Picture this: A woman has dreamed, all her life, of her walk
down the aisle in a gorgeous wedding gown to the rhythm of her favourite love
song. In her early 20s, she had several suitors but she wasn’t keen on marriage
so she ignored the advances. The men thought she was “playing hard to get,” so
her indifference earned her even more attention. But then she hit her 30s and
the advances became fewer... and soon, there was not a single suitor in sight.
The thought of reaching 35 with no Mr Right in sight sends her into a frenzy
and she starts to live a life of depression and desperation.
One woman, Beatrice (not her real name), confessed to Eve
Woman in an exclusive interview that a similar state of mind left her
vulnerable to a trap that changed the course of her life. Still reeling from
the effects of a romance gone wrong, she says she wanted to share her story
with women so that they would not suffer the same fate.
It all started one day when she was on Facebook. She noticed
a friend request from, “George Tanga” who she did not recognise but, figuring
it was probably an old high school friend, she clicked on the button to accept
the request. “Normally, I would have been annoyed by the cliché message,
‘Thanks for the add,’ George wrote on my wall. But because of the magnificent
photo on his profile, I felt nothing but delight that such a young and handsome
man was seeking me out in this era where the ratio of men to women is 3:1,”
Beatrice says.
Two days after becoming Facebook friends, Beatrice and
George had exchanged phone numbers. Their correspondence then grew from flirty
‘inboxes’ to lengthy live chats on Facebook. Every night while she lay in her
bed, they would chat on WhatsApp until the wee hours of the morning, George
assuring Beatrice of his love for her. Every morning, she woke up to love
messages from George. “He struck me as a rare kind of man. He showered me with
attention and sweet words. I felt like a black Cinderella. It was like a dream
come true, a prayer answered. The number of times I had prayed and fasted for a
husband... indeed, the Lion of Judah had passed me not,” Beatrice says, almost
laughing at herself.
She recalls that on their first date, which was exactly 12
days after the friend request, George showed up at her workplace in a black BMW
at exactly 5pm, just as she was winding up for the day. “I had my own car but
George had convinced me that we should use his car so I had taken a matatu to work,”
she recalls. Beatrice worked in a reputable firm and held a managerial
position. The respect she got from her workmates was immeasurable. If anything,
she was a mentor to most of them.
“In person, he was HOT. It was love at first sight although
I had already seen him before in photos. I thought I already knew this man
inside out. I had opened my world to him and given him access to my private
life. In one week, it felt like we had known each other forever,” she says.
That evening, George took her to dinner at a five star hotel
and made sure she felt like the queen of England. “George had told me he lived
in Nakuru but would travel to Nairobi once in a while to attend ‘board
meetings’ for his company, which I never got to see...blame it on being blinded
by love. So, the few times he came to Nairobi, we spent the night in the same
five star hotels,” she says.
Smitten, Beatrice started to ask George about
meeting his parents and friends. But their plans kept being postponed because
of ‘urgent’ meetings or family matters that he had to take care of since he was
the bread winner in his family.
“All these mishaps never raised my suspicions. I was in love
and they say love is blind,” she says. Three weeks into their ‘relationship’,
Beatrice introduced George to her close friends and she was planning to take
him to meet her family. Beatrice would welcome him to her home when he was in
town. She had given him access to her home and would even give him her car to
move around with. “George’s ‘driver’ was always running errands for his
‘company’ with his car when he was in Nairobi,” Beatrice explains.
A month into the relationship, just as they were planning to
travel to Beatrice’s parents’, she was hit by a bombshell. “One afternoon,
George passed by my office on his way to the ‘airport’ to pick his diabetic
mother who had travelled from upcountry for treatment. He said his phone had
gone off and he needed to communicate with his mother once she landed,”
Beatrice narrates. “He asked to use my phone and, as fate would have it, he had
also, apparently, left his laptop at the board meeting since it was being used
for PowerPoint presentations.”
So George asked to use Beatrice’s laptop, claiming he had
some work to do and e-mail to send as he waited at the airport. Being the
“fiancée” in love, she gladly helped her man out, offering to go off air as he
used her phone. After all, it was only going to be an hour or so. But three
hours later, George had not showed up and he could not be reached on phone.
“I didn’t panic at first because I thought that maybe my
phone had gone off as well...that he had decided to rush back to ‘his company’
for the meeting he had left halfway. I only began to panic when the time came
to leave the office and I still had not heard from George. I was actually
worried that maybe something bad had happened to him,” she says.
She did not have anyone to call and ask about George because
she had not met any of his friends — she had only talked to them on his phone.
“So I left the office and drove home. I was uneasy but I ignored the feeling,”
she says.
“When I opened the door, the house looked strange. I walked
through the house but I couldn’t tell what was unsettling. It was only when I
had set my bags down and walked to the kitchen for a cold drink that I realised
my fridge was missing. In a panic, I looked around the house. My microwave was
gone and so were my TV and entertainment system,” she says.
It was clear she had been robbed and the first thing she
thought was to call George, who had become her closest friend, to ask him what
to do. But then she remembered that she had no phone so she drove to the police
station to report the matter, leaving George a note. “I was still in shock and
I kept waiting for George to show up. I kept hoping that the robbery was just a
coincidence and that my dream man had not just vanished into thin air...with
everything I owned,” she says.
But after two days, there was still no sign of George. He
had deactivated his Facebook account. “I had discovered that my ATM cards were
missing from my drawer. By the time I called the bank, I had lost Sh150,000.
That is when it hit me that George had schemed a well-planned robbery without
violence on me,” Beatrice says. Within a month, she had lost almost everything
she had worked for.
This was beyond the police... at least that is what she
thought before she contacted a private investigator to help her track George.
