Unbelievable cruelty: Vulnerable widows are hot on the radar for international crime groups
Alone, vulnerable, lost in grief and often cashed up – ruthless international criminals are trawling through death notices to find Australian widows, then fleecing them for everything they own.
SA News
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Ruthless international crime groups are trawling Australian death notices to fleece hundreds of thousands of dollars from grieving widows, using AI technology to conceal their identity.
Leading South Australian scam expert Evan Frangos from the Australian Anti-Scam Alliance said an increasing number of vulnerable, grieving, cashed-up widows were losing their live savings to callous criminals who pretended to want to be their friends and lovers.
“It’s absolutely heartbreaking” Mr Frangos, who is also a private investigator with South Australian Private Detectives, said.
He said scammers were voicing AI-generated video calls to conceal their identity and “lovebomb” their victims using stolen photos – often US military personnel – to trick their heartbroken victims.
In a harrowing interview, 69-year-old Prue, who regularly broke down in tears and harshly admonished herself, told how she lost her house and entire life savings to a group of Mafia-linked Russian scammers after her husband died.
Prue, who revealed she was so embarrassed by losing $800,000 to scammers, only recently told her closest friends and family how the catastrophic series of events began when her husband died in January 2019.
“Look I was really struggling when he was my best friend. I was in a fog,” the woman said.
Prue, who lives in Perth, said she got a phone call one day from a man saying he was from an investment company and suggested she invest in bitcoin.
“He was so nice. They seemed so interested in me and my wellbeing,” she said.
Her first deposit was $100 and over time she deposited more and more money.
“At one stage they told me if I invested $65,000 I would be protected against all future losses,” Prue said. “It was all a scam” she said, breaking into tears. “I started yelling at them ‘where is my money.?”
They told her they would talk to a manager to help, only to call her later to try to get more money from her.
Prue then paid a recovery service she found online, only to discover they were her scammers who had taken all her money.
“I was left with $5,” she said.
Prue was forced to sell her farm, move into a rented unit and return to work.
“I lost $800,000” she explained. “I never imagined people could be so cruel”
Widow Cathy Brennan-Coffey was also a victim of a romance scam where she sent $38,000 to a man posing as an American military officer.
Ms Brennan-Coffey has since founded a scam group helping scam victims with support, education and financial recovery. and said about 30 per cent of the people who sought help were widows.
“They have money, they are vulnerable, there is often nobody else in the house,” she said.
The Melbourne woman explained how she had no intention of getting involved in another relationship after her husband died in 2016.
She was watching videos about oil painting when a man messaged her on TikTok saying he had seen her watching several of these videos and told her he had an interest in oil painting too.
Over several months, Ms Brennan-Coffey said he charmed her saying he was a civil engineer named Thomas who worked in the American military.
It wasn’t until months into the relationship he started asking for money for a plane ticket when he claimed to be on deployment in Iraq.
When he didn’t arrive, she got a message from someone claiming to be his commander saying he had been injured on the way out of Iraq.
The man pretending to be her online boyfriend then said he needed to money to pay for the hospital bill.
“He would say the nicest things to me,” Ms Brennan-Coffey said. “I was so love-bombed that I couldn’t think straight.”
By that stage, she had sent more than $38,000.
Eventually her local bank got wind and blocked her from using her own account.
Ms Brennan-Coffey said she joined an overseas group called ScamHaters.
“They saved my life,” she explained and she has since gone on to found the Australian-NZ chapter where she has helped 18 victims of both romance and investment scams.
“Now I’m a crusader” she said. “This really could happen to anybody.”
Adelaide barrister John Dillon said many older people who were scammed often had trouble accepting they were victims.
“Confronting a loved one who is a victim can sometimes be the worst thing you can do,” Mr Dillon said.
“This often estranges people further from their family members and can even make them more reliant on the perpetrator.”
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