A Florida woman looking for love was conned out of $25,000 by a man she met on a dating site, who claimed to be a soldier stationed in Afghanistan.
Susan Rizzo said she was immediately taken with a photo of the alleged scammer when she first stumbled across it on the site on Plenty of Fish. He was attractive, she recalled, and went by the name Nicholas Shawn Wells Edwards.
Edwards allegedly told Rizzo he was in Afghanistan amid the United States’ withdrawal from the nation. He claimed to have spent his money getting from Afghanistan to Israel and requested that she send the funds there, which he would then use to return to South Florida.
“I feel my life is in limbo while waiting for your safe return,” she wrote to him on Aug. 14.
“A lot didn’t go as planned … a lot of decision making amongst most of the special ops soldiers,” he immediately responded.
Then 20 minutes later he added: “Except there’s a problem about my return because there’s a provision to it that needs me to handle my own private flight arrangement.”
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Rizzo said she became overwhelmed with worry and only wanted to help the new man in her life.
“He had gone to Falluja, Mosul, and was going to end up in Khandahar,” Rizzo told NBC News 6. “Yes — and he told me on different missions he had lost men from his group and he was considered the military anthropologist so he was in a relatively safe position.”
In the end, she decided to follow his directions and shipped off the parcel of cash to an address that was not in Israel, but rather to a townhouse in Atlanta. A review of the steps also revealed errors by the writer, who said to use “beneficial” not “beneficiary” for the recipient, and “routine number” not “routing number” for the bank details.
“I sent the money because after two months of communicating I felt I was developing a relationship that felt real,” she said.
When Edwards asked her for another $300,000 she knew her handsome paramour was too good to be true. She said she hopes to get the funds back and that she is sharing her story to help other women avoid similar scams.
“I don’t want this to happen to somebody else and if there’s a way for me to get my money back that would be wonderful. I definitely can’t afford to throw that to the wind,” Rizzo said.
“However, for somebody else to get taken like this emotionally and financially — it’s embarrassing. It’s hurtful.”
