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.
Federal prosecutors in Ohio just closed the door on a romance fraud crew that ran for years on the loneliness of American retirees. The sentences add up to fifty years. The restitution adds up to more than $8 million. The machine that produced both is still running under other names.
Federal prosecutors in Ohio unsealed an indictment this week against two Ghanaian brothers and a Virginia woman accused of running a romance fraud ring that fed on lonely Americans for nearly two years. The script is older than the internet. The pipes are new.
An Indonesian fugitive arrested in Bangkok allegedly ran a $10 million romance fraud operation that turned loneliness into a pipeline. The machine had a script, a shift schedule, and a cryptocurrency off-ramp. The hearts were just the interface.