Ga. Widow Duped Out of $500 on Christian Dating Site
A 54-year-old disabled woman who lives in Georgia says she was tricked out of $500 by a man she fell in love with through a free Christian dating website after her husband's death. Police are investigating the case.
"I put my heart out there, he took it and destroyed it," Jewell Berggrun, a resident of Winder, Ga., told WSB-TV, of the man she found on a Christian dating site.
The man told Berggrun his name was "Alexi" and that he lived in Texas with a business in Malaysia. He also sent her a picture of himself.
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"He said when he came back from Malaysia, before going back to Texas, he would be stop by Atlanta to say hello and to get to know me," she was quoted as saying.
The man told her he urgently needed $8,000 for a generator. Berggrun, however, could only give him $500, but only to realize later that she was duped.
"This guy is not who he says he is. He (his pictures) were on three different dating website(s), under three different names," she said. "He is doing this to several other women."
Berggrun's husband died of a heart attack recently, and she has been living on a fixed income since then. She says she's disabled, and doesn't have the money left to buy medication or groceries for the rest of this month.
Police are investigating the case, but said such incidents are not uncommon and the victims normally have little hope of recovery after the money is transferred to a foreign bank account.
Berggrun's case comes just days after a Nigerian conman duped a 66-year-old San Jose, Calif., woman out of $500,000.
The woman met the conman through ChristianMingle.com, which advertises itself as a place where Christians can "Find God's Match for You," according to CBS News.
The victim was able to recover $200,000 from a bank in Turkey, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, which, however, warned that the case should serve as a warning about scams on international dating sites.
Deputy District Attorney Cherie Bourland said the woman, a divorcee, befriended the Nigerian conman on the dating website thinking he was an Irish citizen, "David Holmes," working on a Scottish oilrig. The man was represented by a photo of a male model he had downloaded from the Internet.
"You get the love drug in you and you end up getting duped," Bourland was quoted as saying. "There had been phone calls. He [the conman] did not seem to have a Nigerian accent. He sent her flowers, but they never met in person."
