My phone lights up with a message. It’s from a man I don’t know, the third to message me today. ‘Hey you,’ it reads. ‘Are you able to send over that money that you owe me?’

I have no idea who he is – it’s clearly a scam. But instead of deleting the message, I type out a reply: ‘I’m so sorry, I completely forgot. Can you send me your account details and I’ll transfer it?’

I’ve no intention of sending him any money, but as soon as I have his crypto account details (gotcha!) I report him to my bank and the police – his account should be closed down within days.

Over the past three years I’ve reported more than 500 scammers like this – from romance scams to financial fraudsters – and spent thousands of hours playing them at their own game. As such, I thought I would be the last person who’d ever fall victim to these heartless criminals. Until the day I did – and almost lost everything.

Though admitting it makes me feel like a fool, I fell for a financial scam so pernicious I never saw it coming – and the effect on my finances and emotional wellbeing was seismic.

And if I can be tricked, anyone can, which is why I’m sharing my story to help others avoid my mistake.

I used to be blissfully unaware of online scammers. But then three years ago, in my mid-40s, I found myself at a really low point.

I had opted to have a double mastectomy because of my high risk of developing breast cancer due to the BRCA1 gene – my father’s four sisters all had breast cancer, and we had sadly already lost two of them.

But complications post-surgery led to the breakdown of my relationship of six years. I’d already experienced a divorce ten years earlier, so this new break-up, coupled with the loss of my aunts, was particularly difficult.

If I can be tricked, anyone can, which is why I’m sharing my story to help others avoid my mistake, writes Julie-Anne Kearns

Lonely and worried, I turned to social media for support from others who’d been through the same thing, joining a BRCA chat group on Facebook. Their help made me feel safe to share my own journey, including posting videos to YouTube, and I soon had hundreds of followers.

One night I got a message from a man called Andrew. He said he’d been following my journey and, having lost his own wife, was in awe of me.

We exchanged a few messages. He told me he was an orthopaedic surgeon in the Army and was stationed in Afghanistan. I work for the NHS, so we had that in common. His studio-shot profile picture showed a handsome man in his 40s, and he sent me pictures in scrubs, too.

Andrew messaged every day for almost two months. While I wouldn’t say I fell for him romantically, I’m embarrassed to admit I was flattered that such an impressive man seemed so interested. We’d often message late into the night and, without me realising it, he became the person with whom I’d share the little details of my day. Though not particularly flirty, he was very caring, asking about my day and checking if I’d taken time to eat after a long shift.

Then I got a message saying his internet connection was about to be cut off, and asking if I could send him a gift card for £500 to pay for more time online. I immediately smelt a rat and blocked him.

I was shocked, both that someone would callously befriend vulnerable people this way to get their money and at how convincing he’d been.

But when I posted about my experience on social media, I was inundated with messages from other women saying a similar thing had happened to them, too.

Some had lost thousands of pounds to men pretending to be someone they weren’t. My TikTok account suddenly grew to 10,000 followers.

I discovered I’d been the target of a technique known as ‘trauma bonding’. In this scenario, the scammer finds someone who has been through a traumatic experience, and invents a similar one to gain their trust.

It’s a common trick to pull on women of a certain age – I’m 48 – especially if they’re divorced, like me. The assumption is that divorced, middle-aged – and especially middle- class – women have got money from a divorce settlement and are looking for someone to spend it on.

These scammers can spend weeks or even months identifying a target – usually from looking at their social media profiles – and will work around the clock building up trust. Someone had singled me out and decided to use my trauma as a way to extort money from me. It felt as though they’d been in my house, rifling through my personal possessions.

As the messages from other victims flooded in, I started researching and posting about all sorts of scams, as well as helping people establish if they were being catfished – when people pretend to be someone else to elicit money from you.

If someone suspects they’re speaking to a person online who seems too good to be true, for example, I will trawl through that person’s social media and reverse search images to find out who they really are.

Unfortunately, the more I posted, the more I became a target myself. But I’d play along, and when I got their account details I’d report them to the police, along with the scams my followers reported to me.

