If you haven’t read the first part of this story, here’s the link. Kindly read it before starting this one.

I said I will never rest until I find him but at some point, I gave up the search. Humans are like that. We give up when we do it over and over again and get no good results. At some point, I accepted defeat, closed shops and moved on. I don’t even know how it all happened but one day I realized I hadn’t looked for him for so long and the thoughts of him also hadn’t crossed my mind for a very long time. That’s when I realized I’d indeed moved on. 

The second person I shared this story with laughed his head off. I told him, “I was so pained I even shared the story on Silent Beads.” He said, “Tell me the title so I go and look for it. I’m interested in the comments. Were they kind to you?” I’d stopped thinking about the story so obviously, I’d stopped thinking about what others said when I shared my story. Most of the comments didn’t favour me. Those who sought to speak for me made fun of my situation before trying to console me. I wasn’t angry. I brought myself and they decided to do to me as they wished. 

The guy I shared my story with ended up becoming my boyfriend. The day he proposed to me he said, “Obviously I don’t work with Emirates but I promise I won’t run away with your money. All I’m seeking to do is run away with your heart instead.” I answered, “You’re proposing to me and also have the gut to tease me? You obviously don’t want a relationship. I would have used three days to think about your proposal and give you a response but because you’re teasing me, I will use a year to think about it and still give you a no.” 

We both laughed about it. It was a yes for me and he knew it. He knew it even before he proposed because when I like a man, I make it obvious through my actions and through incessant touches. He’s still my boyfriend and everything we’ve been through to this point shows that we are heading to the best place of our lives together. But this story isn’t about him and it’s also not about my love life. It’s about the guy who ate me, ate my money and later disappeared. 

I spent a night at my boyfriend’s place. I woke up at dawn and couldn’t sleep again so I picked up my phone and went on Facebook. I was scrolling through my feed when something caught my attention. I was in the ‘People You Know’ section. This face looks familiar. He was bald. I didn’t remember any friend of mine who was bald or ever knowing someone who loved to shave his head bald. His name was Collins Sarkwa. I was tempted to scroll away when I said I should check his profile out. I was going through his photos when I screamed, “It’s him! The Nigerian guy. He’s on Facebook? God, he’s the one.” It’s indeed a small world. His profile had minute information and he hadn’t posted for a long while but I trusted the account was for him because it looked solid and had Emirate written all over it. His cover photo was Emirate air. He had images of cabin crew all over his photos.

When my boyfriend woke up, I showed him the account. I said, “You see this guy? He’s the one. The guy who ran away with my money.” He looked at it and said, “What’s he doing on Facebook? You said he was a Nigerian but this one here has a Ghanaian name. A fraudster with a Facebook account? It could be fake.” I told him, “We are talking about a fraudster and you’re talking about a name? Maybe he’s Collins on Facebook and Chinedu on Twitter. Who knows, he’s Alfredo on Instagram. A scammer can be anything. What’s important is that I see a photo and it’s him.”

He had a point but I wasn’t going to take his point without investigating it. He asked me, “Let’s just say you see him today. What are you going to do?” “Take my money back of course. In fact, I’ll cause his arrest because he’s a criminal. Just imagine how many women he has been able to dupe. He has to be arrested and shown a lesson.”

He was doing everything to talk me out of pursuing the guy but I wasn’t listening. While listening to him, I was devising a way to get to the fraudster. When I left, I called Cee. Cee was the first person I confided in when the thing happened to me. She told me, “Send me his link and I’ll send him a friend request immediately. We must get to him as soon as possible.” I went to her house and planned what to do. She sent him a friend’s request and a week later, nothing. We waited another week and nothing happened. We agreed it was a fake account and nothing was going to come out of it. 

A month later, Cee called. She said, “The hook has been swallowed. It looks like it isn’t a fake account after all. Let’s wait and see how it goes.” The idea was to catfish him and there was no better person to do it than Cee. A week later, Cee sent a message thanking him for accepting her as a friend. In the end, she said, “Waiting to hear often from you as we go along in our new friendship. He came to respond, “The pleasure is all mine but too bad I’m not often on Facebook. I travel a lot and hardly get the time to stay on Facebook.”

Cee pick up on that line and conversation ensued. In the end, they exchanged contacts. 

