Lynbrook woman says she lost $25G in online dating scam

Joan Romano concedes she was gullible when she fell for a man on an online-dating site.

Romano, 53, of Lynbrook, spent about six months in a virtual romance with a man who described himself as a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan - and she lost about $25,000 in the process.

When the man, who said his name was Sgt. Austin Miller and, later Sgt. Austin Newman, asked her to send a laptop so they could keep in touch, she purchased one and sent it to an address he provided in Ghana. When he told her he needed her to pay the customs fees on the laptop, she did.

And, at his request, she wired him tens of thousands of dollars over several months.

"I fell for it and I screwed up," she said of the courtship, which had included promises of gold, marriage and starting a family.

Romano, who is divorced and works as an office manager for a rheumatologist, says she was suspicious - though not sufficiently skeptical to refuse his requests. She blames her gullibility on the daily stress of caring for a disabled brother and elderly mother, both of whom live with her, as well as on her patriotism. She had worked in the World Trade Center, though fortunately she had called in sick on the morning of 9/11.

Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Army's Criminal Investigation Command at Fort Belvoir, Va., said his office is investigating the case.

Romano isn't the first person to fall for an Internet con artist masquerading as a U.S. Army soldier, Grey said. In the past six months alone, the Army has received hundreds of such complaints, mostly by women who tend to be middle-aged, single, divorced or widows, he said.

Among them are women who were convinced that the impostor who had ripped them off was a legitimate U.S. service member, he said.

Match.com, the dating site where Romano says the man first messaged her, said in a statement that it advises members to "be cautious of scammers, never wire transfer money or provide banking information to anyone," and report any suspicious activity.

A Nassau district attorney spokeswoman confirmed that Romano had filed a complaint but said the office told her to call the federal government because the crimes occurred outside the office's jurisdiction.

Romano says she also filed a complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June. Special Agent Jim Margolin said its Internet Crime Complaint Center doesn't publicly confirm or deny the filing of complaints.

It's hard to find such impostors, much less prosecute them, Grey said, because they tend to run their operations out of Internet cafes on other continents where there are legal "jurisdictional issues."

"They'll set up an operation, work it a couple weeks and move on," Grey said.

And contacting the Army to confirm a name against official military records won't necessarily weed out scams, Grey said, because many impostors steal identities of real soldiers.

Women in romantic relationships should be suspicious if they are asked to send money or valuable items, he said.

In Romano's case, she says she concluded she was talking to an impostor when she and a neighbor searched online last month for information about the man - and found pictures of him on a site about impostors.

"My face almost dropped," she said. "I said, 'Oh, my God!' "