the cash but that still left olivia feeling like she needed to raise a further 2000 pounds to get him over the line my heart ruled my mind at that time and i was under his control i took a loan from a payday company and lent him some money to complete the two thousand dollars at that time i didn't feel it was very risky i was confident he was going to pay me back with his bank accounts frozen olivia even offered to send gary more money to help with his day-to-day living expenses gary accepted and told her he'd pay her all the money back when she came out to doha for their upcoming break together he didn't demand me for money it was just me feeling bad that he wouldn't have anything to eat or anything to support himself [Music] in the end olivia sent gary a total of 3 370 pounds and while deep down she wondered if she was being taken for a ride it was only when gary canceled their holiday together in doha that she finally understood her relationship wasn't real he made excuses he was broke after sending all that money i thought i've got to cut my losses i was more disappointed than heartbroken keen to know exactly how she'd been tricked olivia did some research and discovered that the bank account gary had asked her to log into was in fact a fake website registered in the ukraine [Music] next she sent some of his images to a facial recognition company who quickly found out the real identity of the man in the photographs she'd been given my heart sank the first photo of the real man he had children so i thought he's a married man and i found out that he was a public figure in malaysia he was the first astronaut of malaysia his name was dr sheikh musaffar al-masri a simple google search quickly turns up the astronauts photos making them easy pickings for a scammer looking to build a fake profile they can use to con someone like olivia linkedin says fake accounts are a violation of its service and it takes appropriate action against them often blocking or removing them altogether and though gary ralston's profile has now been removed that's come too late to help olivia it's not like breaking up with a real boyfriend it's like breaking up from two people the one you were speaking to and the one in the photos [Music] susan tichner thought she had found her soulmate when she connected with dr perry powell through a dating website but it was money not marriage on his mind when he asked susan to pay for a certificate to get some gold through customs and it wasn't long before he was asking for even more money this time to ship the gold home which he insisted had to be via indonesia he said it was just routine and he sent me an email saying it was 800 and something to have it shipped in the meantime he was panicking he was texting me are you going to send me this money then i got more suspicious and i changed my mind and i said no perhaps sensing he'd been rumbled perry changed tack he told susan he was posting her 250 pounds in cash that she would then need to send on to one of his relatives in the united states but when she took this cash to her bank staff there refused the transfer the bank said you're definitely being scammed i went home i started trying to find out whether there was any truth in it every time i asked him a question he always avoided it by saying how much he cared about me and how how he would definitely be there for me and i kept calling him a scammer what did he say to that how could i not believe him after all we said to each other when susan's family got wind of what was going on they insisted she report the whole business to the police and action fraud but despite losing nearly 1 400 pounds susan holds out hope that perry could still be the real deal despite your children saying to you mum stop what was it that made you continue to talk to him no matter how many times i thought he was lying no matter how many times people told me i wanted to believe it was all true and so how do you feel about that person now whoever that person may be i feel maybe one day you'll turn up at my door half of me is thinking that the other half thinks how embarrassed i am how stupid i feel i don't think you're stupid how do you feel about us perhaps trying to find out who this person is i'd love to find out it was the person i actually fell in love with mm-hmm i'm gonna give you a hug now thank you thank you [Music] hoping to get answers for susan i'm running a check on some of the photos perry sent her we're going to crop them reverse image search them and see where they lead us reverse image search can be as simple as dragging and dropping a photo onto the search box on your internet browser this will then reveal a number of identical or related images giving you a far better idea of where the original picture came from and after a bit of digging it appears that the images susan was sent can be traced back to a man whose name isn't perry but fred there's a facebook profile for fred and from what i can see this man lives in holland he doesn't live in israel he doesn't work for the un he runs a company in holland one of the first things i've noticed about fred's facebook page is this open i haven't added him as a friend but i can see all these pictures all the information about him this guy is a prime candidate to have his identity stolen having open settings on your facebook account means anyone anywhere can log on to your page download your photographs and harvest any personal information you may have put there it's an absolute goldmine for scammers looking to build a convincing