Sharon Ballmer from Manchester, in the evenings when the house was quiet and her son and husband fell asleep, surfed Facebook and sometimes chatted with her friends. At one point she received a friend request from a man named Murphy Townsend. He accepted it and slowly began to talk.
The photos he had on his profile were real but they were not his. It belonged to Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pampriks. The couple's conversation continued for months and Sharon began to fall in love with the man.
He told her he was a high-ranking military man serving in Syria. He told her at the beginning that he could not leave because he had no money and the situation was dangerous. In fact, the man expressed his desire to visit Sharon but unfortunately the financial was a deterrent.
Then the woman from Manchester told him that she would give him the money. "He told me that he felt lonely and was serving in Syria. "His wife had died and he just wanted someone to talk to," says Sharon.
Murphy was asking for more and more money every month. Other times for a ticket to visit her, other times because he had to go to the US urgently, other times because he went to the hospital and had to pay every time he found something different and every time the woman inflated his bill. Until she gave him a total of 80.000 pounds, ie 95 thousand euros.
And suddenly… he disappeared
Sharon meanwhile revealed to her husband that she is in love with a military man and left home after 29 years, to be left alone elsewhere. At one point the woman had no more money and in order to continue sending it to Murphy, she borrowed another 44 thousand euros.
Until Murphy disappeared one day. She did not answer the cell phone he had given her, nor the messages. And then the woman did the obvious. He found the phone of the American bases that Murphy was supposed to be serving and asked to find out if there was a Murphy Townsend there.
When she was told that there was no such person to serve there, she lost the earth under her feet. She finally decided to make her plight public and come forward to protect other women from falling victim to the internet world in general. 
And a note: The Latvian Minister of Defense, whose photos Murphy used in his fake profile, said that at the moment there are at least 100 fake accounts with his photos as a profile picture on the internet.
in.gr