'He told me he'd been shot and needed money but it was a lie'

Sue was targeted when she joined an online dating group a few years after her husband, Dan, died, which she said "devastated" her.

"Dan was the best thing that ever happened to me," she said.

Shortly after joining the group, Sue started receiving messages from someone claiming to be called John.

John told Sue he had been a widower for six years and was currently in Dubai.

"He said that he was a civil engineer and he was 71," Sue said.

"He looked quite decent."

A couple of days after he started messaging her, Sue said John told her he loved her.

She now suspects she was being targeted in a dating scam, a category of fraud that has seen one of the largest increases in reports since 2019.

The category covers cases where the intended victim is befriended online and emotionally manipulated into sending money to someone they believe they are in a relationship with.

In the first six months of 2024, Action Fraud received reports of 4,109 cases of dating scam fraud, up 56% for the same six months in 2019.

Police advise anyone who has been a victim of a scam to report it as soon as possible, both to Action Fraud and their bank.

It was hacking which saw 46-year-old Alex Carlton scammed when she came home from holiday.

While travelling, she "clicked on something that looked very much like the normal Sydney Airport wi-fi".

It asked her where she was going. After typing in London, she got on with a few tasks - including "a bit of online banking".

When she arrived in London, she saw she had been charged by "a restaurant in Sydney that I have never been to".

"I was charged while I was flying somewhere over Turkey."

She did not report the incident to the police as her bank quickly froze her card. But she is now more vigilant about what wi-fi she uses.

“They do look very, very similar to the real one," she said.

"It can be very difficult sometimes to tell."

According to Action Fraud, £1.4m was lost last year through this type of fraud.

Additional reporting by George Sanderman and Grace Dean