Only when it was too late did Christine Settingsgaard see the red flags festooning her online boyfriend.
He communicated by text messages and phone calls, never by video. He always had an excuse for why he couldn’t meet in person. And when he was supposedly called away to a remote job site, he said he couldn’t access his bank, which led to an urgent request.
He asked Settingsgaard, 37, a single mother of three who lives in Barrington, Illinois, to deposit an $85,000 check into her bank account and then wire $82,000 to his sister in Utah. When she was done, he said, he would give her a big surprise.
