Meet the love scam investigator

When Kylee Dennis' mother told her about the man she'd met online, he sounded too good to be true - and he was. Kylee, a former police officer, exposed the scam and found a new calling, investigating the thousands of romance scams perpetrated on Australians each year.

- WORDS by SUE SMETHURST

Kylee Dennis had just poured a glass of chardonnay on a hot summer's afternoon in January 2023 when her mum, Julee McKeen, rang to share some exciting news. Julee, then 78, had met a man online, and they'd struck up quite a rapport. They'd been chatting for almost seven months. "Donald" would soon be returning from a lengthy overseas business trip and Julee would finally get to meet him face-to-face. She was looking forward to the long lunches and coffee catch-ups they'd spoken about many times a day.

“You could’ve knocked me over with a feather,” Kylee says. “Mum sounded so happy. She told me he was a widowed businessman from Orange, which is just a couple of hours from her NSW south coast home, and he was getting ready to retire and looking for a companion to share his life with.

“He sounded wonderful, perhaps a little too wonderful, and I asked Mum to send me a picture of him,” she says. “I hung up the phone and said to my husband, ‘Mum’s got a boyfriend!’”

Julee forwarded a picture to Kylee, who'd been a detective with the NSW Police Force for 14 years. Kylee thought the person in the picture looked much younger than the 72 years of age he claimed to be.

“The picture raised a red flag and I started to wonder what this person wanted with my mum,” she says.

Wine in hand, and tapping into her years' work in intelligence gathering and undercover operations, Kylee perched in front of the computer to see what she could find out about Julee's new beau.

Less than an hour later, she made one of the toughest calls of her life.

“I rang Mum and said, ‘I hope you’re sitting down’. I had to break the news that she was being scammed. I broke her heart, it was awful.”

“I was shocked and quite devastated that something like this could have happened to me,” Julee says. “At first, I didn’t believe Kylee, but she was right. I was very hurt and very angry with myself that I’d been conned.”