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Jan Marshall is an extraordinary woman. Having studied psychology, sold computers in the early days of personal computing and travelled the world, Jan is tech-savvy, well-spoken and understands how the mind works. So why did she give over a quarter of a million dollars to online scammers? On this episode of the podcast, Jan tells the story of how she lost the money and how she overcame the experience.
On the surface, Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn should have seemed too good to be true. The Irish divorcee was a successful engineer, traveling the world with his teenager daughter. Now, he was ready to settle down and he thought Jan might be the woman he could that with.
Jan Marshall and the man she knew as Eamon Donegal Dubhlainn.
The pair met on Plenty of Fish, a free dating website. They struck up a relationship and soon Eamon was talking about moving to Australia, buying a house and marrying Jan. In reality, all the talk of ‘buying a house’ was a gang of internet scammers putting out the feelers for how much they could take Jan for.
They settled on the sum of $30,000 and soon Jan received a paniced email from Eamon, claiming he couldn’t get paid for the work he was doing in Dubai unless he prepaid his taxes. She agreed to lend him the money. Soon, more requests came with the scammers asking for more and more money and more and more tragedies befell Eamon.
Standover men came to his apartment to collect debts, a car accident on the way to the airport put him in the hospital and fines, taxes and expenses kept piling up.
On realizing she’d been scammed, the heart broken Jan tried to retrieve the money but receive not help from the police who told her the money was gone.
Now, Jan helps other victims of scammers find support. You can read her blog here.
Nicholas J. Johnson is a Melbourne magician, author, entertainer and collector of scams.