Woman Falls For $500,000 Scam

We've talked about scams several times on the show, and I'm always surprised how otherwise intelligent people can do such dumb things. This may be the biggest haul in an internet scam I've ever heard of.

According to SFGate.com and CBS San Francisco, the woman coughed up $500,000 to a man she met on Christian Mingle, a dating website for Christians. She never met the Nigerian in person and she got $200k back, but she is still out $300k. The divorced 66 year old woman raided her retirement account and refinanced her house to come up with all that money. The man, who, in all likelihood will get away with this, posed as an Irish oil rig worker who needed a loan to start a business and he even set up a fake website to fool her; that was where the first $300k went. She put an additional $200k in a bank account before realizing that she was being scammed. She contacted the authorities who arrested a man who came to withdraw the money, but he is not believed to be the perpetrator, just an associate. She got that money back.