As they do every few months, authorities are warning people to be cautious when meeting people on online dating sites after someone was scammed out of a lot of money.
This time it was an 84-year-old Georgia man who was swindled out of $150,000. And it might have been more had his family not discovered what was going on. The unidentified senior citizen was admitted to the hospital this week, and family members noticed he kept receiving texts from a woman who kept asking him for money, according to Roswell Police Department rep Sean Thompson. When they asked him about it, the man told his family the woman lives in Dubai and he's been "dating" her, Thompson says.
So far, investigators haven't tracked down the scammer, but Thompson says they're working on it. In the meantime, he's reminding everyone to use common sense when venturing into the online dating world. "We always preach that you should never send money to anyone you’ve never met," Thompson says. "And, really, you shouldn’t be talking to anybody you’ve never met in person."
For more information, please read here.
Photo: Getty Images