Deep in rural Missouri, Lauren McEwen thought little of it when she received a Facebook friend request from an attractive man apparently living a few hundred miles away in Tennessee. They shared several mutual friends and, assuming he was someone who originated from her hometown, she accepted.
McEwen, 70, a divorced grandmother, was happily single and had not envisaged romance in her life before the man, who called himself Ace Swift, began sending her messages. An online relationship soon began.
But she was even less prepared for the reality that the man in the photographs was Dr Christian Boving, a doctor and television personality based in Denmark, who The Times revealed last year was a victim of widespread identity theft by romance scammers targeting