fake dating profile [Music] it seems clear that susan's scammer was using another man's facebook profile pictures to con her out of almost 1 400 pounds but with it being so easy to create a fake person from real images i've come to meet tech expert then sodogran dan how you doing you're good learn more about staying safe online what are the risks attached with open facebook settings one of the biggest things that people might not realize is by being wonderfully generous with their settings and opening to everyone they're actually open themselves to abuse and it's a little bit like a digital green cross code you've got to really think what would you do to make sure you're the safest possible roads are obviously great but they also are quite dangerous same principle here with facebook the more information a con artist has on you the more elaborate the con can be it's not foolproof but changing your privacy settings so only friends and family can access your facebook pictures and information will make it less likely that your photos could fall into the wrong hands of course once those images are out there there isn't much you can do and if you're one of the many people like susan using a dating website it can be very tricky to know for sure that the picture you're looking at really is of the person they say they are how much of an issue is it having these fake profiles on these dating sites well i mean not just only on dating site this is a they've been for all social media platforms because it's so easy to set up a profile that the barrier to entry is so low and you can actually do it now with machines so the machines can actually start thousands of fake profiles all you need is an email address and a picture they could get off the internet so the fake accounts are rife on the whole of the internet on dating sites they are almost fundamental what do you mean by that one of the best ways of getting people into a restaurant is to show that your restaurant's really full so you put people on the front people can see them but actually the restaurant the rest of the restaurant's empty same principle with a dating thing you don't want to turn it to a dating site where there's no one there because that wouldn't be a great experience for you but you turn up and you interact with god expect real people yeah but would you know how would you know so you'd have to check check check again but some people aren't prepared to check the online dating association that represents the big players insists that fake profiles are largely a thing of the past however it's been estimated that up to 20 of all profiles online could still be fake and that can have a huge cost for anyone who like susan is scammed as a result it's often impossible to recover the money they've lost but forensic fraud investigator richard emery believes the bank should be doing more to help victims get their money back richard hello hello ash very pleased to meet you the banking industry categorizes romance scams under the umbrella of what it calls authorized payment fraud so what we mean by an authorized payment fraud is that the victim of the fraud authorizes the payment from their bank account they believe that they are making a genuine payment but ultimately the payment goes to a fraudster if we just want to put some numbers on it for romance scam last year on average a victim would make 5.4 payments to the fraudster so the average value of the transaction a romance scam victim pays to the fraudster is less than two thousand pounds okay so once the payee has been created multiple payments to the same payee are quite difficult to detect richard thinks a big factor here is that when we set up a new payment banks only check the account number and sort code not the name of the person the money is going to so in a romance scam if the fraudster says my name is sergeant john smith and you create an account in the name of sergeant john smith sort code an account number but actually he is somebody completely different because the bank doesn't allow you to validate the payee name you end up paying money to an account which is entirely unintended so why do you think the bank doesn't do that well that's actually a very very big question because in my opinion the banks should have been doing it since they became aware six years ago they became aware of the risk fingers crossed this should soon finally change uk finance which represents the banks says confirmation of payee is set to be rolled out sometime in 2020. of course that's little benefit to susan but while the information i found out won't help her get her money back it will give her the truth about so-called dr perry powell shortly kim and i will be revealing to her everything we've discovered as we've seen with some basic tricks and technical know-how fraudsters can quickly pounce on unsuspecting victims before disappearing into the night with their money so often in romance scams like these the victim never actually meets the person they've fallen in love with but dave hazel was different he met someone in person not just online he could never have imagined though that he would find himself exploited at the hands of an unscrupulous scammer [Music] if love is a dance then dave hazel has certainly had his fair share of misplaced steps [Music] ballroom dancing i've been doing for about seven eight years and i love it but it was on a trip to london with friends that dave met a woman who he appeared to be completely in sync with we arranged to meet up the next day for coffee and we