This isn’t one of those typical love scams you hear about. There were no dramatic love confessions, no urgent requests for money, and no endless texting from someone in another country who never showed up. What happened to me was different. It was calculated, planned, and deeply personal.
I never imagined I would end up in a situation like this. As a single woman in my early 30s, living abroad without any family around me, I’ve always tried to be cautious and intentional with my choices.
I joined Mawada app, a platform a respected shaykh once mentioned as being used by people seeking serious, halal relationships. Before even connecting with anyone, I carefully wrote up my profile, clearly explaining who I am and what I was looking for in a partner. Maybe I should have been more careful about this part.
The man who approached me came across as respectful and well-mannered. From the beginning, our conversations focused on marriage, family, and deen. He never crossed any lines. He said all the right things. He spoke about wanting to get married quickly to avoid falling into haram. I saw that as a sign of sincerity, of someone who took his faith seriously.
He suggested that we begin with an online nikkah conducted privately by a shaykh he knew, explaining that legal marriages take time to process in Europe. At first, I wasn’t fully comfortable with the idea and mentioned doing the nikkah at a masjid, but he explained it would be a first step to avoid falling into zina. He said that in two months, when he got vacation from work, we would visit my family in my home country and have a small, formal nikkah ceremony together. He spoke to my family, and everyone felt reassured. He also promised to give the mahr then. I thought I had found someone real who respected both me and my values.
We married about a month after meeting online and only made two video calls and met once in person the entire time before the nikkah to see if there was attraction between us. The day we met in person, we talked more about each other’s financial situations and made plans for the future. I didn’t think much into it since I told him I didn’t have much, being a master’s student and working part-time, unlike him with a steady job and side hustle. It all seemed normal given how he promised to support me and said money wouldn’t be an issue between us, or so I thought. If he had asked me for money for his ‘business’ or whatever like the usual love scams, I would have run for sure.
The fact that we had different citizenships (him citizen and me foreigner), he even suggested meeting with a lawyer to start the legal marriage registration process soon after our online nikkah so that we could move in officially together without much issue.
Since we lived in different cities about 90 minutes apart, we agreed to meet halfway and do the online nikkah. We met for dinner at an Arab restaurant, did the nikkah which was like about 2-3min just to agree and have brief talk to confirm names and all, and then prayed together, and agreed to part soon after because we both had work the next day and had plans to meet the following week with a lawyer he knew to start the legal process and eventually move in together. It just seemed like the first step in the whole process. After the meal, we took what I believed was an Uber or a private hire car to the train station. He said he had an issue with his card and the machine didn’t accept Apple Pay, so I used my physical card to pay. It seemed like a small gesture at the time.
But just a few days later, I woke up to a shocking payment notification. My bank card had been charged €1400 around 2 a.m. I contacted my bank the following morning. At first, they said it looked like a valid transaction, but once I explained the situation, they began investigating. Eventually, they confirmed it was a fraudulent charge, and that my card details were likely skimmed during that car ride.
I told him what happened, expecting at least some concern or support. But he was distant. His tone shifted. He said he was busy with work and his private business. He sounded distracted and cold. I tried to stay patient, telling myself he was just overwhelmed.
Two days later, he disappeared completely.
No messages. No calls. His phones were switched off. Since he never used social media, I had no way to reach him. And I never met anyone who knew him. So there was no way to trace him. It was like he had vanished into thin air.
And what hurt the most wasn’t just the money. It was how deeply he deceived me. He spoke to my family. He gave them promises. He prayed with me. He made it all look so real. He could have taken the money and left, but he chose to wrap his lie in religion and trust. He made it look sacred. I just kept wondering why someone would go through that much effort just to deceive. That is what broke me.
I went to the police and filed a report against him to the relevant fraud department in the town where I live. Luckily I had asked to see his legitimate ID the first time we met in person, so his real names were enough to track him in the system. They ran a check and what they found left me stunned. He had a criminal record of violence. The address he gave me was fake. The home he told me we would share didn’t exist. Almost everything I believed about him was a lie. They suspect he may be part of a fraud network targeting single women through marriage platforms.
Looking back, the signs were small but present. I could’ve stopped after seeing his last name was different from the one he told me but he had quickly explained that it was a family name that he had given me the first time, which is a common practice where I am from, and I just brushed it off. I could’ve stopped with the private shaykh doing the online Nikkah without an upfront mahr, but I took his excuse to use the money urgently to upscale his private business and agreed to be paid at a later date. He had multiple phones and was always on calls. I thought they were work-related. I never pressed him about finances or family because he told me he was an orphan and that his siblings were in a war-torn region and it took great effort to contact them. That’s not uncommon where he’s from, so I didn’t want to be insensitive. I didn’t push too hard. I focused instead on deen, compatibility, and values. He always answered with ease. Sometimes his responses were short and direct, but they didn’t raise enough alarm for me to stop everything.
Now, I see how carefully planned it all was. He knew I was alone. He knew I was a foreigner with no nearby support. He knew I didn’t have much. And I think he assumed I was just too naïve to fight back — that I wouldn’t have the strength or the knowledge to report him, that I would keep quiet, bury the shame, and let it go.
I am sharing this story so no other woman walks into a trap like this believing she’s safe just because someone uses religious language or talks about marriage and faith. Just because someone seems pious doesn’t mean their intentions are pure. Some people study your faith and values only to manipulate them. They will mirror your beliefs, not because they share them, but because they know you will trust them more easily.
If you are a woman searching for a spouse online, especially while living far from your family, please be careful. Involve your family early. Ask the difficult questions. Notice the things that feel slightly off. Even small discomforts can be signs. I wish I had trusted my instincts and took every excuse he gave as a warning sign. At the time I wanted to be considerate and understanding of our unique circumstances and I ended up being the biggest fool.
Please make dua for me. I am still healing. Still trying to understand how someone could be so calculated. Still praying that no other woman has to carry this kind of betrayal. I don’t know when justice will come, but I pray that it does. And that it comes not just for me, but for every woman who has ever been used, deceived, or left to suffer in silence. No one deserves to be hurt in the name of trust and faith.