Although it was an embarrassing situation, she opened up to the sleuth who told
her that she was not the first to woman to report such a case. It was like a
cartel of men doing rounds on social media, identifying and robbing their prey.
Three weeks into the tracking down, she had spent almost
half the amount she had lost — more reason to give up the search. At some
point, she had resolved to splash his images all over social media but that was
not possible. George had played his cards so well, all the photos she had of
him were in her laptop and phone, which he had made away with. To this day, she
regrets not saving those photos elsewhere.
GRACE'S STORY
When Grace (not her real name) received a message on
Whatsapp, she ignored it as a stray since she did not have the sender’s number.
“I went on with my duties only to receive another message from the same number
the next day. Unlike the first message, which was formal, the second message
was a bit flirtatious,” Grace says. It read, “Hi Nancy, are you a model? You
have such a beautiful figure as can clearly be seen on your profile photo.” It
had been a while since anybody had complimented her, especially regarding her
appearance. She quickly reread the message just to be sure it was as sweet as
it sounded. “I went through the sender’s profile. It was just what I had been
hoping for; a tall, dark and handsome man. I wished I was the Nancy in
question,” Grace says.
She asked who it was, stating she was not Nancy. The sender
introduced himself as Timothy and confessed it was a wrong number. Apparently,
he had saved a friend’s number and missed a digit. Even though they were both
strangers, this marked the genesis of a short-lived relationship.
“Within two weeks, we had already fallen head-over-heels in
love with each other and were planning to finally meet in person,” Grace
narrates. Timothy, who had introduced himself as an engineer with a leading
telecommunications company, never disappointed when it came to love. “He knew
what to say, how to say it and when to let it out. He stole my heart,” Grace
says. Incidentally, Grace had just celebrated her 32nd birthday. Timothy
grabbed the chance to make her feel like a woman.
One afternoon, a well-wrapped package arrived for her at her
workplace. She smiled as she opened the parcel knowing Timothy was the brain
behind it. She was not wrong, once she opened it, her face lit up. It was a
sexy pair of lingerie and gold-coated earrings with a matching necklace, all
from Timothy...a belated birthday gift.
“As much as I tried not to fall in love, I could not resist
Timothy,” Grace says. She had just come from an abusive relationship that
almost saw her lose her teeth. A relationship that begun in a bus and lasted
less than six months. She remembered how happy she had been when she met her
ex, at least, it stopped the pressure from her parents after her younger sister
announced that she was getting married. She regretted ever rushing into that
relationship and vowed never to repeat the same mistake. But falling in love
with someone she barely knew. Love made her forget all the life lessons and all
she could think of was Timothy.
“When the day for our meeting came, I dressed my best. After
all, I was going to meet my prince charming. I even went the extra mile of
hiring a cab to take me to our meeting place. I had to make a very good first
impression,” Grace says. Timothy had suggested that they meet at the Kenyatta
International Conference Centre where there was a homes expo. He had told her
that he was planning to buy a house. “What more could a lady want if not a
focused man?” Grace confesses. They looked at the variety of houses on offer at
the expo after which Timothy treated her to a late lunch in a five star
restaurant in town.
It was during this lunch that Timothy started making phone
calls. He seemed irritated by the other man whom he was expecting to meet but
Grace did not bother to find out what the problem was. After lunch, a Caucasian
man showed up at their table and apologised to Timothy for being late. He
joined them just when Grace was about to excuse herself. Timothy asked her to
stay since whatever they were about to discuss wasn’t private.
He then gave the white man something that looked like urine
in a test tube and the man gave him a cheque worth Sh200,000 in exchange for
what he had received. The transaction was very fast and the two men parted
ways. That’s when Timothy started explaining to Grace what substance he had
sold.
“He told me it was medicine meant to help horses conceive
quickly. He said he had bought it at Sh50,000...that there were the only three
people in the country who had ventured into the business because the substance
was still new in the market. Not many people had heard of it. The white man was
their client and he exported the stuff at an even higher amount. He said they
bought it from their contact person in Uganda,” Grace says, bitterly recalling
the day. Grace almost jumped at the idea of joining them in business but waited
to be invited. Timothy on the other hand was slow to invite her. All he told
her was that he was going to purchase his next stock the following week.
“My greed was making me itch and I wished Timothy would just
ask me to join the business...but I controlled myself,” she says. After their
late lunch, Timothy dropped Grace at home and they parted ways. More love
messages and calls were made between the two, Grace had definitely found her Mr
Right.
One week later, Timothy called Grace and told her he was
travelling to Uganda to make the purchase. He finally asked if she was
interested so that they could travel together. “Looking back, he knew very well
that I could not travel because of my tight work schedule,” she says.
Grace, who had all along been waiting for that opportunity
accepted the business proposal before he could change his mind. “I promised to
send him Sh300,000 that evening so that he could introduce me to the business.
We had agreed that I would wire the money to Timothy’s account, but he showed
up that evening at my house and took me out to dinner after which I gave him
the money,” she says.
After dinner, Timothy dropped Grace at home. That was the
last she ever saw of him. “That night, I tried texting him our usual love
messages before going to bed but they went unanswered,” she says. His calls did
not go through either. This did not raise any alarm for Grace until two days
later when her phone calls would still not go through. “That is when I came
back to my senses and realised I had been conned,” she says.
Her efforts to trace Timothy through the CID were futile
since he had done away with the mobile phone line he had been using. “I did not
have any proof that I had given him the money. This made it even more
difficult,” she says. It has been months since it happened and, still, there
isn’t a ray of hope for Grace. She hits a dead end every time she gets a new
lead... yet she keeps spending money to try and trace Timothy. Once again love
had knocked her off her feet.
