Seeking truth, finding closure

Welcome to My Late Husband and Con Man Justin Adin Simon Lumsden, a dedicated resource for those impacted by Justin Adin Simon Lumsden. This site aims to provide a platform for victims to find answers, achieve closure, and connect with others who share similar experiences. Your insights are invaluable as we piece together the full story. We are here to support each other on this journey.

Anyone who was a victim of my husband or knew (of) him or has info about him, I would greatly appreciate hearing from you. If you do not feeling comfortable posting a comment publicly, please contact me privately here or at oceanialulu@yahoo.com

I am writing all this as not only a way to document all the events while it’s still fresh in my memory, but also in the hopes anyone who knew (of) him could shed light on him and his background particularly in South Africa and why he was fearful of being deported. As well as what the situation was with his estranged family, whom he had no contact with.

Justin Adin Simon Lumsden (I will here on out refer to him as Jay, his nickname) was born per his birth certificate on December 28, 1970 in Pretoria, South Africa. A government gazette entry contradicts his birth year as 1979, but that is most certainly a typo. His parents were Julian Simon Lumsden and Lorraine Margarat Botha. He has a younger sister, a minor child who will remain anonymous for discretion sake, and most likely a son, Joshua.

I found out about my husband being a professional con man in the hours after his death on December 20, 2025. He activities go back decades, in different cities, states and continents. So not only the shock of his passing, but that the man I knew, loved and trusted was a monstrous stranger who had been plotting all along to fleece me and disappear. As he had done to many before me.

I will elaborate upon all this, but I will first tell about how it all started. This is not every single insane thing that happened, otherwise this would be encyclopedic length.

I had a post up on Reddit’s r4r board, in April 2017, seeking someone specific. Jay contacted me and he checked basically all my boxes. I had a thing for British, Irish, Australian and South African men. Although he in actuality was South African, he said he was British/English and his accent was convincing, no trace of what it probably was originally. I also had a weakness for green eyes, which he had. Personality wise he was also perfect. He was attentive, affectionate, loving, witty, protective. And by far the most charming and charismatic man/person I’d ever met in my life. He said he was single. In retrospect, he was too good to be true.

We were originally supposed to meet about a couple weeks after he contacted me, his claiming he would be visiting where I lived in Honolulu, HI on a business trip. He claimed he had been a former international DJ and voice artist and now worked for Sony in A&R.

He never ended up visiting Hawaii due to the work trip being cancelled. Over the 4 year period of our long distance relationship, all sorts of events kept coming up that prevented him from visiting. One noteworthy one was his close friend "Darren" sick in the hospital, and needing Jay’s help in housing/babysitting his children for an extended period of time. Then Covid came along, fortunately for him, and bought him lots more time.

Meanwhile, I was in Hawaii taking care of my sick mother. Even without Covid, I would not have been able to visit Jay anyway, due to my mother needing me there. She passed away in 2021 and with Covid restrictions lifted, I made the trip to visit Jay in summer of 2021, for a week in NYC, where he truly was living there. We spend a week at a hotel getting to know each other in person. Jay had said we couldn’t stay at his apartment, since his child was there (and a babysitter) and it would be awkward to have a stranger to her staying there. I agreed and thought him a good, cautious dad. He also said he wanted us to have the time together without anyone else around, which I also agreed with.

The real reason was he was still living with his estranged ex and their child as basically a squatter. His ex no longer had relations with him for awhile, once she realized he was slime. At the hotel, he would leave for a few hours every day and come back later, claiming business. He was actually going back and forth between the hotel and home, or doing who knows what else.

After our week in NYC is over, I return back home to Hawaii and quickly settle my mother’s affairs, sell the condo and car to start my new life with Jay. I was supposed to move in with him in NYC, but the plan changed to New Jersey. He said he was sick of the city and wanted his child to attend a good school there. So NJ it was, I purchsed a property there ahead of time for us. I join Jay in NJ in September 2021.