Nothing had changed. He was posting Emirate stuff on his status and was updating his status the same way he did when I knew him. Today, “Destination South Africa.” Tomorrow, “Dubai bound.” Cee was sending me the screenshots. I told her, “Poor boy, he hadn’t changed his tricks one bit.” I showed the screenshot to my boyfriend, just to convince him that it was the same guy who duped me. He wanted us to stop pursuing it. He told me, “When this blows up, you’ll have a story to tell everyone who asks you and I’m wondering what kind of story you’re going to tell them.” I answered, “I’ve told you it’s about my money and nothing else. All the money he took from me that he didn’t pay, I’ll get it from him.” He asked, “And if he’s not able to pay?”

I saw where he was going with the conversation. He was doing everything within his means to stop us from pursuing someone who had taken a lot from me. I told him, “I’m not doing this with anger. I’m doing this to close a chapter in my life. At least, let me get to the end of it and see what happens. It’s better to get closure on this than keep wondering about it in the future. This opportunity came out of nowhere. I believe it’s God’s way of telling me to right my wrongs.” He told me, “Anyway, if it makes you happy, then go for it but left to me alone, it’s not worth it.”   

Left to me alone, it was worth it so we kept pushing until Cee got a message from him one day that said, “I’ll be in Ghana very soon. Do you care for a meeting? I’ll be in Ghana for only three days but I can manage to meet you on one of the days, that’s if you don’t have a problem with it.”

It was a Saturday. He wanted Cee to meet him at his hotel but knowing what we wanted, we rushed him to choose a different location. Somewhere in public. A place we can pin him down and get our pound of flesh. No matter what Cee told him, he insisted on meeting at the hotel. “I would be too tired to go anywhere and I can’t go too far because a call could come through anytime requiring me to report to work,” he said. Cee responded, “No problem, I will be there. I can’t wait to see you.”

READ ALSO: I’m In A Relationship With A Man I Should Run From

That day, I asked my boyfriend to go with us and he declined. “You know I don’t support this. I have a feeling it won’t go the way you think it will go. He took your money and cheated on you but you moved on. Why go back and bring the whole story back again? It doesn’t sit well with me.” 

Cee called a macho man friend who was ready to act like a policeman and go with us.  

Cee went in first. The idea was to bring him to the hotel’s restaurant so we meet them there but he declined to come down because again, he was too tired to use his legs. Cee texted me, “He’s not coming. You two can come in now. He’s already trying to get me to sleep with him.” We got there and knocked. He came to open the door. The man pushed it open and we entered. He saw my face and went shocked. I asked, “You’re shocked to see me, right? I’m here for my money.  GHc5,000 in total. The hotels I booked that you didn’t pay for and the last one you took from me and disappeared.”

He was shaking. Cee started screaming, “If you don’t pay us the money, you’ll rot in jail. Do you see this man here? He’s a policeman and doesn’t have patience. Pay up before he starts to manhandle you. The macho man was right next to him, holding against the wall. He started begging. He didn’t have a Nigerian accent. I was like, “Who are you? Collins or Chinedu? Or you just love names that start with ‘C’. He was still pleading with us to allow him to make a call. Let me call some friends. They’ll come here and settle it.

There was luggage on the table. It came with tags and inscriptions that looked like someone who just came out of the plane. We searched the luggage and saw three ID cards bearing different names. He had three iPhone boxes in his bag. One iPhone 11 Pro Max and the other one was iPhone 8. The third box was iPhone 12 Pro Max. We opened the boxes and they all had iPhones in them except the iPhone 12 pro max box which had a block of soap in it. The macho guy slapped his face and screamed, “You’re from Circle right? You’re one of those guys who sell shops as phones, right.” He was just begging as if all his life depended on that moment. 

At the corner of the bag was a wallet that had another man’s ID in it. He had a total amount of Ghc750 in the bag. He was begging us to take the phones and leave him alone. Cee said, “Let’s report him to the police.” The man macho man agreed. I didn’t want to. All I wanted was my money but looking at the things we found in his bag, we knew the right thing to do was take him to the police station and we did just that.

30 People Advice Their Ex and Talk About Why It Didn’t Work–Beads Media

But before we got to the station, I took the two phones and the money from him. 

We took him to the police and left him there after writing my statement. We haven’t gone there since. The last time they called, I told them to do whatever the law requires them to do. I haven’t been there since and I don’t know what happened to him. 

Am I happy? 

Arresting him didn’t bring any special fulfilment to me. I’ve lost more than I gained but I’m happy I could meet him again in my lifetime and get the closure that I deserve. He wasn’t working with Emirate but he had become so good with his tricks that if you’re not learned like I wasn’t, it would be easier for him to get you. It was after I read the comments in my first story that I realized I was such a fool not to have seen the signs of lies that were right before my eyes. As someone rightly said, “You were too much in love with who he could be than to see him for who he was.”     

–Lora

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