Susan Reed pleaded guilty to fraud after scamming elderly widow out of $120K

She preyed on a lonely widower who just wanted companionship, swindling money for home deposits, a car, furniture and Christmas presents.

A convicted scammer has struck again and swindled more than $120,000 from a lonely widower after he responded to a companionship advertisement she posted.

Susan Diane Reed, 66, from Maitland was unemployed and living on a disability pension when she took out an ad in July 2017 in the personal section of the paper which read, ‘lonely lady, recently widowed seeking companionship, honest, loving and loyal’.

A 74-year-old man whose wife had recently passed away responded and wrote to Reed, saying he too was “lonely” and was looking for companionship.

Police facts said the two met up at her East Maitland home where she told the victim she had been married twice and both her husbands had passed away due to illness, as well two of her sons had died in their 20s.

She spun a lie that one of her husbands had died from an asbestos related illness and she was soon to receive a $1.6 million insurance payout from his death. Police facts said he in-fact died from an unrelated illness two years earlier and there was no settlement.

The pair struck up a close relationship and would soon talk on the phone three to four times a week, before Reed would start asking him for money, according to police facts.

Reed pleaded guilty at Newcastle District Court on Wednesday. Supplied Amy Ziniak

The long list of transactions started when the man transferred $3000 into her account in August, 2017, when she suggested they go on a holiday to Queensland, which they never went on and she never paid him back.

From September that year, to July 2018, Reed would ask for more and more money which included more than $40,000 for a house deposits, $30,000 for a car, funds for furniture and Christmas presents.

She swore she would pay him back but he never saw a cent, before she cut off communication in October 2018.

Reed was arrested more than two years later at her residence on November 19, 2020, before being charged.

In Newcastle Local Court on Wednesday she appeared via video link as her solicitor Mark Ramsland pleaded guilty to dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception to the value of $120,100.

Eight other charges of dishonestly obtaining financial advantage by deception were withdrawn.

Reed has been committed for sentence in the District Court on July 8.

In 2005, Reed was sentenced to jail for similar fraud offences.