An 84-year-old Australian pensioner left his home to an online wife he never met; a court ruled she did not exist and awarded his estate to his daughter | World News

Clifford Stanley Perrin died in Maryborough Hospital on Christmas Eve 2025, aged 84 and divorced. He had been the victim of a scam that depleted his finances, leaving his estate with one asset: a small property in Hervey Bay, which was subject to a reverse mortgage. According to the Supreme Court of Queensland judgment in the Will of Clifford Stanley Perrin [2026] QSC 247, his handmade will named the scammer, whose purported name was Stella Helena Perrin, as executor and beneficiary. On 24 September 2026, Treston J found that she did not exist and that her appointment and the gift to her failed.

How did a fake online lover target an Australian pensioner’s home

Mr Perrin was born on 24 February 1941 and did not finish high school, but worked in a variety of occupations during his working life. His father died in about 1986 and his mother in 2004, and in the years before her death he was her full-time carer. In 2005 he retired to a modest home in Point Vernon, Hervey Bay, where he lived until he went into hospital before his death. He was briefly married between April 1971 and June 1976, and the marriage ended in divorce.The judgment records that his only daughter was born shortly after the marriage in 1971. While she was growing up she was told her father was deceased, and she learned otherwise in her twenties. Around 2010, a DNA test showed a 99.99 per cent chance that Mr Perrin was her father. The court noted that the relationship was “not a particularly close one” and that, after about 2019, he appears to have stopped contacting her entirely. In about 2012, he befriended a local bus driver, Mr Kim, who began picking him up two or three times a week. Mr Kim observed that Mr Perrin was a lonely man who lived alone and did not appear to have a regular circle of friends.

How did a fake online wife convince a pensioner he was married to her

Unknown to both his daughter and Mr Kim, Mr Perrin had one other friend, a woman called Stella Helena Bennett. Records obtained after his death indicate that he met her over the internet in about 2012. She told him she was born in 1976, a former fashion model from an upper middle-class family in New York, who lived in the town of Massena. At that time, Mr Perrin was a 71-year-old pensioner with significantly impaired vision who could no longer drive. According to the court, he had never travelled to New York and had never met Stella. Even so, on 25 April 2013 he considered that he had married her. In an email to a friend on 6 May 2013, headed “Take a seat before you read this, Pete”, he described Stella as his wife and said she was coming to live in Point Vernon.Stella told him they had been married by proxy and later sent him a copy of a marriage certificate, which the court found to be a forgery. Around the time they connected online, she also said she had received a large inheritance from her father, held in New York by a Zimbabwe-based company, which she could not access until tax was paid. The judgment records that she sought his financial assistance and identity information to pay the Internal Revenue Service, and promised to move to Hervey Bay with the balance of the funds. In 2014, she told him she had moved to Kuala Lumpur and become a Malaysian citizen. She later said Malaysian taxes were blocking the inheritance and gave him an “inheritance tax bond disclosure” and a letter purportedly from “MPI Generali Insurans Bhd”. The court found both documents were false, and stressed that there was no suggestion the legitimate company had any part in producing them.

How did a pensioner’s fake online wife obtain his money and inheritance

Stella extracted various funds from Mr Perrin over time. The evidence shows she asked him to transfer money to accounts in other people’s names, send Bitcoin, send iTunes Gift Cards and Steam Wallet Cards, provide cash to unspecified third parties, and mail new SIM cards or iPhones to her. At different times she also obtained his credit card information, bank details, myGov account details and identity documents. In May 2024 his own bank blocked a transfer, and a bank employee told him the receiving account was associated with a scam. The court found that Mr Perrin suggested Stella simply prove her identity, but that she instead suggested he tell the bank he was sending money to a family member who needed medical help.The will is dated 3 May 2024, although the evidence suggests it may have been executed on 4 May 2024. It was witnessed in the presence of two justices of the peace. The court described it as a handmade document in two parts. Part A revokes earlier wills and appoints Stella, “my wife”, as executor and trustee, recording that she lived in Kuala Lumpur. It also bequeaths the bulk of the estate to her. A further dot point provides that if Stella should “pass away before my death”, the entire estate goes to his daughter. The court found that Mr Perrin was not shown to lack testamentary capacity and that the will was duly executed. It found no earlier will.

How did a court expose an Australian pensioner’s fake online wife

The court gave nine reasons for finding that Stella was “either not a real person or does not exist at all”. They included the improbable nature of the supposed match, and the marriage certificate, which bore no seal, named “Fresno County of New York” although Fresno County is in California, referred to “New York State Republic”, and misspelt the bride’s name. The applicant’s solicitors also confirmed with the Massena Town Hall that no such marriage certificate was registered. The judge accepted evidence that, after Mr Perrin’s death, Stella refused to prove her identity when asked, asked for money first, and then deleted the message exchange. The court also found that during his lifetime she suggested he gift money immediately rather than wait to die, and that she repeatedly pressed him to take out a reverse mortgage on his property. Applying the Briginshaw standard, the judge concluded that the evidence strongly supported the inference that Stella had perpetrated a romance scam.On the legal question, Treston J applied the rule in Jones v Westcomb, concluding that Mr Perrin must have intended the gift over to his daughter to operate if Stella never existed. The judge relied on the wording of the clause, which was functionally the same as in Re the Will of William Ian Southey [2025] VSC 801, and on emails in which Mr Perrin recorded suspicions of Stella in January 2015 and again in August 2024. The judge said that, had the rule not applied, the parts of the will affected by his false assumption about her character or identity would have been severed, following Kennell v Abbott. The court ordered that the will be pronounced in solemn form of law and declared that the applicant, Tanya Maree Stankovich, was entitled to probate as executor and to the residue as sole beneficiary. It also ordered that costs be paid out of the estate on the indemnity basis.