judges/auctioneer’s gavel with a pile of dollars
A Florida woman who stole the life savings of an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor in what a prosecutor called a “sick” romance scam pleaded guilty Friday and could face prison time, officials said.
Peaches Stergo, 36, pleaded guilty to wire fraud, which carries a maximum of 20 years in prison under the law.
The Champions Gate woman stole over $2.8 million from the man in a scam that lasted years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York said.
Stergo met him on a dating website, and in 2017 she asked for money, claiming she’d gotten a settlement from a lawsuit but needed to pay her lawyer to receive it, according to court documents.
A series of lies over four years followed, in which she claimed she needed more and more money or else her TD Bank accounts would be frozen and he would never be paid back, according to the indictment.
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