An Australian woman has had to piece her life back together after she and her partner were scammed out of $134,000 and then they had to forfeit an additional $94,000 from their house deposit because of a property deal that went terribly wrong.
Then in another tragic twist, her long-term partner died just a month later from cancer.
Emma Lees, from northern New South Wales, Australia has had the worst year imaginable.
“It’s just insane,” Lees told news.com.au. “I would never in a million years have thought I’d be in a situation like this.”
Lees, 46, and her late partner Geoff Shearman, signed a contract for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom house in New Brighton, near Byron Bay, in October last year.
They were expecting a large sum of money to come through from a $134,000 mining investment Shearman had made in 2016.
To tide them over in the meantime, they borrowed money from friends and family to pay the deposit.
However, the investment turned out to be a scam and they had to renege on the deal as they didn’t have the funds to complete the transaction.
As a result, the vendor was legally entitled to keep the couple’s house deposit and walked away with their $94,000 downpayment while also reselling the property within two weeks for $47,000 more.
The horror ordeal started in July last year when the couple learned that their rental property in New Brighton was going to…
