A widow lost $39,000, her house, and six dogs after a scam. ‘If the story wasn’t so horrible, people wouldn’t pay attention’

It started after a teenage girl sent a panicked email about getting her period while at school. 

That desperate SOS—one every woman knows well—went from England to Pennsylvania, where Kate Kleinert, a widow who lived alone outside Philadelphia with her six hospice dogs, read it. Kleinert’s heart went out to the girl, who referred to her as “Mom” and was the daughter of a single-dad friend named Tony who Kleinert had been chatting with. Kleinert ran out and picked up a gift card and texted images of the front and back. She sent $100 so the girl could pick up what she needed from the school store. That single gesture kicked off a series of events in which Kleinert was bilked out of the nest egg she saved from her career and husband’s life insurance after she took time off to care for him in the years before he died. She eventually lost her home in an electrical fire after she was unable to scrape together the money to get a handy man in to fix her air conditioner. Kleinert, then in her late 60s, tried to extinguish the flames but she eventually had to flee the house in fear for her life. Her home burned to the ground. None of her dogs made it out in time.

In Michigan, the man who exploited Beth Hyland never even asked her for money. 

“Richard” sought Hyland’s help logging into his bank account while he was abroad. He and Hyland had bonded over their separate emotional journeys and had planned to meet around the holidays where Hyland lived in Michigan. In a bind, Richard—who claimed to be a French national working as a construction contractor in Qatar—shared the username and password to his bank login and when Hyland pulled up his information on her laptop, his balance showed he had about $700,000 in cash parked in the account. He walked her through transferring his funds so he could pay a lawyer and a translator while he was finalizing a $10 million payment for a massive job overseas. The next day, they were both locked out of the account but Richard needed another $20,000 so he could finalize the transaction before flying to spend the holidays with Hyland in Michigan. She wanted to help so Hyland took out a $15,000 loan from the bank, and got a $5,000 cash advance. She sent that plus $1,000 she had on hand through a Bitcoin ATM with Richard’s constant support via text and a video explaining how to move the funds. He stole every cent. 

Jackie Crenshaw got a check for $100,000 in the mail from “Brandon,” a man she first met on a dating app called BLK that is marketed to African Americans. Brandon had sent her little trinkets in the past, like a pillow with their photos, coffee mugs emblazoned with their names, pizza to her condo when she worked late, and then chicken dishes when he discovered Crenshaw didn’t particularly care for Domino’s. Concerned, Crenshaw brought the check to the police who waved her away and told her to buy a Mercedes and enjoy. She also called the bank that issued the check and they assured her it was legitimate. So she deposited the money and soon after, Brandon began planning a big 60th birthday bash on a yacht for her and her friends—after Crenshaw passed the crucial age threshold of 59½ when she would no longer incur a 10% penalty for withdrawing money from her 403(b) retirement fund. Crenshaw was conned out of about $1 million in total and her condo, which she had purchased in 1992 and finished paying off after 26 years of mortgage payments, has been in foreclosure for the past year.

Michael Rod, an FBI supervisory senior agent in California who leads an elder justice task force focused on fraud, said his team has encountered lawyers, doctors, judges, and pilots who have lifetimes of professional experience—like Crenshaw, Hyland, and Kleinert—who have been victimized in similar schemes. 

“These scammers do this for a living, all day, every day, and anyone who devotes that much time to it is going to be good at their tradecraft,” said Rod “It’s really quite simple; they prey on both the trust and loneliness of the victim. That’s the key to it.”

In 2024, the FBI logged $16.6 billion in total fraud losses, a 33% jump from the year before. Crypto-related fraud alone accounted for $9.3 billion, a 66% increase, with adults over 60 losing more than any other age group. Romance scams, which fall into a broad bucket that includes long-term fraud schemes that rely on building trust with victims and include what experts call “bromance” scams involving friends who claim to be helping their professional circle invest successfully, have grown into a flourishing vector to broader crypto and investment scams. These include ponzi-like schemes, crypto frauds, and money muling, in which a victim unwittingly accepts funds that have been coerced and pooled from other victims before shuttling them into other accounts, laundering the money for crime rings........

© Fortune