{"id":25796,"date":"2023-07-28T14:33:43","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T18:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=25796"},"modified":"2023-07-28T14:33:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-28T18:33:43","slug":"florida-woman-jailed-for-stealing-from-holocaust-survivor-in-romance-scam","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2023\/07\/28\/florida-woman-jailed-for-stealing-from-holocaust-survivor-in-romance-scam\/","title":{"rendered":"Florida woman jailed for stealing from Holocaust survivor in romance scam"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A Florida woman who defrauded an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor of his life savings in a romance scam has been sentenced to four years in prison.<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Peaches Stergo, 36, siphoned over $2.8m (\u00a32.1m) between 2017 and late 2021 and used the money to live a “life of luxury”, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stergo, who met the Holocaust survivor on a dating website, pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in April.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The judge called her scam “unspeakably cruel”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Sentencing her to 51 months in prison on Thursday, US District Judge Edgardo Ramos ordered Stergo to pay $2.83m in restitution.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stergo met the Holocaust survivor on a dating website around six or seven years ago, according to prosecutors with the US Southern District of New York.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She began asking the victim to borrow money to help her get funds from a legal settlement that prosecutors say did not exist.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stergo continued to lie to the elderly man for the next four and a half years, demanding that he deposit money in her bank account or it would be frozen and she would not be able to pay him back.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Prosecutors said she “callously defrauded an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor who was simply looking for companionship”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stergo used the money to live a life of luxury, including buying a home in a gated community and staying at luxury hotels, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She also spent the cash on designer clothing, a Corvette, Rolex watches and gold coins and bars, while the elderly victim lost his apartment, prosecutors said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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The elderly man gave 62 cheques to Stergo over the course of the scam. At one point, he explained the situation to his son, who warned him it was a swindle.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In text messages, the Florida woman mocked the victim, telling her real lover that the 87-year-old had said he “loved her”, followed by a message that said “lol”, according to prosecutors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She joked in a text that the victim was “broke” and he “don’t have anything else to pawn”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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She was upset when the money ran out, but only because, as she wrote in a text message: “I don’t want to work… it’s too hard.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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As a part of her sentencing, Stergo was ordered to forfeit her home in the gated community as well as over 100 luxury items.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Stergo’s lawyer told US media that she had “expressed remorse for her actions and will make every effort to repay the restitution in this case”.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In previous court documents, her lawyer argued she suffered from childhood trauma that made her prone to compulsive behaviours like participating in scams.<\/p>\n

Source: bbc.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Florida woman who defrauded an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor of his life savings in a romance scam has been sentenced to four years in prison. Peaches Stergo, 36, siphoned over $2.8m (\u00a32.1m) between 2017 and […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25797,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[417,1977,803],"class_list":{"0":"post-25796","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-usa","9":"tag-florida","10":"tag-holocaust","11":"tag-wire-fraud","12":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25796"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25799,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25796\/revisions\/25799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}