When Martina* fell in love with Anthony Blakey, a charming entrepreneur she met in 2019 on match.com, she thought the feeling was mutual.

The two dated casually for a couple of years but things intensified after Martina’s mother died in 2021, when Blakey began talking about them moving in together.

They discussed buying two properties, so they could live between her home town — Columbus, Ohio — and his in Atlanta, Georgia.

It was Blakey’s advice she sought on how to invest the $70,000 she inherited from her mother.

The grieving single mum, who had struggled financially for years, knew using the lump sum wisely could make all the difference for her and her three children.

Instead, she ended up losing the majority of her inheritance.

Blakey, she claimed, convinced her to hand over all the money to him.

The Royal Gazette contacted Blakey for a response to Martina's allegations. In a short written statement, he “vehemently” denied them.

Martina said she transferred $50,000 to him to go towards a house in Atlanta, and the rest for a credit card and down payment on a house in Ohio.

When Blakey’s promises did not pan out, Martina confronted him.

Then he largely vanished from her life — a similar disappearing act to the one he did after convincing the Bermuda Government to lend $800,000 to his company, Savvy Entertainment, in April 2018 to fit out a recording studio in an historical Dockyard building.

The studio never materialised and most of the loan was never paid back, leading to Blakey being charged, in absentia, with obtaining a money transfer by deception in Magistrates’ Court in October 2022.

More than six years after those taxpayer funds were lent to him, a trial date has not been set for the American former music promoter.

An extradition treaty between the United States and Britain was signed in 2003 and extended to Bermuda.

Alan Richards, former Deputy Director of the Department of Public Prosecutions, told the Gazette in June that efforts to secure Mr Blakey’s extradition were ongoing, adding: “Given the number of steps involved in extradition proceedings, it is not unusual for them to take some time.”

Cindy Clarke, Director of Public Prosecutions and Acting Attorney-General, said last Wednesday: “We have sent all required documents and await notification of any decision made by the US courts.”

Nicole Navas Oxman, from the US Department of Justice, said: “He [Blakey] is not in US custody and we have no comment.”

Even knowing Blakey is accused of tricking a country’s government into parting with close to $1 million, Martina still feels deep shame and embarrassment about what happened to her.

“I thought we were building a life together,” she told the Gazette, choking back tears.

She added: “I feel pretty stupid, regardless of whether or not you know he is a professional, but I still feel stupid because now I have no money as a single mother.”

Going public about it is painful, but Martina does not want it to happen to anyone else.

“I want to do the right thing,” she said.

Martina was living in Atlanta when she and Blakey met.

Nothing about his behaviour in the early years gave her cause for concern: he was charismatic, softly spoken, happy to hang out at home on low-key dates.

She recalls how he “kind of avoided going out much” and seemed to spend most of his time with his family, whom she never met, while claiming to be friends with celebrities such as Usher and P Diddy.

“He seemed really professional, clean-cut, well-dressed, well-spoken, mannerly,” she said. “Our first date lasted five hours. There were no red flags at all.”

She visited his apartment in Atlanta, a minimalist bachelor pad in the affluent Buckhead district, and he told her he ran a non-profit organisation called the Savvy Foundation.

He also said he had plans to launch a business, Black Bred Distillery, with his brother, Timothy, in Kentucky.

Martina had “no suspicions” about him, but a male friend of hers did.

The man did a Google search on Blakey and found the Gazette’s articles on the unpaid Savvy loan.

He contacted the newspaper, looking to understand more about the case, but when he shared his findings with Martina, she did not welcome his intervention.

He e-mailed the Gazette in June 2022: “I, at this point, have backed away and will let the pieces fall where they may.”

Martina said Blakey brushed off the allegations about the $800,000 loan when she quizzed him, falsely claiming he had been defamed by the Bermuda Government and it had given him a financial settlement.

She believed him, just as she believed him when he told her after her mother’s death that he had seen a therapist during the pandemic who helped him realise he wanted to settle down.

“He said he wanted to marry me. Obviously, I never got the ring or anything real out of him, just a bunch of words.”

