San Sebastián love scam costs 82-year-old widower nearly 400,000 euros

The court has now ruled that the deception continued for almost two years and cost the man 397,205 euros.

He met the woman at a restaurant in Brussels on 25 January 2022. According to the Gipúzcoa provincial court, she immediately took advantage of his age and loneliness, making him believe that she was romantically interested in him and wanted to become his partner.

The meeting was only the beginning. That day, the woman arrived with a man she introduced as her cousin, although he later turned out not to be related to her. The restaurant manager seated the pair next to the victim.

The man later came to suspect that they had information about his personal life. During their conversation, the woman told him that she would like to have guitar lessons. He no longer gave lessons but made an exception for her.

That same evening, she sent him a message saying that he was an exceptional man and that she wanted to see him again.

They arranged to have lunch the following day. He told her that he was considering moving to Spain and had seen a housing development that interested him. She said she could go with him and that they could live together.

He warned her that "the age difference was incompatible", but she replied that it did not matter. She even told him that she had previously been with a younger man who had later left her for another woman.

From the outset, people close to the victim in Brussels warned him that the situation seemed strange. But he was lonely. "I don't like being alone," he told the court.

He saw the relationship as an opportunity to have someone by his side again. The fake romance then began. The Gipúzcoa court described it as a "romance scam" and ruled that the Romanian woman used the emotional relationship as a "decoy" to obtain repeated payments from the man and even a flat in her name, for which she never paid.

After spending the early part of their relationship together in Brussels, the pair decided to move to San Sebastián a few months later. They moved into a property that the man eventually bought on 7 June 2022 for 264,119 euros.

According to the ruling, the woman also persuaded him to give her his half of the property, worth 132,055 euros, rather than simply leaving it to her in his will. A Romanian lawyer known to the woman even travelled to Gipúzcoa to formalise the transaction, with the victim paying his travel and accommodation costs.

After buying the property, the woman began asking him for money. She told him that she needed funds to buy a house in Romania for her mother and promised that the property would eventually belong to him.

Using that promise, she received four large bank transfers: 50,000 euros in November 2022, 70,000 euros in February 2023, 75,000 euros in June and a further 38,500 euros in September. The total came to 233,500 euros.

She later told him that they had already bought the house but that it needed work and required more money.

As the demands for money increased, the relationship also failed to develop as he had imagined. They slept together when she was not travelling, but he acknowledged that they never had a sexual relationship.

Even so, he expected much more from their life together. "I had thought that perhaps I would have a child with this new partner," he told the court.

The ruling says he continued to believe in their plans for a life together. "I didn't let myself get carried away by my feelings too much, but I would have gone to live with her, because that was what she had promised me," he said.

At another point in his testimony, he summed up how he felt at the time: "I wanted to believe that I had been very lucky."

However, doubts eventually began to emerge. At one point, the man realised that his bank card was missing from his wallet after the woman had left the house unexpectedly.

When he asked her about it, she denied taking the card and even suggested that someone might have copied it.

The provincial court has now found it proven that, between January 2023 and February 2024, the woman made 63 cash withdrawals from the man's account, totalling 21,770 euros, without his knowledge or consent.

There were also further transfers and requests for money. At one point, another man claiming to be her cousin appeared and demanded money that supposedly had to be repaid.

The man began to grow suspicious. By then, he had bought the San Sebastián property, sent hundreds of thousands of euros to Romania and still had around 150,000 euros in his bank account.

His Brussels bank adviser then warned him that his money was falling "drastically". The situation deteriorated to the point where the man decided to leave twice. He subsequently discovered that some of the explanations the woman had given him did not match reality.

She claimed to work in a restaurant, but he later discovered that this was not true. She also spent long periods away from home, saying that she was in Romania. Around this time, he also learned that she had met another man.

On another occasion, the woman told him that she needed 500 euros for a medical test. He called the hospital and was told that she had no appointment scheduled.

The following day, she asked him for money to pay a Romanian lawyer. "She took 3,000 euros from me during those days," he told the court.

Eventually, after a series of similar incidents, his San Sebastián lawyer intervened. When the man wanted to meet his lawyer, the woman insisted on accompanying him and refused to leave despite being asked to do so.

The lawyer had to call the National Police to make her leave. The victim then decided to leave the property for good. He packed a small suitcase and left accompanied by his lawyer and escorted by police officers.

By then, he told the court, he had "a hundred-and-something thousand euros" left.

The provincial court concluded that all these events amounted to what the judgment, issued on 13 July, calls a "romance scam".

The court ruled that the woman made the man believe they were in a romantic relationship and had plans to build a life together, when in reality she used that relationship as a "decoy" to obtain financial gain.

The judges rejected the defence argument that the man had voluntarily given the woman the money and half of the property because he wanted to help her. The fact that he personally made the bank transfers does not rule out fraud, the ruling states, if he made those financial decisions as a result of deception.

The Gipúzcoa court found it proven that the woman received 233,500 euros to supposedly buy a home for her mother in Romania, as well as other sums, and made 63 cash withdrawals from the man's account totalling 21,770 euros without his knowledge or consent. The 132,055-euro donation corresponding to half of the San Sebastián property also formed part of the case.

The court placed particular weight on expert reports about the victim. Specialists concluded that he retained his cognitive abilities and did not suffer from a psychiatric disorder, but they identified a social and emotional vulnerability that made him particularly susceptible to manipulation when making financial decisions linked to emotional relationships.

The judges concluded that the defendant had exploited that vulnerability.

The court also described the man's testimony as "firm and consistent". His account was supported by bank records, the property deeds, transfer documents and expert evidence.

The evidence showed that the various transactions formed part of a single strategy of deception, the judgment concluded. The court therefore found the woman guilty of a continuing offence of aggravated fraud because the amount involved exceeded 250,000 euros.

It sentenced her to four years in prison and a 12-month fine, with a daily rate of six euros. She must also pay the victim 265,150 euros in compensation, plus 190.58 euros in notarial costs and statutory interest increased by two percentage points.

The ruling also includes the San Sebastián property. The court revoked the 132,055-euro donation that the man had made to the defendant, representing half of the property, and ordered her to return it.

The judges ruled that the donation could be revoked because the beneficiary had committed an offence against the donor's assets.

The man, who told the court that he had planned to live with the woman, now lives alone in San Sebastián. "He currently lives alone, although this is not by choice," the ruling states.

Perhaps the phrase that best sums up the entire story is the one he used when recalling those days in Brussels: "I didn't realise it was very suspicious luck."

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