Patricia was a huge Vince Gill fan, traveling to the country music star’s shows and following him on social media.
So it didn’t seem odd when someone purporting to be Gill responded after the Plymouth resident posted a message on his Instagram page in the fall of 2022 — “hope you come to Boston!”
That single comment unleashed a torrent of messages and AI-generated images from people pretending they were Gill or an associate. For months, Patricia exchanged messages with the person she believed was the country music star — first on Instagram, then on Google Chat.
She became convinced the pair were soulmates who would be together when he traveled to Boston a few months later.
(The Independent is not publishing Patricia’s full name to protect her identity.)
Before long, Patricia received a message that she didn’t find suspicious or troubling.
Gill had been accused of rape, the person said, and when his wife, singer Amy Grant, found out she froze his assets and threatened to divorce him. He said he needed $350,000, which he promised to return to her as soon as he was able to.
Over nearly a year in 2023, scammers posing as Gill or his manager, systematically emptied out the now 75-year-old woman’s bank and retirement accounts leaving her with little resources and a big tax bill, according to her
daughter, Jessica, and Plymouth police.
The scam finally ended in December 2023 when Jessica caught wind of what was happening.
She wondered why her mother kept furtively checking her phone. She snuck a look and was horrified by what she saw — an endless stream of messages to and from “Vince Gill” that began in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee emoji and a red rose and continued throughout the day.
She still had no idea what she would eventually uncover — that her mother had handed over nearly $450,000 to fraudsters who took advantage of her kind and trusting nature to wipe out her life savings.
It’s a story that has been repeated many times and yet the scammers have become increasingly sophisticated and able to find a victim’s weaknesses and exploit them mercilessly. Often, authorities say, scammers seek out recent widows or widowers. Patricia, fit the bill. Her husband died just a few years ago.
They spend weeks or months developing a close relationship with the victim, before moving in for the financial kill. It’s a process fraud investigators call “pig butchering.”
Federal investigators say that the number of online romance scams has increased dramatically over the past few years, as methods become more sophisticated.
In 2022, nearly 70,000 people reported romance scams with losses totaling $1.3 billion, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The actual number is probably much larger since the “vast majority” of the scams are not reported to the government, the FTC wrote in February 2023.
Earlier this month, a French woman was scammed out of over $800,000 by someone posing as actor Brad Pitt.
The woman sent the fake Pitt money after someone posing as his mother claimed he had developed kidney cancer and needed a loan.
“It can 100 percent happen to anyone,” says Jessica, who has taken control of her mother’s finances and hopes people can learn from her experience.
In a statement, Gill spokesperson Alison Auerbach said the singer “would never contact anyone directly, particularly through social media channels.
“It is heartbreaking when one of Vince Gill’s perfectly wonderful supporters is taken advantage of by online scammers,” she wrote.
“We flag these fake accounts as they come to our attention and also make it discernible which social media accounts are Vince’s official outlets. Those outlets are managed by a team of professionals.
“If anyone contacts someone saying they are Vince Gill, rest assured they are not.”
Jessica staged what she calls an “intervention” in December 2023, accompanied by an elder services worker who had been contacted by a Santander branch manager who suspected Patricia was being victimized.
Her daughter took away her phones and checkbooks.
At that point, she calculated the losses at $295,000.
But it turned out her mother had obtained four loans and took $96,000 from her credit cards, which she sent to the scammers. — new estimated loss — $426,000.
By liquidating her retirement accounts, she also incurred a big tax bill, Jessica said.
Jessica called Plymouth police, who launched an investigation.
Patricia didn’t seem to believe the officers when they told her she had been the victim of a yearlong scam.
“She couldn’t explain why Vince Gill would text her…directly or through this attorney and/or why he would need money,” wrote Patrol Officer Edwin Fein in his report.
“She just seems very defiant that she is actually speaking with Vince Gill and Mark Christopher (his manager) and there has been no way to convince her she’s not,” Fein wrote.
Patricia handed police copies of 13 money wire transfers she had sent to the person posing as Gill. The transfers went to five people in the United States, but the recipients were believed to be just links in a fraud chain that originated in Nigeria.
The money went primarily to a woman in New Jersey, Elizabeth Stuber, though there were also wire transfers to people in Texas, Missouri, and Florida.
From February to December 2023, Patricia wired funds every few weeks — sometimes three times a month, records showed. The amounts varied but were always large — from $10,000 to $40,000.
Earlier this month, a Plymouth District Court clerk magistrate charged Stuber, 70, with money laundering and receiving stolen property. She is due back in court on February 11.
But she’s unlikely to appear. In a series of emails, Stuber said she’s a victim herself.
Police believe she may have been turned into a “money mule” by the fraudsters, who forced her to collect from victims and forward the funds back to them.
“I don’t know any of these people that put money into my account,” she wrote. She said she has no way to travel to Plymouth and no funds to hire a lawyer.
“I am homeless and disabled completely,” she wrote. “I’m in bed as of now ‘cause I’m in a lot of pain. I have no money and never did. They made me lose my (Social Security) and Medicaid. My life is in ruins.”
She said she can’t attend the court hearing.
“I have no car and no one to take me there,” Stuber wrote. “I am ready to end my life over this.”
Though it seems doubtful that police will be able to recover the stolen money, Jessica and Plymouth police hope others will learn from Patricia’s experience and take steps to protect their loved ones from increasingly rampant online fraud.
“I have used the story to educate people I work with and anyone who will listen — start talking to your parents and have a power of attorney and an estate plan,” said Jessica, an events planner.
“I had barely any knowledge of her accounts. I would never have seen the money going away,” she said.
Plymouth police detective Lieutenant Michael Glowka said the scammers, omnipresent on social media and dating sites, work hard to seem “genuine, caring, and believable” to “gain the victim’s trust.”
But don’t be fooled, he said.
“I would suggest if people are communicating with a person they have never met, do not send them money,” Glowka said in an email.
“Family members should keep a close eye on their loved ones who could fall victim to these types of scams (elderly living alone). If possible, have a second person listed on bank accounts. This could help monitor accounts to ensure no one is falling victim to a romance scam or any scam.”
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.