A HEARTBROKEN daughter has revealed how her cancer-stricken mother was conned out of $350,000 (£275k) in a horrific scam which she believes led to her death.
April Helm’s mum Sherry was a 73-year-old widow when she met a man named Gerald on dating site Plentyoffish and soon became besotted with him.
The man claimed he owned a diamond mine in Turkey and sent Sherry a photo of a 40-year-old motivational speaker based in California, claiming to be him.
Within a year or so Gerald had swindled Sherry out of all of her money – and left her penniless.
“My mom was married for a long time and her husband died. So she was a widow for about a year or two," radio presenter April explains.
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"She was lonely and she decided to go online to start dating, and I told her that was fine.
“She promised me she'd be careful so when she sent me a picture of a man she'd met online a few months later, and she was really excited about him."
However, April quickly realised that her mum's new love interest wasn't who he was claiming to be.
“Immediately I knew that he was a scammer…because he was probably about 40 years old and really good looking," she admits.
"My mom was going through cancer. She was 73, overweight.
“It just didn't add up. So I told her, ‘Mom, I think this is a scam’, and she said, ‘Well, I'll be careful.’
“Fast forward about a year or so and finally she admitted that she'd been scammed. She told me, ‘He's taken all my money. Come, get me.’"
No content with taking all Sherry’s life savings, the scammer then encouraged her to move money around for him – which is illegal.
“All she had left was social security which they took,” April says.
“But the scammers weren't done with her and she was turned into a money mule.
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“She was going from bank to bank to bank, moving money around for her scammers to stop it from becoming traceable.
“I told her she could end up in jail but she didn't listen."
April says Gerald was able to convince her mum with the use of fake video calls.
“The calls would always be at night and when I asked why they couldn't be in the day she told me because of Gerald's schedule," she says.
“I even asked to be on the call with her but mom said she wasn't ready for that.
“Now we know that he was using a video of this motivational speaker, turning the audio off and speaking over it.
“It is easy to ask how anyone could be that gullible but scammers have all kinds of excuses.
"Gerald would blame his mouth not matching the words on the 'poor connection.'"
Sherry told her daughter that Gerald had taken $200,000 (£157,000) and April didn't discover the full extent of the damage until after her mum's death.
The scammer used a variety of scenarios to get Sherry to send him money.
After claiming he owned a diamond mine gerald told Sherry he had ran into emeralds and needed help funding the project.
He later claimed he was arrested after a car accident and needed Sherry to bail him out of jail.
But April says that far worse than losing the money, she believes that the scammer is responsible for her mum's death.
“I believe the scam led to her death,” April says.
“Because in their play book, scammers keep their victims up all night to keep them delusional, so they're not thinking clearly.
“She was up all night talking to her scammer, and I was supposed to go get her that next day because she was penniless, had nowhere to live.
“I told her she couldn't move in with me because my ultimatum was she couldn't talk to the scammer under my roof, and she refused so my brother agreed to have her instead.
“But that night she had rolled out of bed and got her head stuck between the head and the night stand, and broke her neck.
“I believe that if she hadn't been up all night talking to the scammer she wouldn't have been so delirious.
“I don't know if she got up to go to the bathroom, or if she just rolled out of bed. But she just wasn't thinking clearly, and she was exhausted.
“So the cancer didn't kill her. I think the scam did. She wouldn't have been talking to the scammer, she might still be alive."
April now helps other people who have been scammed and runs a podcast called ScammersStories where she shares people’s experiences.
“Right before my mom died, I started a podcast on the on scams, because at the time I couldn't find a lot about it," she says.
“And one day my mom called me, and told me she needed $200 (£157) for a doctors bill.
"When I offered to pay it directly to the doctor and mom declined I realised it was for the scammer.
“I told her I would give her the money if she agreed to do an interview on the podcast and she agreed.
“On the podcast, she admitted to talking to multiple scammers.
"Even after she figured out it was a scam she got addicted to the attention, and she couldn't stop.
“And that's the thing that people don't understand is people think that once you figure out you've been scammed, you're just going to stop and go away.
"But one of the people I'm in contact with has lost everything and is living in a tent in the woods, and she still won't stop talking to her scammers. It's just like a a drug addiction, it's bizarre.
“Cutting off Gerald would have been like a death for her because he was messaging all day, all night.
"He knew her every doctor's appointment. They acted like they were interested in the same music and the same food and the same religion.
"It was like having a best friend, even though they'd never met before.
“Her excuse to me for still talking to him was that she wanted to try and get the money back.
“But the reality was she was addicted to the attention she was getting."
The episode has caused immense stress for the whole family who has lost any hope of inheritence.
Even once Sherry had passed away, the relentless scammer did not stop and began harassing April.
“After she died, the scammer somehow got my number," she says.
“They started texting me and threatening me.
"They said that they had a video of me having sex and if I didn't give them a certain amount of money that they were going to release it.
“Knowing full well the video didn't exist I called their bluff.
"I couldn't believe they were still trying to milk more money from us."
April says the scam really took a toll on her relationship with her mom, in the months before her death.
“It put a damper on our relationship, because every time we would talk we would talk about the scam, and she would get upset and I would get upset," she recalls.
“I just dreaded the phone conversations with her, so we didn't talk as much as.
"My mom had cancer and we should have been talking about her life but instead I was angry, and I didn't want to talk to her.
“That's really common with other victims who I speak with, usually they cut off contact.”
April believes Sherry could have survived much longer if it wasn’t for the fall that killed her.
She says: “There are so many things that she's missing still, weddings, big events that have come up in my life, honors that she could have gone to.
“I'm still angry, and it almost still doesn't feel real."
April says that victims of scamming aren't necerssarily naive or gullible with her own mum being an intelligent business woman.
“My mom wasn't stupid,” she says.
“But she thought that she was a good person and she deserved to have someone love her which helped to convince her Gerald was real."
April has spoken to many scam victims and says although little can be done to track them down, she would still urge victims to report their experiences to the FBI in the US or the police in the UK.
And she is calling on big tech companies to do more to stop scammers.
She adds: “The more that victims report their details, the more likely the report will lead to an arrest.
“Aside from that social media networks and dating websites also have a responsibility to come together and figure out ways to weed scammers out.
"If they do it will prevent more people like my mum falling prey to a fatal scam."
