Some stories start out as WhatsApp fairy tales and end up as episodes of ‘Chi l'ha visto?’ with broken air conditioning.

It is well known that the Kenyan coast is a place for encounters, often fatal (an adjective that fits perfectly with both love and accidents), but it is a fact that since they can be organised virtually, they hide many more pitfalls.

The latest episode comes to us from Mombasa, where a woman, whom we will call “Mombasina” for her place of residence rather than her vocation, thought it would be a good idea to turn a romantic date into a textbook scam.

He, a British citizen of a certain age, convinced that he had found true equatorial love after months of sweet messages as ripe as mangoes, finally decides to meet her in person.

She invited him to her flat in Nyali, an elegant neighbourhood where the sea is blue and illusions come at a high price. These are almost always Air BnBs that support the lie of the university student from a good family or the career-minded employee of a multinational company.

A few minutes after the first toast and the flirtatious smiles that lead to the bedroom, the door bursts open: a man enters and introduces himself as “the betrayed husband”, followed by another man brandishing a police badge that is more fake than a Facebook diploma.

The scene is like something out of an afternoon Kenyan soap opera: the Englishman, as pale as a tourist who has overdosed on sun cream, is accused of “destroying a family”.

Meanwhile, the fake policeman threatens arrest.

The man, terrified and confused, does what many unsuspecting Westerners would do when faced with the African mystery: he pays. Eight hundred thousand shillings, transferred immediately to mobile numbers kindly provided by the bandits.

Once they have collected their loot, the trio escort the unfortunate victim out of the flat with the professional calm of people who have finished their shift. Then they disappear into the humid Mombasa night, like ghosts paid by the piece.

The DCI, our Criminal Police with more heat and less coffee, to whom he, having recovered from his heartbreak, manages to follow the digital trail and, in short, arrests the woman and one of her accomplices.

The third is on the run, but is probably already writing love poems on a new Tinder profile.

Investigators discovered that the couple were part of an organised “heartbreak” gang: they lure foreigners to dating sites, ensnare them in their web (digital, not fishing), invite them to apartments rented for the occasion and relieve them of their wallets and self-esteem.

This is not an isolated case: in recent months, the Kenyan coast has become a kind of “Love Island” for romantic crime. In April, another foreigner, a 69-year-old widower with a fragile soul and a solid pension, lost as much as fourteen million shillings to a phantom “Anita”, whom he met online and never saw in person.

He had even sold everything to move to Nairobi and marry her. When he landed, however, it was not Anita waiting for him, but the emotional and financial void of Terminal 1.

The moral of the story for Italians who still dream of love in the tropics: Kenya is not just sea, safaris and smiles. It is also a country where virtual love can turn into real robbery. And if someone writes to you “my dear, come to me”, always ask yourself first how many zeros there are after the “me”.