I even started getting scammers trying to get my TikTok account taken down, falsely claiming the content was offensive. I was thrilled that I was clearly bothering them.

Then in November last year, I received a letter from HMRC, saying I was owed £2,500 in a tax rebate.

I knew that I’d overpaid the previous year, so it sounded right. The letter said they had increased their security measures, and I needed to email them two forms of ID before I could claim the money.

The letter looked so genuine – the same font, masthead and wording as HMRC letters I’d received before. And the correct HMRC web address was at the bottom of the page.

I’d never come across a scam using physical letters before – it was always email or social media, and they usually ask for money.

It wasn’t immediately obvious to me how my actions could have benefited anyone financially.

I’d recently been asked by the DVLA to send a copy of my passport when renewing my driving licence, which was totally legitimate. So coupled with the coincidence of knowing I was due a rebate, the letter didn’t raise my suspicions at all.

I happily sent off a picture of my driving licence and passport to the email address and forgot about it. Weeks later, the money hadn’t arrived, so I called HMRC.

My blood ran cold as they told me the money had been paid some time earlier, and that they hadn’t sent the letter I’d received.

They also mentioned the new business I’d opened that year, a bakery. But I can’t bake a cake to save my life. I felt physically sick as it became clear someone had opened a fake business in my name, probably to launder money.

I was advised to call Action Fraud and then the police. The realisation that I had lost money from the rebate I never received, and could lose more, was horrifying – as was the embarrassment of being taken in by the very people I’d prided myself on being able to spot a mile off.

In November last year, I received a letter from HMRC, saying I was owed £2,500 in a tax rebate. It looked genuine…

Though I’d never blamed victims for falling for scams, it was such a wake-up call to just how easy it is to be duped.

To my horror, fraud officers discovered my details were available to purchase on the dark web – when I’d sent off my ID, my identity had been cloned.

Days later, I received a letter from a law firm, saying I was being sued for non-payment of a £16,000 loan that had been taken out in my name. I had sleepless nights over what would happen – would I lose my car, my home or even go to prison? With the help of the police, I managed to prove the loan had been taken out by someone who had cloned my identity, and was eventually able to have it written off by obtaining a Debt Relief Order.

But I dread to think what would have happened without that, which could have been the case without the police’s official acknowledgement that I was a victim of identity theft.

However, it transpired that dozens of other applications had been made too, and although none of them had been approved, my credit score was left in the gutter. The scammers had even unsuccessfully applied for a P45, in order to get a job in my name.

The police advised me to change as many of my details as possible to prevent further cloning attempts. They even said it might be wise to move house or change my name by deed poll.

I haven’t made any steps as drastic as that – not yet, anyway – but I have changed my phone number and email address.

I’ve since looked back at the original HMRC letter. It’s still difficult to spot that it’s a fake, but there are clues. While the letter contained real details and accurate spellings, the email address I was told to send copies of my ID to didn’t have the correct hmrc.gov.uk ending. I also noticed the paper wasn’t particularly high quality. I rue the day I didn’t look more closely.

While I haven’t lost any money – yet – I’ve already been unable to get finance for a new car because of my ruined credit rating, and had to use savings to buy a cheaper model in cash. If I try to make any big purchase, my bank immediately blocks the transaction until they have spoken to me.

The most frightening part is I have no idea if the worst is over or still to come. I lie awake at night, worrying the police will turn up at my door, believing I’ve been involved in something truly awful.

I find it very hard to trust people now, and especially anything that comes from official organisations. When I changed my car, for example, and the DVLA asked me to send the logbook, it brought me out in a cold sweat.

Lots of people ask me what they can do to avoid falling victim to a scam such as mine. My best advice is to always call and check that official correspondence is real before replying to letters or emails – and of course, don’t use the phone number provided on the letter, as it could be false too.

But it’s been very hard for me to talk about what happened to me publicly. I saw it as my job to help other people beat the scammers, and yet I ended up falling victim to them. I feel a fool.

I have had a lot of unkind comments from trolls saying the same, but I can cope with those if sharing my story helps someone else avoid what I’ve been through.

After all, if it can happen to me, it could happen to anyone.

As told to Heather Main