PENELOPE Mukan (not her real name), a 33-year old senior executive, met an American named William on a popular online dating site two years ago.

William claimed to be a bassist with a popular 1990s rock band. He sent her photographs of himself, his parents and friends. The "relationship" grew fast and within weeks, he told Penelope he wanted to meet her.

"I was sceptical at first because things were happening too fast. My friends also became worried when they realised I was obsessed with him," she said.

William arrived in Kuala Lumpur on the eve of Valentine's Day 2006, and the first thing that struck Penelope was that he looked nothing like the photographs he had sent.
"He said someone else's face was superimposed on his for a promotional shot of the band and I left it at that."

William was a fast worker. The next day, armed with a diamond ring, he proposed at dinner.

"The following weeks were incredible. I was madly in love and introduced him to my parents."

Her friends, however, were sceptical and shocked when they heard that Penelope had said "yes".

While Penelope was busy making wedding plans, William said he had to return to the US to finish some work.

Doubts crept in when she found out that he was flying to the United States via Manila on a budget airline.

"I checked his passport but he became defensive. Again, I left the matter alone and he went off.

"A few days later, he contacted me and said he had booked tickets for a holiday in Ibiza, Spain. I was excited because Ibiza is known as 'the' place to party."

Then came a request from William, which set off the alarm bells.

"He asked me to meet him in Europe and then we would fly off to Ibiza. But the route he chose was suspicious."

The tickets were for KL-Rome-Amsterdam-Ibiza-Amsterdam. The return leg to Kuala Lumpur was left open.

Penelope was ready to resign from her well-paid job in Kuala Lumpur until she told her friends about her grand dreams and they "knocked some sense into my head".

"They told me about cases of human trafficking and drug mules.

"And when they saw the roundabout way of getting to Ibiza, one of my friends tore up the tickets."

The friends did not stop there. They started checking William's background and even accessed the Interpol website.

At this juncture, a shell-shocked Penelope did her own checking.

She managed to track down William's mother to a farm in the US.

His mother told Penelope that her son was not in any rock band and that he was on a business trip to Manila. She also knew nothing about the wedding.

Penelope then sent a card to the recording studio which William purportedly "owned" in the US. It came back with a "return to sender" stamp.

The final blow came when Penelope took the diamond ring to a jeweller and was told it was a fake.

"I contacted him on his mobile and he admitted that it was all a hoax. I just hung up on him."

The incident happened less than two years ago and until today, Penelope is still in shock, wondering what would have happened had she gone on the trip.

"I may well have been another Malaysian woman locked up in a foreign jail."

What frightened her even more was the fact that William was spotted in Seremban several weeks ago, having a drink with a woman in a restaurant...