had a good time and then i had to leave so i said good you know it's been nice meeting you and hopefully we'll keep in touch but the woman he'd met linda smith was a canadian tourist who soon returned home and the two quickly lost contact back in norfolk and eager to find a partner dave decided to sign up to a popular dating website so i went on to the online dating because some friends they'd met partners off of them and they said why don't i try it and to his delight dave came across a profile that looked like it belonged to the linda he'd met in london i saw a picture and i saw her name linda smith and i thought that is a coincidence it's you know i want to see if i can if it is the right one the woman replied saying she was the same linda smith from canada that dave had been so taken with i was really excited and happy and i thought yes she's single and i'm single hopefully we can try and rebuild what we had in that weekend over the next six weeks the two constantly messaged each other and it wasn't long before linda was suggesting she moved to norfolk and live with him i was really really really happy i was out of this world no one else existed that's how i thought of her and she was saying the same but a few weeks after they first got back in contact linda sent dave an email asking for a hundred pounds to help pay a medical bill for a member of her family she had family problems that's why she asked me to if i could help her out i said yes okay but one part of linda's story didn't seem to add up the bank account she asked for the hundred pounds to be sent to wasn't in canada as he expected but ghana i emailed her back and said well you're in canada right yeah and she replied to that email and said no i'm with family in ghana but i'm gonna be going back to canada once i've got things sorted out with the family so i sent a hundred pound so and she emailed me back and said thank you very much but over the next few months the requests for money to help pay her family's medical bills in ghana kept coming with little cash to spare dave maxed out his credit cards and even took out a 5 000 pound loan linda promised to repay the money once she came to norfolk to live with him and asked for dave to cover the cost of her flights to the uk all i was concerned with was getting linda over to me and settling down having a happy family life i kept on sending her money i was really struggling to survive but at the end of the day it'd be worth it when she finally got here by now dave was eight thousand pounds out of pocket but could at least look forward to linda's imminent arrival having booked the week off work to spend it with her the night before she was due to arrive he received a troubling call linda said she'd been detained by immigration in ghana for not having the right paperwork i was virtually in tears because she was crying and we were miles away miles apart and i couldn't do anything to comfort her linda told him she needed three thousand pounds to pay off the officials and fly to the uk but she only had 500 pounds of her own money so i rallied around and got another loan to pay for it i sent her 2 500. by now dave had shelled out nearly 15 000 pounds but the following day linda still hadn't been released she told dave that he'd now need to hire a solicitor in ghana which would cost a further 1500 pounds dave refused prompting a man who said he was linda's dad to call pleading for him to send the money he was begging me and he said that you know she really loved me and she really wanted to be with me so if you want if you're the same if your feelings are the same you'd want her you'd want to help her out as much as you could dave felt he had no choice but to help selling off some of his possessions to raise the 1500 pounds but he couldn't escape the nagging feeling he was being scammed something that was soon confirmed when he went to transfer the money at his local bank when i was in the queue at the bank the lady saw me up really upset and she said what's the problem i said i've been silly i think i've lost i've lost a lot of money so she had a look and on the immigration paperwork she she noticed one small little misprint and her advice to me was go down the police station and report it as forward not only did dave now have to accept that his dream woman was a scam and almost certainly not the woman he'd met in person originally but he was now nearly fifteen thousand pounds out of pocket and in debt i was really upset my heart just dropped out of my body i just felt like getting in the car driving to the end of the road and ending my life hi dave sarah sarah hilly from the charity victim support helped dave come to terms with what had happened when we first met you're a very different person than you are today you were struggling quite a bit weren't you yeah but if you hadn't been there i wouldn't be here telling everybody my experience well you should be very proud of yourself thank you very much sarah i am sarah helped dave understand that he was one of many people to be taken in by this kind of scam over 4500 reported cases in 2018 alone dave's story and the way that the crime has affected him is quite a common one lots of people feel that they're the only person that's been through something like this they feel embarrassed they don't want to talk to people about it because they think that people are going to think they're foolish but as the time's gone on his confidence has improved he's getting out and about he's living his life and he's looking forward to the future