It was a Saturday in November when Deborah Colgate got a Facebook message from a man named Daniel Blackmon.
Colgate, 56, was recently separated and admittedly lonely, yet intrigued by Blackmon. He was handsome, kind, and a colonel in the U.S. Army. He asked about her family, what she did for work, if she had grandchildren. He told her how beautiful her smile was. They talked about their hobbies, and their interests, and within a few weeks, Blackmon started opening up to her. He said his wife had left him after trying to kill their son, Alvin. And because Blackmon said he was currently deployed, Alvin was living with a family friend in England. Meanwhile, Blackmon soon made it clear his feelings for Colgate were growing stronger: He wanted to be with her, he said. He wanted to marry her.
It wasn’t until Blackmon started asking Colgate for money that her daughter, Brandi, who worked at a bank at the time, felt something wasn’t right. Blackmon was telling Deborah that doctors had found tumors on his son’s stomach, and he desperately needed surgery. He said he couldn’t access his money because he was deployed, and asked Deborah if she could lend him a few thousand dollars.
But what Brandi found when she searched Daniel Blackmon wasn’t what she expected: the real Daniel Blackmon, an Army colonel in Oklahoma, was happily married with children.
