A Dublin woman who was scammed out of over €25,000 by a man she believed to be Coldplay’s Chris Martin has called for anti-fraud protections to be ramped up.
The woman, who is in her 40s and works in a finance-related job, has also revealed the documents she was sent during the scam, and the images which made her believe her burgeoning romance was real.
She told EVOKE’s sister paper the Irish Daily Mail that she had been vulnerable and naive, but that she was bombarded with calls and messages over four months – including a Skype video call which appeared to show the singer, a band member and the band’s manager talking to her.
She was also sent images of a bogus passport and driver’s licence for ‘Chris Martin’. The woman recovered money that was sent from her UK bank account, following a determination from the financial ombudsman that she was a victim of fraud.
She is now taking legal action to recover the €22,000 that she sent from her Ulster Bank account in Dublin, as the ombudsman here has backed the bank’s position that it does not have to return the money.
She said she felt let down by the lack of protection in law in this country. She explained that the catfish had begun in early 2021, when she responded with a one-word comment, such as ‘lovely’, to a post from Coldplay management on the band’s Twitter page.
‘I got a contact from a man purporting to be Chris Martin,’ she said. ‘He then asked me for my phone number. I did not believe it was true initially but then I was like, could it be? And I gave my number and he contacted me via WhatsApp and Facebook, with fake Chris Martin accounts as well, and then he contacted me on Skype.’
She said the person posing as Martin asked for money quite quickly into the contact. She said. ‘I should have known it was a scammer but I was dazzled and thought I had to be complicit to keep what I thought was the real Chris Martin talking to me.
‘He asked for the loan a month into the conversation and was love-bombing me constantly. Initially, he asked for £150 and £400 to help with costs for orphans he was looking after… Then he asked for £2,200 towards flight costs to come visit me in Ireland.’
The scammer arranged for her to send money to various women’s accounts in the UK. She believed he could not use his own bank account due to his fame, but now knows the accounts were those of money mules.
The scammer asked for €20,000 for a film project, which he then upped to €22,000. She agreed, but insisted it was only a loan. She got a solicitor to draw up a loan agreement, which he signed.
The money came from her pension fund, which had taken five years to accrue, she said. When she eventually confronted the catfisher, they continued to insist they were the real Martin, and almost immediately asked for another €20,000.
The woman made a criminal complaint and a cross-border police investigation was escalated to include Interpol and the FBI.
Email correspondence between her and Coldplay management confirmed the scam. A spokesman said it was a ‘mind-blowing level of deceit’ and the images were taken from online sources such as Instagram.
