A 69-year-old British woman who had been targeted in years of romance scams died in Ghana after traveling there to try to recover funds, an inquest in Exeter heard. Janet Fordham, a retired housekeeper from Devon, was allegedly conned over a five-year period by fraudsters operating from the UK, Germany, the US and Ghana. Investigators say she lost her life savings and her home during the campaigns.
Family members and police repeatedly tried to stop Fordham from sending more money to the criminals, but she was assessed as having capacity and could not be legally prevented from continuing contact. Detective Sergeant Ben Smith described her as the victim of a sustained fraud between 2017 and 2022, estimating she had sent between £800,000 and £1 million to scammers. He said Fordham sold her home and land and had been living in a caravan in Devon.
Fordham’s daughter-in-law, Melanie, told the inquest that her online dating activity began in 2017, when she met a man who claimed to be a British army sergeant major serving in Syria. That man allegedly asked for help bringing gold bars to the UK; Fordham spoke of plans to marry and buy a house and is believed to have paid about £150,000 to that scheme. She later fell victim to someone posing as a diplomat. Melanie said Janet seemed to recognize she had been scammed but struggled to accept it, moving from one fraud to another. Payments were made by bank transfer, postal wire services and possibly via a travel agent.
At some point she was contacted by a man in Ghana known as Kofi, who said he was a doctor and claimed to have discovered she was being scammed while working part time in a phone shop. He offered to help recover her money and Fordham flew to Accra in October 2022. The inquest heard the relationship with the man in Ghana developed into a romance and that Fordham agreed to marry him.
On 14 February 2023, while he was driving her to meet a family member to discuss the marriage, the car left the road, swerved and overturned. Fordham was not wearing a seatbelt and sustained fatal head injuries. Devon and Cornwall police found no evidence of third-party involvement; the driver admitted a driving offence. Senior coroner Philip Spinney noted inconsistencies and gaps in the evidence about the crash and said it had not been thoroughly examined. He recorded that Janet Fordham died from a head injury probably sustained in a road traffic collision.
The inquest highlighted the difficulties families and authorities face when adults judged to have capacity continue to fall victim to complex frauds, and the challenges of investigating incidents that occur overseas.