Nicky from Missouri called into the The Ramsey Show with a late-in-life love tale. (1) She, a 68-year-old widow, has met a man, an 81-year-old widower, who wants to marry her. At first it seems like a heart-warming story, but when co-hosts hosts Jade Warshaw and Ken Coleman started asking questions, things went sideways fast.
Nicky started asking if she should mix her finances with her new suitor. She indicated her savings were much larger than his. The co-hosts asked how they met, and she told them that they had met on Facebook in a group for widows and widowers. They bonded when he told her about a woman he had been seeing. He was giving her money, and even though he supposedly has a pension that pays over $100,000 per year, Nicky felt she was taking advantage of him. The relationship apparently ended soon afterward, and Nicky ended up as his new lady.
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She then admitted she’d never seen him face to face. In fact, he lives six hours away. Wedding bells turned to alarm bells as Jade and Ken pulled more suspicious details out of her.
When they expressed dismay at the idea that she’d even think about marrying a man sight-unseen, she said “he is too open and honest!”
Coleman laid it all on the table: “Nicky, you have a hook in both sides of your mouth right now, and this needs to stop.”
Without proof to the contrary, he suggested she might be the victim of a catfish or romance scam.
Scams preying on the elderly are common
Romance scams are a big slice of the fraud problem for older adults. The FBI’s 2024 Internet Crime Report shows people 60 and over filed 147,127 complaints with reported losses of about $4.8 billion. Confidence and romance fraud alone accounted for 7,632 of those complaints and $389 million in losses.
A report by the Federal Trade Commission in 2023 outlined some of the most common lies associated with romance scams, including the “deployed service member” who cannot meet in person and the “offshore oil rig worker” who conveniently loses access to their finances.
Read more: Want an extra $1,300,000 when you retire? Dave Ramsey says this 7-step plan ‘works every single time’ to kill debt, get rich in America — and that ‘anyone’ can do it
One of the most popular scams lately is called “pig butchering” and commonly involves elements of romance scams. Pig butchering involves scammers gaining somebody’s trust over time and persuading them into supposed high-return investments, frequently involving cryptocurrency.
Another popular type of fraud to watch out for is impersonation scams, in which crooks pretend to be authority figures, such as government workers, bank security staff or law enforcement, to access your personal data or funds directly.
How to protect yourself or a loved one
When entering a new relationship, especially one that may involve an age or financial gap, it’s smart to proceed with caution. Be careful when sharing information about money. Keep your bank accounts and credit lines separate until trust has been earned.
If you’ve found new love online, it pays to be extra vigilant. If any romantic interest refuses to video chat, invents excuses to reveal themselves or asks for money or investments, those are big red flags.
Love and trust are built slowly, and if someone demands them quickly it should make you think twice. Real affection doesn’t come with pressure, secrecy or urgency around money.
In Nicky’s case, she told Warshaw and Coleman she’d had video calls with her new beau and they were due to meet soon. So, it seems she might get up close and personal with him. But Coleman wasn’t buying it and tried dragging her back to reality.
“Have some strong margaritas and cry yourself to sleep about how lonely you are, because that’s what’s going on,” he said.
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The Ramsey Show Highlights (1
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