Over 17 months the woman spoke almost every day to a man who called himself Donald. Photograph: Getty

Last year we were contacted by the sister of a woman in her 60s who had been ensnared in a sinister romance scam and had fallen in love with a man who called himself Donald.

The woman’s family were distraught and knew she was being conned. They were afraid that, as well as having her heart broken, she’d also lose all her money.

Despite their best efforts, their worst fears were realised and the woman could not be persuaded to sever ties with a man who, she believed, loved her.

Eventually, the wool cleared from her eyes but not before she was left with huge debts and a potential legal headache that could prolong her nightmare.

Last week the woman asked us to share her story with readers in the hope that her experience might save others from being conned by an unscrupulous cohort of criminals that prey on some of the most vulnerable people.

When we were told the first part of this story last year we called the woman Mary, although that is not her real name. We will stick with that name now.

Mary joined a dating site in the late summer of 2023, thinking little of it.

“A couple of weeks later I got a notification to say this man had liked my profile so I wrote to him and said hello and almost immediately he came back to me and the conversation began,” she says.

It was all “very natural and he seemed sincere and interested in me”, Mary says.

Within days, the man who called himself Donald asked if they could move the conversation off the dating platform and on to WhatsApp.

Things moved quickly after that and within a couple of weeks Donald was saying he had strong feelings for Mary, who felt the same way.

He told her he lived in an affluent Dublin suburb but before a meet-up could be arranged he needed to travel to Germany to work on a lucrative telecommunications project.

“He sent me a link to his website, which looked very profe