Jay had said that he had a Family Trust, but that it had been frozen due to his greedy ex and mother of his child filing suit and going after (more) money, therefore his funds were frozen. As time dragged on and that case was supposedly over, he then said a bank employee at Credit Suisse tried to embezzle his funds, which further continued his account to be frozen, until the investigation was over. All lies.

I was patient and sympathetic since I’ve had no shortage of huge misfortunes in my life, so I merely thought Jay was unfortunate as I was. Now all of Jay’s financial woes were a source of frustration and dread for me, make no mistake, but he promised I would be made whole in the end and he would be in a position to contribute. He spoke of an estate in Guildford along with his Family Trust, but I never cared about any of those. All I wanted was for his shit to be gotten together, instead of all these misfortunes and dramas his life was filled by and by extension mine, even if they were no fault of his own as I believed at the time.

During the 8 years we were together, from 2017 until 2025/his death, Jay cost me well over $100,000. Probably more like $150K. Honestly, I can only guesstimate since I didn’t keep meticulous track of it. I fully trusted him and he exploited that. Some of the funds lost/spent were totally legitimate, like an $80K stock loss at a legitimate investment firm due to the state of the market, and also some medical and legal expenses were legitimate. Also, I was fully supporting him. But aside from those, the rest was monies obtained under false pretenses, and spent elsewhere, like on gambling. As his ex pointed out and I agree after knowing all this, Jay was a man of many addictions and excesses: drinking, smoking, drugs (at least in the past), gambling, philandering.

When we were living together in NJ, initially it was only part time, since Jay would come at about 7am and leave at about 3pm, claiming that he still had his NYC apartment and child living there, and had to be back with her when she was out of school. There never was any commute back and forth to NYC; he had recently had his ex move to NJ as well, getting a place without her knowledge with her funds ahead of time. She is not sure how he was able to do it, but figures forgery and trickery were involved. if anyone could find a loophole and a way and BSing, it was Jay.

Therefore, Jay was going back and forth between me and his ex. He got a thrill out of doing this, I know now. Eventually he did live with me full time, after his ex had had enough of his squatting. He may have also been fearful she would report him to ICE.

As it turns out, he was an illegal alien living in the States illegally for years. He had told me he was a resident alien/expatriate who had the right to work here. No wonder, in retrospect, he was so paranoid about ICE and being deported. I thought he was being silly at the time, since I thought he was legal and what’s more, married to an American citizen.

We got married on April 26, 2023 in NYC at City Hall.

Jay decides he wants us to move to Mesa, AZ. He says it’s because of the lower cost of living and especially the climate being hot and dry. He said he couldn’t stand cold seasons and the humidity in NJ. I think the real reason is he was running again, and he specifically wanted a gated community, supposedly for safety and security. Now I think he wanted to keep people out, like ICE, who he was especially concerned by. Although he actually did love the Arizona intense heat, I think it reminded him of his homeland, which he couldn’t ever go back to (not England as he claimed but South Africa).

We had travelled to Mesa by Amtrak. Jay claimed he couldn’t travel by plane due to a large vascular bump on his head, which he said could be fatal from the air pressure/elevation. The real reason is as an illegal, he couldn’t board a flight since he did not have the proper credentials. He would’ve been taken into custody and deported.

We settle in Mesa and have a good life here. I am content and oblivious. Recently before his death, Jay had us open a Family Trust, and we were to open a Trust bank account. It is certain he planned to transfer my funds from other accounts into the bank Trust, drain it and vanish. After he had gotten these 2 surgeries and healed from them I’m sure he would’ve been gone. He had oral/dental surgery for his teeth scheduled in early January 2026 for extractions and denture implants, and surgery to remove the bump on his head in February. He had claimed his bad teeth condition was a result of cancer/chemo, which he often spoke about. I know now he never had thyroid cancer, or any other cancer for that matter, nor a stroke, and his teeth were likely a result of decades of neglect and from drugs, smoking and alcohol.

His bump, he had claimed, was a result of changing his child as a baby in the bathroom. He said he was sitting on the floor bent down, lifted his head and hit it hard on the toilet. That his bump was caused by the physical trauma. His ex said that was not true and it likely happened when he passed out from too much drinking on a NYC sidewalk.

