HERCULES (KRON) — An 83-year-old Hercules man was scammed into sending $30,000 to a purported romantic partner he met online, according to a police report released Friday.
Though the man’s large money transfer was stopped by his bank, Hercules police are following up on the fraud report, which was received Wednesday at 1:20 p.m.
The elderly man reported that he had been dating a woman online for the past four months and had sent her smaller transfers of money, which amounted to several thousand dollars, police said.
The man’s purported partner convinced him to send $30,000 based on the pretense that she received a family inheritance in gold and she needed the money for the storage and transfer fees, police said.
He sent the money to the suspect’s bank account in New Jersey, where she told him she lives, police said. The bank put the transfer on hold and alerted the victim that the transaction may be fraudulent.
Hercules police said the case is being investigated.Bay City News Service contributed to this report