You lost everything.
Ebhard Krier is a broken man with a broken heart. A widower who thought he’d found love through the Internet after his wife of 34 years died of cancer a year and a half ago.
Did you really believe that this woman was in love with you.
Yes, this was, that's what I believed.
Heather Humphreys became alarmed when her father started becoming more and more secretive about e-mails, and other contacts he had with a woman calling herself Lisa Kelly supposedly living in the African country of Ghana, but it wasn't just that.
All told he spent how much money.
Let’s guess,I think it's about almost three hundred thousand dollars.
Krier now reveals he traveled to London 14 times over the past year thinking he would be rendezvousing with his love who claimed she'd invested his money in accounts in Ghana.
And when she didn't show up, didn't something go up in your head that something was wrong here?
No, not even went in my head. I was in love with her, love is blind.
His last trip, the end of July.
Four o'clock in the morning I got a phone call saying he's in London, no way to get home, they picked him up walkingon the highway.
Krier was briefly checked into a psychiatric hospital by his family, by that time he'd lost his home to foreclosure, forced to move in with his daughter, her husband and their three children.
He was sending her 1600 a day?
While going through her dad's finances. Heather said she got the shock of her life.
This was his pension.
This money, this 115,000 dollars is gone. They have it. It’s all gone, everything.
(How much money...)The family contacted us after we aired a story about a Yonkers man who had stolen money from his son, and then committed suicide after being victimized in a similar Ghana romance scam.
The only thing I didn't do, you know,i didn't steal or I did kill myself.
You didn't steal and you didn't kill yourself.
How do you look at these people?
Oh well, I think they are monsters. Why are these people getting rich on, you know, destroying families that destroyes families. Whatever already have told you it happens all the time, why aren't we doing things to stop it.
Heather says early on when she suspected the scam, she tried to get help even contacting the FBI.
When I called the FBI they were like, "We just tell him to stop". It's another country we have no jurisdiction, there is nothing we can do for you.
They are asking why can't you do something.
The FBI can't go and arrest people in other countries.
And the FBI’s Richard kolko says Internet scamers come and go so fast. It's almost impossible to track them.
The simplest thing is don't fall prey to them. There is no reason to it. It’s an education thing, and that's what you can do today, your story will help us educate people.
Do you realize now this was a scam? |