Sweetheart Swindler: Part 1

The Perfect Scam

AARP

True Crime, Society & Culture

4.5 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2019

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Jim spent much of his life building a real estate empire on the West Coast. In the process he became a millionaire, profiled in newspapers and on television. But in 2007, when the recession hit, Jim lost his vast fortune. At 76, Jim is running a small resort in Lake Tahoe, working to slowly rebuild his finances, when he receives a mysterious call. The woman on the other end of the line asks for Jim by name. She introduces herself as Desiree and asks if Jim remembers her. He doesn't, but Desiree is unfazed, claiming to have met Jim at the resort while she was a guest. She wants to get to know him better and before the call ends, Desiree has arranged another trip to the resort to visit a flattered Jim. Desiree arrives with a business opportunity for Jim, who quickly realizes she thinks he's still wealthy. She's visibly disappointed to find that Jim's house is no longer a mansion but a renovated Airstream trailer. At every turn of the visit, Desiree finds a reason to ask Jim for money — she needs investors for a new business and money to pay a family member's mortgage — but Jim isn't in a position to lend or invest money. Desiree decides it's time to go home. When Jim returns from taking her to the airport, he has an uneasy feeling. He looks to make sure the checkbook the resort keeps to pay vendors is still there. It is, but the stash of cash he keeps in the same drawer, the little savings he has left, is gone. Jim immediately contacts the authorities, but Desiree, who will eventually come to be known as the "Sweetheart Swindler," is just getting started.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This week on AARP, the perfect scam.
0:03.0	And I says, Deseret, I said, you just stole my money.
0:08.0	She was really kind of upset.
0:10.0	You can't write me a check for $10,000 and I said no I can't.
0:15.0	Welcome back to AARP the Perfect Scam. I'm Bill Johnson your host and I'm here with
0:20.6	AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale.
0:23.2	Frank thanks for being here again.
0:24.3	Thank you well thanks for having me.
0:25.6	And we're back with another romance scam this week but it's got a lot of twists and turns
0:29.3	that our listeners will find quite interesting.
0:31.8	Frank I want to ask before we get into it romance
0:34.1	scam sometimes it could be a group of people who are working together sometimes it
0:37.3	could be a lone wolf right somebody just doing it by themselves absolutely and most
0:40.9	of the time it is a con man or con woman working alone, but sometimes they are connected with a small group of people
0:48.2	or a large group of people who send them out and find the people for them to go take advantage of and then they go out on that kind of mission to go do just that.
0:57.0	We will find out that this one is done over the phone and then on text and then in person but romance scams could certainly be all of the above
1:07.3	Yes
1:08.5	face to face over the phone and I mean is there different emo or is it all involves the same sort of degree of
1:13.6	of conning someone it's all the same degree I think the internet is the
1:19.2	easiest way because as we've talked about before there's no emotion involved.
1:24.8	Many times you never see the person, the person never sees you and you're scamming this
1:29.6	person basically online and I think that's where a lot of these are sometimes very bad where people are very badly
	...

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