‘I Lost $1 Million to a Real Life Romance Scam—Now I’m Helping Other Women Fight Back’
Debby Montgomery Johnson lost her husband—then $1 million to a “perfect” online match. Now she’s sharing what saved her.
Romance scams are more prevalent than ever today, and the effects can be devastating for both victims and their families. And they can happen to anyone. Debby Montgomery Johnson—a former banker with a career in finance—never imagined that the worst day of her life would be followed by two years of deception that would lead to a significant financial loss. But Debby’s story doesn’t end in devastation. Now she’s sharing her experience in her own words to help other women recognize the warning signs and reclaim their lives.
The day everything changed
My husband left the house on April 8, 2010. He was going to a business meeting on the west coast of Florida, so he said, “Goodbye, and I’ll see you tomorrow.” The next morning, I was at a business meeting. I was a treasurer for the school district, and I was at the end-of-the-year meeting. When I went on break, I looked at my phone and I had 12 voice messages.
I picked up the first one—it was from my oldest son, who was 23. He said, “Mom, Dad just died. I’m coming home to take care of everything.” And I listened to that over and over. In an instant, Lou had a massive heart attack, and I never saw him again.
Learning to survive alone
Six months later, I was thrown into running his company because his company was paying the bills. I wasn’t sleeping at all, because I would stay up until midnight trying to run the company. I’d get to sleep for four hours, and that would be the time when I would cry because I couldn’t do it during the day. I had to keep myself together. I was angry at him for dying. I was angry at him for not leaving his passwords. There’s so many things involved in running a company that I didn’t know anything about.
After about a year of that, I realized I was making more money with my company in a month than I was making in a year with the school district. So I bit the bullet and I left.
In the process, my girlfriends were like, “Deb, you need to get a life. You’ve got to do something other than work.” And so they said, “Well, you’ve got to start dating.”
At that point, I didn’t like the word widow. I had four children. Three were gone—I only had my 15-year-old here. I was very busy. I didn’t fall into the family category anymore. At church, I didn’t want to be the widow. I hung out with my old widower friends who were in their 80’s because I was more like their daughter.
So when they said, “Start dating again,” all those “not enough” feelings when you’re 16 and dating for the first time—not pretty enough, smart enough, skinny enough—started to take over.
Then I met the ‘perfect’ man online
I finally thought, you’re 52 years old, get with the program. I was an Air Force officer at one time. I worked for a bank. I was a senior bank manager. I had legal experience. I had all these great jobs and great experiences, but my inner self was saying, “I don’t know about this.” But I dipped my toe in.
I went to a faith based dating site, thinking that it would be safe. I even went to my mother because I figured she’d be the greatest skeptic, and she said, “One of my best friends married a guy that she met online. Go for it. “
The only pushback I got was from my brothers. “You’ve got to do a background check on him. You have to do this and this…” So I stopped telling them what was going on. I think the girls were living vicariously through me.
My husband was a brilliant guy and a business person. So I was looking for guys like that, and I saw the guys in in the tank tops and the guys hanging on motorcycles with the girls. So when I engaged in this, I thought, “Oh my gosh, this is what that is out there. I’m not interested.” And then I got a message from a very good-looking international guy from London. He had his PhD in business.
The only thing that was a little bit odd at the very beginning is that in his message, he said, “You can call me Eric Cole.” And I thought that was a really weird way of saying, “My name is…” And I called him on it.
He goes, “I’m from London, and that’s lingua franca.” I thought okay, that makes sense to me. Again, trusting.
After a week or two, he says, “I just got a job overseas. I’m going to have to get off the dating site. Can I move you on to Yahoo chat?” I didn’t know any different. But he walked me through Yahoo chat, and I thought that was pretty cool, because back in 2010 that was instant messaging. It was great. And it didn’t matter where he was, because I would get that “ding, ding, ding” on my computer. I’d run to my office and I’d be on the computer for hours. I didn’t care if it was the middle of the night.
There were all these things that I questioned that goes back to my Air Force Intelligence background training.
Then he started asking for money
My very first transfer was about $2,500 to Western Union, and as a former banker, I found that really scuzzy, I thought, “I don’t want to do this.” I had to go to the local grocery store, and I wasn’t even sending it to my guy. It was a friend of his.
