A retired pastor from Dresden, Maine, who got scammed by an online suitor has paid an enormous price — his freedom.
Seniors are a frequent target of scams. An AARP survey from 2014 found that a quarter of Mainers 50 and older have encountered phony Jamaican lottery schemes, IRS agent impersonators or romance cons. The consequences for getting snared in one of these traps can range from the loss of a few hundred dollars to hundreds of thousands.
Bryon Martin, 77, recently left a voice message on his son’s phone explaining his situation. He can’t talk directly with reporters about how he got taken by a scammer, because he’s serving time in a Spanish prison.
“I am not a criminal, but a victim of a romance scam,” Martin says.
A romance scam that started about five years ago, when Martin was coming off of a divorce and was alone and broke. He started to visit online chat sites. That’s where he met a woman who called herself Joy.
“Over five years we wrote of many things — our dreams, hopes, and the future,” Martin says.
“Joy told him that she was in her thirties,” says Martin’s son Andy. “She sent him pictures.”
Andy Martin says Joy provided a detailed personal story.
“Apparently, she was beautiful,” he says. “She was living in the UK, but she was from Nigeria.”
Joy said her parents had been murdered, but had left her millions of dollars and a large estate in South America, neither of which she could immediately access, so she was working as an artist and struggling to pay her bills.
“He would send her, basically, half his social security check, as I understand it,” Martin says.
Between $500 and $700 a month. Joy called Bryon her hero, and promised that they’d get married once she could claim her millions.
“So that was kind of the trap,” Martin says.
Martin lives out of state, and says he wasn’t aware of the scam while it was happening, but Bryon Martin’s other three kids, who live in Maine, were dealing with the consequences.
Their father was sending money to Joy instead of paying rent to his daughter, and the home ultimately went into foreclosure. Even when Martin eventually met and married another woman who lived nearby, he tried to break things off, but couldn’t seem to shake Joy.
“And that was I guess when she brought up a promise he had made to her a couple years back, where he would go to South America to get some real estate documents,” Andy Martin says.
The documents, Joy said, were needed so that she could claim the estate left by her parents. She said she couldn’t go herself because she couldn’t get a visa. She offered Bryon Martin some of the money she would soon inherit.
So, last June, he flew to Lima, Peru. He waited for days in a hotel for Joy’s attorney to deliver the real estate papers.
“And finally, the so-called attorney shows up with two books that are sealed in plastic, and is told that’s what he’s to bring to Joy,” Andy Martin says.
Bryon Martin boarded a plane bound for London with the two books in a carry-on bag. During a layover in Madrid, airline staff pushed him in a wheelchair to his next gate, when he was stopped by security.
“So they X-rayed the bag, saw the books, opened them up, inspected them and found the cocaine inside,” Andy Martin says.
Over 1 kilogram of pure cocaine. Bryon Martin was arrested and sent to jail.
Andy Martin says that none of his siblings believe their dad knew he was carrying drugs. But they were tired of his behavior — he had fallen for other scams before. Bryon’s new wife didn’t want any part of this debacle either. In December, Bryon Martin left Andy Martin this desperate message.
“I am in a terrible emotional state,” he says. “I can’t reach anybody. Please give me a call — or, not call. You can’t do that. Please write me. Please call the attorney and ask him to get out here — whatever can be done. I just don’t know what’s going on.”
Andy Martin had found an attorney, Matthias Weigner, who says that Spanish officials are clamping down on drug traffickers, so the best option under the circumstances was to work out a plea for a reduced sentence.
In this case, six years and one day.
“Legally, the court or the prosecution has to prove ‘dolus’ — or that you knew you were carrying drugs,” Weigner says. “However, the excuse to say that you didn’t know is so common.”
Wiegner says he’s also trying to get Bryon Martin deported under a new Spanish law. And Martin could also get help from a prominent Maine politician.
“I think this is terribly unfair that an individual who is a victim of a scam is in a Spanish prison, while the perpetrators of the scam — the criminals, the con artists — are going free,” says Sen. Susan Collins, chairman of the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
Collins says Martin is not alone, that there are at least 30 Americans, including many seniors, who are being held overseas as a result of this type of scam.
Collins and eight other members of the committee sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday, asking him to look into Martin’s case.
“And also to look at the case of other Americans who are in similar situations in foreign countries,” Collins says.
Andy Martin says his dad may have been gullible, but he doesn’t deserve what could amount to a life sentence in prison.
“He’s very old, and he’s not in great health,” Martin says. “He faints, and he collapses, and they have to take him back to his bed. So I just worry about him dying over there.”
As for the woman who called herself Joy? She’s likely a fictional personality, created by those involved in this scam, who continue to operate in virtual obscurity.
