A Florida woman has pleaded guilty to making millions of dollars from individuals online via romance scams.
The woman, Cristine Petitfrere has confessed to knowingly defrauding individuals and leading them on for profit. According to the court documents, she did so with a co-conspirator who would bank a percentage of the money from the illicit scheme and launder the proceeds. It is alleged that Petitfrere laundered over $2.7 million and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.
“Romance scams cause not only significant losses but also profound emotional harm to countless individuals,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division.
Million-dollar romance scammer pleads guilty
The FBI Miami Field Office investigated the case, and Petitfrere is scheduled to be sentenced in the Southern District of Florida on Dec. 11 and could face up to ten years in prison.
According to the Justice Department, this kind of scam is used to garner the trust of those being taken advantage of for profit. The report said “These schemes not only cause significant financial losses, but also deeply impact the lives of victims, many of whom are elderly. Americans lost $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023, according to Federal Trade Commission data.”
In other scam related news, a man from Nevada has been convicted of a fraud scam involving $11.2M in COVID-19 pandemic relief funds intended to help small businesses.
According to the court papers, Dezfooli submitted loan applications under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was established to stem the losses small business owners suffered during the pandemic.
These loans were fraudulent, the Nevada court heard and were not going to support the employee salaries that were meant to be safeguarded by the loan scheme. It was found that the fraudulent loans were submitted to “federally insured banks, purportedly for the benefit of companies that the defendant controlled, and obtained more than $11.2 million in proceeds from those loans.”
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