A 78-year-old Virginia man suffering from dementia who was looking for love on a dating app was scammed out of $600,000 after falling victim to a pair of online con artist.
The unidentified man from Annandale had worked his entire life investigating fraud for the government, but fell victim to an age-old con himself, prosecutors said..
Over a span of two months, he sent $400,000 in cash and $200,000 in apple products to a woman who claimed she was a 30-year-old widow thrown into prison.
In total, he sent 53 packages of Apple products, which were to be used to raise money to ‘free the woman from jail,’ he was told.
However, the man was taken in by an extensive scam involving several Ghanian nationals, prosecutors said.
On Friday, two of the people who scammed the Annandale man were sentenced in federal court in Alexandria.
Ghanian nationals Linda Mbimadong, 29, and Richard Broni, 31, played relatively minor roles in the scam: Prosecutors describe them as ‘money mules’ who never made contact with the victim themselves but helped receive and launder the money in return for a five to ten percent cut of the proceeds.
He has since been diagnosed with dementia and is the latest victim in a growing trend known as romance fraud.
‘It did not matter when [he] revealed that his credit was ruined, that he could not afford to pay for medical insurance, his bills, or even his medications,’ the man’s son wrote.
He said the scammers ‘took advantage of an elderly man with declining…
