SCAMMED OUT OF HER LIFE SAVINGS

MARCEL THOUGHT HIS MUM WAS HAPPY … BUT SHE WAS ABOUT TO ADMIT HER SECRET

- Emma Levett

With three grown-up kids and retired from a successful career in nursing, Marcel Blanch de-Wilt hoped his mum, Marjan, would at last make time for herself.

“My parents divorced when I was 3, so she raised us boys,” Marcel, 31, tells New Idea. “She was happy and independent, but companionship was an aspiration.”

Unsurprisingly Marjan, 69, didn’t discuss her dating life with her sons. However, in March this year she mentioned to Marcel there might be someone special.

“She said she’d met someone and he might be back in Adelaide next week,” Marcel says. “I was happy for her. I had no reason to be suspicious. I didn’t know she’d been online dating and even if I had, there wouldn’t have been immediate alarm bells. Mum knew what went on online. We’d watched TV shows about it together.”

It was true. Marjan was an intelligent woman. She knew what was what and the man she’d met was, in her eyes, completely legitimate.

“[‘Kyle’], the person I met online was a businessman traveling the world,” she tells New Idea.

The pair had struck up a conversation in December 2019 through the dating website Zoosk. He was a widow and had a daughter living in Adelaide, near Marjan. Over the next three months, Marjan completely fell for him. He sent her flowers, matching robes with their names embroidered onto them and countless messages proclaiming his devotion.