thanks to the support he's received from sarah dave is now back on his feet and strutting his stuff and while his experience has put him off online dating for good he's still hopeful that in the future he'll find the right partner to tango with i've been through the really bad times and now i'm looking to enjoy myself i'm looking to get settled down with somebody we've been looking into the case of susan tickner before we begin our investigation she was hopeful dr perry powell was genuine [Music] but the case against him is comprehensive and now it's time to see how susan will react to everything we've discovered first of all i've got a couple of these documents with an israeli custom stamp now if you look closely that stamp will say israel customs and preventative services right now the israeli customs department isn't called that it's called israel customs administration okay i wouldn't know that no because he's used that name we know that this is a fake document okay although you've got deep suspicions in the back of your mind sometimes you you seem to wipe them out you don't really want to believe it should i move on yes please do you remember this picture yes i do i sent him two of my books in a package for his birthday and i asked him for proof i needed proof because he was still asking me for more money and i said before i send any more money i need proof so i need a picture of you standing somewhere holding one of my books and he sent me this well the head has been photoshopped yeah and the book's been photoshopped on right i feel quite sad about it all i feel stupid i feel like i've really made an idiot of myself you're not stupid this is someone who is extremely cunning they've gone to extreme lengths that would lead most people the wrong way we've found out that he has been relying on images from a man called fred who lives in holland he is married with children so these innocent people they don't know their identity is being used no which is awful isn't it really how do you feel about what you found out i just feel relieved actually i feel i'm quite a strong person i'm one of those kind of people who just move on just stay off and get on with my life i've had worse things in my life but i'm not making a joke of it i feel angry at least susan is now under no illusion that everything perry told her was a lie all that's left to do now is for kim to give him a call and a piece of her mind hello hi perry how are you i'm very good are you i'm okay i'm just wondering i i said on my message i'm just a little bit confused you shouldn't be confused baby are you gonna come over am i gonna meet up with you you do want to see me yeah i really want to miss okay so i still be reading your books you still reading my books are you i'm so glad about that i really love you because i i don't know what came over you you started turning your back at me well listen i i i need to tell you that i'm not actually susan and my name is kim marsh and you're being recorded for broadcast on the bbc and we believe perry powell is a fake identity that you've created as part of a scam using photographs which you found online we believe you've taken around 1400 pounds from susan what'd you say to that perry oh it's lies well i don't think it is lies perry if in fact your name is perry i don't think it's lies at all how can she be saying that because i don't see anything she can't help me it's fine okay you you're still denying it wow what a piece of work i know i so not do you see the manipulation i love you yeah and then he went on to guilt trip you susan i'm sorry that we've had to present this information for you um do you think it's giving you the closure that you need even when i walked in here today i'm still thinking they're going to say oh you weren't scammed it wasn't it was real you know it in your case because you just want it to be right for you and um it was just not real thank you susan it's been lovely too although the man of her dreams turned out to be an invention by scammers susan can now draw a line under the whole sorry saga although i'm quite shocked he sounded a totally different person than i had built up a picture of in my mind so i just feel he's out of my life now and i'm pleased if you think you've been scammed in a similar way or have been asked to send money to someone you're talking to online then we'd like to hear from you email us at love or money at bbc.co.uk [Music] [Music] throughout our investigation susan genuinely wasn't sure whether perry existed or not but today she finally got her answer he was a total fake and while susan won't get her money back she is now armed with the right information to make sure this doesn't happen to her again yep and that goes for the rest of us too think twice before handing over money to someone you've met online even if you believe their story checks out because you can never be sure whether those who are asking for it for love or money [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Real Stories

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Keywords: Real Stories, Real Stories Full Documentary, Real Stories Documentary, Full length Documentaries, Documentary, TV Shows - Topic, Documentary Movies - Topic, full documentary, full episode, catfishing documentary, romance frauds, for love or money full movie, for love or money tv show, for love or money full episode, Romance Fraud Documentary, Dating Scam documentary

Id: 76AD6Uv4bB4

Length: 43min 45sec (2625 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 04 2021