Mary Ann Stone learned that the hard way. It all started during a simple game of online Scrabble, Stone said a man who claimed to be in the military overseas took it a step further than just gameplay.
“At first it was very casual and then he wanted to know if I wanted to be in a romance. I said I’m 71-years-old… no,” said Stone.
Stone declined the man’s approach and said he persisted with the conversation online by befriending her, even calling her mom during the messages back and forth. This went on for weeks while playing the game online and then out of the blue asked Stone to send him a Netflix gift card.
“He said, ‘Well can’t you just take a hundred dollars and get me a card and send it to me?’ I said, look I’m on social security,” said Stone.
Stone continued to talk to the man, he even sent her a picture of himself so she could get to know him more.
“Well I have a special place in my heart for soldiers because I’ve worked with soldiers,” she said.
The two continued chatting back and forth online and the man asked Stone if she could help him out as he wanted to send her a check for $20,000.
“He told me that he had done some computer work for these people out in California and he wanted to know if they could mail the check to me for $20,000 because he didn’t have access to his bank,” Stone said.
In her gut, she knew something wasn’t right but kept playing along, “I said I’m going to catch this guy. This guy is a scammer.”
The check arrived and he instructed Stone to cash it and then send the money back to him. Thankfully, she didn’t do that, as if she would have, the bank would have eventually told her the check was bad and she would have owed the money back to the bank, money she could have already sent back to the scammer.
“It’s hard to tell how many women he has scammed. Women need to know there are scammers out here. That will take advantage of your emotions,” a frustrated Stone said.
Stone is not the only one targeted in scams like this. These scams are known as romance or friendship scams.
According to the FBI, romance scams result in greater financial losses to victims when compared to other online crimes. In 2019, almost 20,000 complaints involved romance scams, about 1,000 more than the previous year, and the losses associated with those complaints exceeded $475-million.
The FBI says the criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do.
Here are the Troubleshooter Takeaways to remember so you don’t fall for a romance or friendship scam:
As for Mary Ann, she hasn’t let this bad experience stop her from playing games online as she has her guard up. She has reported the scammer to the bank and FBI.
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