DOCTOR Neil Wallman was 55, recently divorced and lonely when he paid $200,000 to a dating agency to meet Lily, a ''blonde Chinese-Australian woman'' with Croatian links.

Days later, there was talk of marriage. The doctor paid another $100,000.

Neil Wallman … ''she could have been a paid stooge.''

Within a week, Lily was on the phone needing $200,000 to help ''release funds from my father's finances in Croatia''. The doctor paid up.

Within 18 months Lily was long gone, Dr Wallman was down $2 million, and the dating agency's operators were buying Gold Coast real estate and luxury cars with someone else's money.