If you’re looking for love online this Valentine’s Day, one Edmonton woman hopes you’ll learn from her “embarrassing”-- and costly – mistake.

If anyone you meet on a dating website asks you for money, “just don’t do it,” said Tracy, who did not want her last name used.

“It’s going to be a scam, period.”

Less than two years ago, Tracy met a man on a dating site and quickly struck up a relationship that consisted of daily communication -- emails, phone calls and texts. She said the man, who called himself Kevin Lopez and sent her photos she now believes to be fake, seemed to be well-educated and sophisticated.

He wrote “beautifully” and said all the right things. Even though they never met in person, Tracy was charmed.

But just two weeks after they began communicating, the man suddenly had to take a trip to Amsterdam. From there, he told Tracy that he would be travelling to the Ivory Coast, where his father had left him a mine.

In hindsight, Tracy said, all these things should have been obvious red flags. But she said “Kevin” was very convincing, had answers to all her questions and seemed to be calling her from international phone numbers. She believed that he truly was in West Africa, so when he ran into financial trouble, she sent him money.

First, it was because his credit card wasn’t accepted in most places. Then, it was because he needed money to pay for hospital bills, after he purportedly contracted malaria and cholera. Later, he didn’t have enough money to pay taxes.

Tracy kept sending him money for over a year, even as she grew suspicious. She believed that if she stopped helping him out, she would never get any of it back.

“You start chasing your money,” she said in an interview with CTV Edmonton. “It ultimately added up to a large sum of money.”

When she finally told “Kevin” that she was out of cash, he said he would be “in touch” and she never heard from him again.

Tracy said she went to police, mostly to “vent” because they didn’t seem interested in pursuing her case, or were incapable of tracking down someone who may have indeed been in Africa – or on an entirely different continent.

Tracy said the experience was “totally traumatizing” and left her humiliated and heartbroken. Making matters worse was the fact that she had alienated herself from her loved ones, she said.

“I became a recluse.”

It wasn’t until about six months ago that her children and best friend found out what had happened.

Tracy didn’t want to reveal the dating site she used, and stressed that it doesn’t matter. Scammers and predators are all over the Internet, she said, and both women and men must beware of who they talk to online.

“If I can help one person out there, I will do that,” she said.

Financial experts advise dating website users to beware of anyone experiencing some sort of a crisis or emergency shortly after meeting. They also advise people to keep all their financial information private.

Tracy said it will take her years to repair her life financially and emotionally.

“It has brought me to my knees,” she said.

With a report from CTV Edmonton's Kim Taylor