A federal indictment unsealed this week in Pennsylvania describes a machine with two mouths: one that whispered love to lonely people online, and one that spoke in the voice of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Both mouths ate from the same plate.
Thames Valley Police charged five people this week over a long-running romance fraud and money laundering operation. The bank accounts that moved the money were not always the criminals' accounts. Sometimes they belonged to the women who thought they were in love.
Xin Liu was sentenced to 27 months for driving from one Florida porch to another, collecting envelopes of cash from elderly victims who had been told, by voices on the phone, that their grandchildren were in jail. She was the last visible piece of a machine whose other parts were on a different continent.
Laura Frantz of Saluda, South Carolina, was sentenced to federal prison this week for moving money stolen through business email compromise. The FBI says they warned her more than once. She kept the account open anyway.