Toronto woman loses life savings in romance scam, warns others to 'be careful'

When a handsome stranger started chatting with Cindy Browne on TikTok, she was intrigued. 

They quickly took their courtship to WhatsApp and bonded over their shared difficulty in love: He told her his wife had died of cancer. She told him her first husband had also died and she'd recently found out her second husband was cheating on her. 

"[He] WhatsApped me every day, so nicely talking," said Browne. 

"I fell for him." 

Less than a year later, Browne says the man she thought she was building a life with had scammed her out of about $26,000 in a type of scheme the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre says is on the rise. 

In a statement, Toronto police confirmed they're investigating, and said "unfortunately, this type of crime isn't uncommon." 

Jeff Horncastle, a unit supervisor with the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, agreed. 

"It's a story that we hear far, far too often," said Horncastle, who noted that romance scams have seen a "drastic" increase in recent years. 

In 2020, the fraud centre registered a reported loss of nearly $28 million due to romance scams in Canada. In 2021, that number more than doubled to more than $64 million – though Horncastle believes that may be an underestimate, as people are often reluctant to report this type of crime. Last year, romance scams accounted for the second-highest amount of dollars lost to fraud in Canada, the centre said. 

Horncastle said some warning signs that could point to a potential scam include: 

Browne's purported sweetheart called himself Fabian, and said he was a pilot based in Jordan. About two months after they started chatting, he asked for her clothing size and said he planned to send gifts from his travels in Europe. 

Fabian told her she'd have to pay a fee to have the gifts delivered.

"I thought maybe the fee was going to cost me, about $30 or $20 or $100 or something," she said.

But when she got a call from someone who claimed to work for a courier company holding the gifts, Browne was told the fee would cost $1,500.