A family say their cancer stricken mum gave her life savings of £9,000 to a scammer before she died - all in video game cards. Kayleigh Allen-Heyes' mum Lindsey Heyes, 45, passed away in July after a nearly a battle with terminal thymus and breast cancer.
But the 21-year-old says Lindsey had been scammed out of all of her money before she died. Lindsey believed that she was in a relationship with a man who claimed he was in the US Army and that he was currently based in Leeds, West Yorks,.
He convinced the mum-of-three that if she sent him gift cards, that he would be able to send her a huge sum of money - ranging from £25,000 to £75,000. Believing the scammer's lies, Lindsey sent the man around £9,000 in video game gift cards over around four years but she had never met the man or spoke to him over the phone.
Kayleigh said: "My mum had been deaf all of her life, and she was a drug addict but she was trying to turn her life around. She also didn't have custody of us and we actually live with my auntie, which is her sister but we still had contact with her and saw her on a regular basis.
"I was first made aware of the situation when she met me in the town centre like we normally do just before my 17th birthday and she took me to the shop and we bought some gift cards. She then told me she had met some man online, and she had recently split up with the father of her two youngest children who she had been with for at least 20 years.
"In my opinion, she depended on him a lot and when she left him, I think she was lost because she depended on him for love. She had lost her children and because of her drugs and her history, she didn't have true friends or anyone close to her and a lot of the family didn't have much to do with her."
Over the years, Kayleigh and the rest of her family had tried to convince her that the man was a scammer, but Lindsey didn't believe them. When she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and they knew she wasn't going to live for much longer, they decided to let her 'do what she wanted.'
Kayleigh said: "She fell out with a lot of people over it, and we tried as a family to be there for her. When we knew how serious her cancer was, we didn't want to argue and we didn't want our last memories to be us falling out with her so we just let her do what she wanted.
"Before she got ill, she never had money and as kids we never expected Birthday or Christmas presents, along as we saw our mum - that's all that we wanted. When we heard she was sending money to him, when she didn't have anything to send to us as presents, it hurt.
"I tried saying this to her, but she used to say that if she got the money tonight, then she could give us money then."
Desperate for money to send to the scammer, Lindsey begged her family and friends to send her money, and even stole from her own Dad. Kayleigh said: "Originally she didn't really speak to many people about it until she got desperate.
"I'm presuming that he was demanding the money more and my mum got paid every month, but I think he was demanding it every week. He sometimes would say he needs it by midnight or by a certain date and it got to the point where my mum was literally begging people.
"She got in touch with family and friends, explaining the situation that she was going to get £75,000 if they borrowed her £300."
The supermarket worker added: "At one point, she was at her Dad's house and she was looking through the draws to see if there was anything she could sell. I actually told my Grandad that she had taken an old phone, and I knew that she couldn't have got much for it, but I told him and he told me to leave her.
"It was just the extent she would go to."
Tragically, just weeks before she passed away, Lindsey went to Leeds to go and meet the man she thought she would marry - still believing that he's real. She said: "After she sent money for a good few years, he must have said to her if you send me some money then I can leave and I can be with you.
"She used to keep saying to us all the time 'I can't wait for Friday, he's being released and I'm going to go and meet him in Leeds.'
"Two weeks before she died, she told me that she went all the way to Leeds on the train to meet him and she stood around and waited for him but obviously he didn't turn up. A few months after her diagnosis, she started asking me to take her to Leeds because I can drive.
"She kept asking me and asked if she gave me petrol money could I take her, I said no because I knew he wouldn't be there. I also didn't know what I would be showing up to because somebody could have been there, but it couldn't have been him."
Kayleigh, from Eccleston, Lancs,. has offered advice to other families who may be going through the same thing, and has encouraged them 'not give up or back down.' She said: "Just don't give up or back down, that's what we did when she was ill.
"She went all the way to Leeds in her condition and at that point she was really bad. She could't breathe, she was struggling to walk and she went all the way to Leeds and as a family, we just left her to her own devices and we left her to do what she wanted.
"Realistically I think if we tried to stick through it for a bit longer and if we had reported it to Action Fraud this time last year, they might have been able to show mum some sort of proof."
