After being targeted in a money-laundering scheme through a private chat on Facebook, 71-year-old Edith Lomax was scared to be active online and go out in public by herself.
The scam began about two years ago when a man claiming to be from California started a conversation with Lomax, who was grieving the recent loss of her fiancé. The two began a friendship. Then came the money requests.
“He was always needing money,” Lomax said. “He was always sending me Steam cards ‘Go to the store now, get me Steam cards, iTunes cards,’ and ‘I’m on an oil rig, and I can’t leave,’ and sometimes it was like, ‘My child is in the hospital and she needs medicine’ and stuff like that with a fake story. A pitiful story.”
About two months after they started talking, Lomax, who lives in Colbert, Georgia, located about 20 minutes from Athens, received a private message from her bank that an unauthorized user tried to make a purchase with her debit card at a convenience store in California.
The next day, she noticed an unfamiliar withdrawal from her bank account to purchase Steam gift cards, which are used to play video games, at a CVS.
After going to the bank, Lomax found that checks from fake insurance companies from across the U.S. had been posted to her account, leaving it overdrawn. The bank called police to the scene and reported the…
