Furious gran on a mission to expose romance scammers

CHANGING her relationship status to "widow" on her social media accounts was a major step for Ruth Grover.

- BY LUCY LAING

LOST HOME Victim Rebecca

Ten years had passed since she had lost her beloved husband Jeff to skin cancer, but only now did she feel ready to fully accept it.

She says: "I was heartbroken. It had taken me such a long time to get used to life without Jeff, but now I was ready to label myself a widow."

The next morning Ruth, now 69, from Hartlepool, was surprised to see three messages in her inbox.

She says: "I opened one and it was from a young man I'd never met, telling me how beautiful I was.

"I didn't know him and I certainly wasn't looking for love. But, intrigued, I accepted the message.

"I opened the other two and they were also from men. All three said they were generals in the US army. They were widowed like me."

Instantly, alarm bells rang. After decades of working in the control room at Cleveland police, where she had read numerous reports about scams, Ruth was no one's fool.

She says: "I started looking online and there were hundreds of reports of women being scammed like this, by men pretending to be from the army and also widowed."