After receiving the inheritance from her mother, she turned to him for advice. “I thought he was a savvy businessman. He said, ‘I think I have something for you’. And that’s when he proposed to invest in his distillery.”

Martina was reluctant to put money into the business. Instead, she said, after Blakey said he and his brother would put their own funds into the company, she agreed to wire money to him to go towards a home in Atlanta.

After seeing a statement showing he had more than $100,000 in his bank account, she felt reassured he could afford to pay her back within an agreed time frame of 13 months.

She told the Gazette that she first gave him $25,000 and then the same amount again, after he said his brother had failed to provide his portion of funds for the distillery.

Martina said Blakey told her: “You know you can trust me.”

She said she gave him another $10,000 after he said he would get her a credit card that never materialised. The final $10,000 was supposed to go towards a down payment on a house in Ohio.

Martina shared wire transfer receipts with The Royal Gazette for payments totalling $60,000 made to him in April, May and October 2022.

“Nothing ever happened that he said would happen,” she said.

The couple lived a nine-hour drive apart, rarely seeing one another but speaking by phone each day. Blakey was “always travelling”, making it hard for them to meet.

Martina began to realise something was amiss when Blakey kept pushing back the time frame for the launch of his business and setting up home together.

She searched online for the house he claimed to have bought for them and discovered it had been sold to someone else. Further research suggested Black Bred Distillery was nothing more than a website, with some promotional photos of alcoholic products that are not available to buy.

“Kind of like a light bulb went off in my head,” she said. “And then I tried to play a game with it, keep him close, try to get money out of him, not let him know that I know what he’s doing.

“But then I broke and I just let him have it. I told him I knew what he was doing...and I said everything that I could say to try to just hurt him because I was so devastated at the situation.

“That went on for a long time, this cat-and-mouse thing. I would get really mad and cuss him out, and then I would try to get him back because I was afraid he would leave and I would never see a dime again.”

Their relationship finally over, Blakey never admitted any wrongdoing. She said he claimed to have put her money towards an RV motorhome for the two of them and then said he tried to return it but could not get a refund.

Martina, desperate and “drowning in debt”, persuaded him to start repaying her $500 a month.

She has so far received $7,600. The Gazette has seen a screenshot of a payment to her from Blakey on Cash App, along with the total paid so far, and a message she said he sent warning her not to speak publicly about the situation.

“You and I have an arrangement — threatening to release disparaging information on me if I don’t pay in full is extortion,” the message said.

Martina said the monthly payments were a drop in the ocean and it would take more than a decade to repay the debt at that rate.

Police in Columbus have told her no crime was committed, because she handed the money willingly to Blakey while in a relationship with him.

Sergeant Joe Albert told the Gazette: “After investigating, the detectives assigned to the case found that a crime did not occur and this is a civil matter. [Martina] was notified of this.”

“There’s nothing they can do,” Martina said. “I don’t have any other avenues. I’m out of options.”

She is haunted by what happened and contemplated taking her own life last winter, although those feelings have stopped.

“I was beside myself. I would wake up at 3am every night, just enraged and not able to sleep. How am I going to get my money back? How am I going to get my money back? That's all I could think about.

“I thought about checking myself into a mental hospital. I didn't know what to do.”

She added: “I didn’t have any money; he knew it.

“My mental state fell to the floor. I didn’t know who was lying to me and who wasn’t. I had believed everything he said.”

Blakey, in an e-mail to the Gazette, said: “I vehemently deny any and all claims made by [Martina] and look forward to our day in court.

“Using articles to adjudicate disputes does not help in the court of public opinion. Against my personal feelings, I’ll refrain from systematically debunking each allegation that illicit [sic] vitriol and defames my character and refer your paper and others to my lawyers.

“[Martina] has been informed of this, as she will be served with defamation charges as well.”

She responded: “I am not afraid of court. By telling my story, I took my power back.”

* Martina’s last name has been withheld at her request.

• UPDATE: this article has been updated with a comment from Columbus police