A 76-year-old widow was scammed out of her life savings by a man she met and fell in love with on Facebook.
Jennifer Dennis, was living in Georgia when she met a man on Facebook named Caleb and said he was working as a doctor for the Red Cross in Yemen.
The two chatted online for months and Caleb proposed that they buy a home together in Cary, North Carolina, to live together and have a fresh start.
Dennis liked the idea because ‘everything about the house and the area reminded me of my husband, which was just heartbreaking’, she told WTVD of her living situation.
Caleb said he would pay $600,000 toward their new home and asked her to pay the remaining $70,000. Dennis said she sent him that amount, plus $8,700 for other expenses.
Dennis and her son, Raymond, then packed up all their belongings, sold their Georgia home and drove to the house in Cary. Her son quickly realized that the whole story seemed odd.
‘When I noticed that someone was still living in the house and knocked on the door, I automatically knew that it was a scam,’ Raymond told the TV station.
‘The owner of the home told them he had lived in the home for years and had no intention of ever selling.’
When Dennis informed Caleb, he sent her a picture showing that he had ‘supposedly been beat up’, she said. She never heard from him again.
‘I had all that money and I don’t think I’ll ever get it back,’ Dennis told ABC’s Good Morning America on Friday, September 29.
Dennis’ life savings were lost, and she and her son were left homeless. They slept in the car.
A member of their church later donated a camper for them to live in. Dennis said her story should serve as a warning to others.
‘I think that it’s devastating for me, but I have my son, which has been a blessing,’ she told WTVD. ‘So some women are totally alone and they get scammed like that.’
Last year, romance scams cost nearly 70,000 people roughly $1.3billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
