WHEN Jean Booth met paratrooper Daniel “Donnie” Rodriguez Fanelli online, she fell head over heels for the man she believed to be a kind, widowed dad.
Within weeks, she was convinced she’d found “the one”. She even got a love heart and parachute tattooed on her arm in his honour.
But Jean, 45, had become a victim of a romance scam that would cost her more than $90,000 (£68,000).
Rodriguez Fanelli, whose real identity remains unclear, hooked Jean in from the start.
“I matched with a tonne of guys, but everyone else was really just interested in sexting,” says Jean, who was living in Maryland, USA, at the time.
“Donnie asked questions about me and my life, instead of about my boobs and what sexual position I was thinking of that day.
“It was a refreshing conversation,” adds Jean, who had got divorced after a 24-year-relationship in September 2024.
Within a couple of days of contact through the Match app in January 2025, Jean and Rodriguez Fanelli exchanged numbers and started texting.
“I was the first to say, ‘I love you’ after about four weeks of messaging,” she confesses.
The pair would exchange 10,449 messages over a period of eight months, sharing intimate details about their lives. Jean told him about her difficult childhood.
“It’s not that he was charming,” she says. “He was nice.”
Rodriguez Fanelli was also easy on the eye. His dating profile depicts a 6ft, athletic man, whose interests included classical music and romantic films.
Jean even carried out a reverse-image search to make sure his pictures hadn’t been stolen, and felt reassured when nothing came up.
Then came the story that made Jean fall even harder.
“Donnie told me his wife had died in a car accident two years prior,” says Jean. “He’d gone to therapy and done a lot of work on himself.
“He’d avoided going straight into the dating scene because he wanted to feel comfortable and ready. He said he’d been with his wife since high school.”
Jean was impressed. “I thought ‘Oh that’s really cool.’ He actually seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.”
He claimed to be a single dad to four-year-old daughter Trixie. He was deployed in the Middle East, so Trixie was being looked after by a nanny at home.
But shortly after Valentine’s Day, she claimed to notice a change in his mood.
“I asked him what was wrong,” she says. “And he eventually told me that his nanny had been threatening to leave unless he sent money to her.
“I even offered to babysit.”
But Rodriguez Fanelli claimed that the only solution was to send money to the nanny.
How to protect yourself from romance fraud
- Take things slowly and protect your personal information
- Be wary of anyone who quickly declares their love
- If they refuse to video call or always have an excuse, be suspicious
- Never send money to someone you have not met in person
- If you think you have been targeted, report it to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk
He told her that couldn’t access his own account, claiming it had been frozen. So Jean would need to send money to this so-called nanny.
She sent $7,800 (£5,800) from her savings despite being recently made redundant.
“I didn’t believe it was a scam because why would he get a third party involved?” says Jean.
“And the nanny was horrible to deal with. Scammers don’t usually make things difficult for you because they just want the money easily.”
Jean even sent messages to check that Trixie would be safe.
“You’re not going to abandon Trixie in the meantime, are you?” she wrote to the nanny. “I know Donnie is really worried about his daughter.”
Rodriguez Fanelli was extremely grateful. “I love you so damned much and I’m so blessed to have you,” he messaged.
But for Jean, doubts were creeping in.
Friends told her that she’d been a victim of catfishing and she was left in tears over the worry.
But when she confronted Rodriguez Fanelli on a text message, he sounded angry that she’d doubted him.
He sent a sarcastic response: “I’m a scam so block me and do whatever you want…. Let Trixie be abandoned. Hope that makes you sleep better at night.”
Then came another manipulative message: “I’ve proved myself to you – now it’s your turn to prove yourself,” he wrote.
Even though Jean knew this wasn’t right, she still clung on to the hope.
“I’ve always tried to see the best in people,” she says. “You don’t want to feel like you’ve been an idiot.”
They’d even had a video chat – but she now suspects that she was chatting to an AI-generated video image.
In March, Jean received a message she’d desperately wanted. The couple would finally be able to meet in person and he was due to return home on 1st April.
Rodriguez Fanelli seemed excited about coming home. He asked Jean if she would move in with him, into a big house with a pool in Maryland.
Soon after came requests for thousands more dollars.
He claimed he needed help paying for expenses such as Trixie’s school fees and uniforms, and the cost of contractors to carry out work on their dream home.
But when his arrival date came, there was no contact from Rodriguez Fanelli for about a week.
When he did resurface, he made another extraordinary claim, saying he’d been locked up for fighting an officer.
He claimed he was unwell and needed more money for medicines and food.
“I was so stressed out and so scared,” says Jean. “I thought ‘I’m going to do some additional investigating.’”
She looked up Rodriguez Fanelli’s Instagram page and sent a message to a woman he followed, to ask whether she knew him.
The woman replied immediately and said she’d previously messaged Rodriguez Fanelli for months – and warned Jean that he was a scammer.
Jean remembered that Rodriguez Fanelli had previously given her the postal address of a so-called neighbour when he’d asked her to send money there.
Curious, she decided to turn up at the property, where she came face to face with a woman named Elizabeth.
“She was caught off guard,” says Jean.
As the two women talked, it emerged that Elizabeth had also been sending money to a man she believed was the love of her life.
Jean then paid for two services that offer more detailed reverse-image searches than the one she’d tried before.
What came back stunned her: the man from his dating profile pic was pictured as a guest at someone else’s wedding.
“The bride’s name was not common. So I looked her up on Facebook and sent her a message,” she said.
“She put me in contact with the wife of the man whose photos Donnie had been using. Donnie had also used photos of their daughter and dog.”
The family were devastated by the theft, she says, and do not want their identity revealed.
Jean also reported him to the police, who are still investigating.
Yet still the denials came. Rodriguez Fanelli told her it was “creepy and crazy” that his photo appeared on Facebook, which briefly made Jean wonder whether he was the one who’d been scammed.
Still, she struggled to walk away.
Jean last sent money to him in August 2025 – at which point she’d given away most of her money, and had needed to move out of her rented home and back in with her parents.
She has been trying to deal with the emotional and financial fallout.
She attended a 10-week online support group for victims of romance fraud.
“I’ve also qualified as a coach in narcissistic abuse recovery,” says Jean, who wants to use this knowledge to help others.
“That course was actually really helpful. It opened my eyes to a lot of childhood narcissistic abuse that I’d gone through.”
She now believes this is why she kept forgiving Rodriguez Fanelli for his behaviour.
“If you’ve experienced narcissistic abuse as a child, your nervous system calls that home. So when you come across it as an adult, you kind of feel comfort in it, and it’s hard to break.”
Jean has also written a book, Hello Beautiful, about her experiences – with the title named after the first two-word message he sent her.
She also gives talks about her experiences.
A Match Group spokesperson told The Sun: “The unfortunate reality is that scammers prey on vulnerability and exploit people’s openness, not just on dating apps but on all online platforms,” they said.
“In the last year, we’ve introduced critical new safety features like Face Check, our industry-leading mandatory biometric verification tool. We know the harm caused by romance fraud is real and lasting, and we welcome open conversation about these crimes.”
What advice would Jean give to other people who are victims of scams?
“Firstly, you’re not alone and you’re not stupid,” she says.
“It happens way more than you think it does. And it’s not because you’re naive, vulnerable or gullible… It’s because you have the capacity for empathy.
“And that capacity for empathy is not something that you should be ashamed of. That makes you a decent human being.”
Hello Beautiful by Jean Booth is available on both Amazon and Kindle.