Kate Kleinert was not looking for romance when “Tony” sent her a friend request on Facebook in the summer of 2020. She had been widowed for several years and was not in the habit of accepting friend requests from strangers online.
The request included photos of a handsome man in a white coat, like a doctor, and another of him in scrubs. “He said he had read my profile and he wanted to get to know me,” she told the Capital-Star in an interview. “And there was just something about it that intrigued me and I wish I could go back to that day and not push the ‘accept’ button. But I did.”
After moving their conversation to an encrypted messaging app — which “Tony” requested — the two began chatting online, with him declaring his love, and his children calling her “mom.”
“I did not have children in my marriage, and I waited all my life for somebody to call me mom. So this was all just fabulous to me. You know, we were going to have this life and he had me going out looking at houses,” Kleinert said.
“Tony” started asking for sums of money here and there — he said he was a doctor stationed in Iraq and it was not easy to send or receive money — for his kids, for supplies, and eventually to bribe someone so he could more easily come visit her at her home in Delaware County.
But the day he was supposed to arrive at the Philadelphia Airport, he never showed. By this time, Kleinert had made a total of…