I questioned that, because he had a crazy name. I said, “Why am I sending it to him on your behalf? He said, “Because he lives there.”
It started from there; $2,500 went to $5,000. Then I went from Western Union to sending wires.
I also questioned the pictures. I tried to verify as best I could, but I also had my heart invested at that point.
He told me about his family, and I got to know him, his sister, his son and his attorney. And there were nights when I was on Yahoo chat, and I had multiple chat boxes open, going back and forth between different people. I would ask his sister something about him, trying to understand who he was, and vice versa, trying to get their stories.
For the two years this happened, I kept track of every message we did, everything we had online. I copied and pasted it and put it in an online journal because I figured, maybe this is going to be family history. Well, it turned out to be 4,000 pages of evidence.
The conversation that changed everything
I don’t know what happened, but he ended up writing to me one morning and was asking me about forgiveness. We were typing for hours. We came back later that afternoon, and he goes, “Can we revisit what we were talking about this morning?” And so we did again, and I finally said,”Why are we talking about forgiveness? Did I do something wrong?”
He said, “No, I have something to tell you, and it’s going to hurt you.”
When I heard that, it was like a knife in my gut, because I’d had that once when I was married, and we got through it, but it was not a happy time in my life.
And he said, “Deb, I have to confess that this has all been a scam.” At that point, I wasn’t thinking this has really been a scam. I’m thinking there’s something wrong. “Are you sick? Are you in the hospital? What’s wrong?”
He goes, “No, this is the truth now. On Yahoo chat, there is a little camera function.”
I have dual screens on my computer, and I’m looking at my screenshot of my handsome Brit, and in the corner of my main screen, I see this little camera pop up. I’m looking at this dark-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned young guy with a big smile on his face. And it was like hitting a brick wall.
I lost $1 million—and my trust
I was thinking, “You ripped my heart out. Not only did I lose my husband, who I didn’t see after he died, but now this is happening to me again, and I’m out $1 million dollars.”
Fortunately, I had a really good accountant who could help me figure out how to do everything, because I had investments and 401(k)s that I had turned in with the promise that he would pay me before any penalty. Well, guess what? That didn’t happen. It’s been 13 years, and I haven’t seen any of that money come back.
No one ever planted the idea that he was lying, and my brain didn’t even go there. I was just thinking that we’ve had these ups and downs, and excitement and terrible disappointment after failed promises of him getting here to visit me. But I never, ever thought he was deceiving me—not until he actually told me that he did.
After that, I took all my journals and all my financials—I kept incredible records—to the FBI. They said, “We’re really sorry, but unless you can get them here to the United States, there’s nothing we can do.” Talk about shutting somebody down fast. I swore I would never tell the story again, ever.
Finding my voice again
Somehow I was going to figure it out to keep a roof over my head and keep moving. But I was not going to tell that story…until I did.
I was at a meeting of a women’s group I belong to down in Fort Lauderdale, and I’d gone there to learn to speak a little bit about my company. Somebody at lunch mentioned online dating, and I rolled my eyes at them.
I told the girls my story, and they’re like, “You have got to tell that.” One said, “Deb, my mom was taken for $80,000 and never told anybody.” Another one had been in a Ponzi scheme, not once, but twice. Never told anybody. The third one was engaged to a guy and found out he had another family somewhere else. Never told anybody.
I realized that my story was not about me anymore. It was about the woman that’s out there bobbing her head and saying, “Yep, this is happening to me, but I’m not going to tell anybody.” Well, now I give that woman a hand to hold and say, you’re not alone. And that’s what I’ve learned through working with The Society Of Citizens Against Relationship Scams Inc. (SCARS); I’m not alone. It was not my fault. I was manipulated by somebody.
I’ve been very fortunate. I remarried, and I’m in a good place, and it gives me great confidence to speak up.
Because once you get the emotion of the story off your shoulders, it’s easier to look at it and to really recover, especially taking control of your finances. Even if you put $1 a week away in a bank account over time, that will grow and will give you the confidence that you can get your finances back on track.
I’m not the face of the victim. I’m the face of the survivor.
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