Fast forward to his death on December 20, 2025. Unbeknownst to me at the time, he had been drinking heavily at holiday gatherings. I only realized this when he came home. Since this wasn’t an unusual occurrence, his drinking to the point he’d pass out and on occasion vomit or urinate, I bid him good night and turned in. I awake during sleep and check on him as I always do, but this time is different, he is unresponsive.

After several hours the ambulance, police and coroner’s office people leave with my husband’s body and he is declared officially dead. It is then that I contact his aunt, son and solicitor abroad, to give them the dreadful news of Jay’s passing. Growing alarm and dread sets in when I cannot get ahold of them and it’s because their contact info is fake. Either they don’t exist, like his solicitor and possibly aunt, or if they do exist as I think his son might, the contact info are all bogus.

I then contact his 2 good friends, J and L. Thankfully they respond and of course are shocked at the news. They are even more shocked once they realize I am his wife, they had no idea Jay was even married, Jay said I was just a platonic roommate and friend. We compare notes and find out Jay has lied about everything. Like he never worked at Sony, he applied for a position there but didn’t get it. He also scammed L for thousands of dollars, under false pretenses of course. He also promised L to let him organize the archives of his great grandfather, a renowned British architect whom Jay often spoke of. Truth is Jay had no relation or connection to Sir Herbert Baker, another of his tall tales.

The conversation with that one friend in particular, is very eye-opening and when I knew for absolute sure Jay was a scammer. But the call to his ex and mother of their child, hits me like a sledgehammer. Jay was not some garden variety user and moocher, turns out he was a longtime professional scammer who has been at the con game for many years/decades, probably from the time he was a young man and definitely started back in his homeland. Which is when I find out he was not an Englishman from London as he said, but a South African citizen. He did that to obscure his unsavory origins and activities in his homeland, I am certain.

I had initially been very hesitant to contact his ex, due to Jay poisoning my mind completely against her. He painted her as gold-digging, troublemaking, selfish monster when it was he who was all these things. Thank heavens Jay had a child with her, because had he not, then he would not have had any dealings with her once he moved on. Since they shared a child together, his ex had to remain a part of his life.

A pattern his ex and I noticed: everything bad that Jay accused others of being/doing, he was actually the one guilty of it.

I was glad I made that call to his ex, as she turned out to be a wealth of information and commiseration. We were Jay’s 2 most recent victims (me the current one and she the previous one). She pointed out and I too had noticed this, that Jay had a preference for dealing with women even in an official and non-romantic/sexual capacity… that they would be easier to fall for his charming BS.

He had a way with many women and unfortunately used that with malicious intentions.

This is why I’m not embarrassed at all that I was a victim of his. He was that good. If he wasn’t, he wouldn’t have been able to get away with this successfully and for so long and with so many women/people. He lured me across the Pacific and across the country and back, under utterly false and malicious pretenses. I went into our relationship in good faith; I loved and trusted and thought I knew this man. To me he was so wonderful and loving, decent and respectful, so gentlemanly and considerate, and never expressed any violence, I was never afraid of him at any time. I could talk to him about anything and he would listen and understand. But it was all an act, all lies and deceit.

I also discovered after his death, that he had created a company, named Flare Productions, less than 1 year ago and based in South Africa. I am quite certain he was going to use this company as a way to funnel my money to himself.

His ex had forwarded to me a PI report conducted in his homeland which did not yield much results. His past is very scant and murky. She also sent me an archived warning post from the early 2010’s which was mind-boggling. That very detailed and highly accurate post (along with many of the comments) revealed the length and breadth of Jay’s activities, which started in South Africa/Durban, before he embarked upon other parts of the world.

I believe every word not only of that spot-on warning post, but the comments as well. After discovering what my husband really was, I have no doubt he was capable of anything. He truly was a twisted man who hid what a soulless, demonic individual he really was. I loved him and will miss him, I had a lot of great unforgettable moments with him and enjoyed our time and life together but it was a blessing he passed away when he did, before he could destroy me and disappear scot-free, and inflict his greed and cruelty upon future victims. He was never going to change or stop.