Marisha Wallace close to tears as she reveals she was scammed out of £60,000
Watch Marisha Wallace close to tears as she reveals she was scammed out of £60,000
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Celebrity Big Brother star Marisha Wallace appeared close to tears as she told how she’d been scammed out of £60,000.
The US singer and actor was tricked out of the huge sum six years ago. Wallace was going through a divorce and had moved from New York to London, where she was appearing on stage, when she met the scammer on a dating app.
Appearing on ITV’s This Morning, she told how difficult it had been but said that she wanted to tell other people that there was hope.
What, how and why?
Explaining what happened, she said: “I was vulnerable and I was alone and I thought you know what, ‘I am going to try to put myself out there, I’m going to go on Bumble’.”
West End star Wallace met someone through the site and they went on a date, and he later told her he was in finance. She had been saving for a long time with the dream of buying her mum a house and he offered to help her, by sending her to an account manager he knew.
She initially handed over £24,000 of her savings and said it all seemed to be legitimate, and that she quickly got a return on her money. However, she was soon encouraged to invest more.
“I am a very trusting person," she said. "If someone says they are going to help me I am like, OK great. I did my research online, I thought, and the person is sitting in front of me. It’s not like it is today where everything is online. This man is sitting in my home, he’s talking to me… I’ve had dinner with him, I’m thinking it’s fine.”
Wallace, who was on Celebrity Big Brother this year, ended up handing over a total of £60,000. She said: “A couple of days later… I was on the set of Aladdin, this is crazy, the first film I’ve ever done, I was so excited, I was working with Guy Ritchie. I was in the trailer getting ready and I texted him on a whim. I had a bad feeling. I texted and no one responded. I called and no-one responded.
“I was crying and I was like, 'It’s a scam'. I knew in that moment, I knew instantly that it was wrong, it was a feeling.”
The star performed in a show that night and admitted: “I don’t even know how I survived any of it. I just had to keep performing, I just had to keep going, you can’t tell anyone, you can’t. There is so much shame and so much guilt and you don’t think it’s real.”
Wallace then told the man she'd met that she wanted her money back and tried to “play it cool” while she looked into what happened. She said she “went complete detective” and learned it had all been a con.
“The police, I had recorded conversations, I had texts, I had phone calls, I had all of the information and they said there is nothing we can do,” the stage star told viewers.
Marisha Wallace tells fans 'there is hope'
Wallace, who was on This Morning with a fraud expert from Victim Support, said she wanted people to know that they don't have to go through it alone and can reach out for help.
"I just want people to know that there is hope, that you don’t have to suffer alone," she said.
"I’m now in an amazing relationship. I just bought my mum the house… if you had told me that during that time, I would have never believed that I could do it. And I did it."
A Bumble spokesperson told Yahoo: “We’re saddened to hear of Marisha’s experience, and concerned about anyone taking advantage of our community to commit fraudulent activity. The safety and wellbeing of our members is critical and since 2018 we have, and continue to, invest in ways to identify and take action on spam, scam, and fake profiles.
"Our moderation technology and teams work to identify and block suspicious profiles and we encourage our community to use our Block and Report function if they suspect scam activity. Someone found to be attempting to defraud or manipulate members will be restricted or banned from the app.”
