{"id":5113,"date":"2024-04-25T13:22:36","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T13:22:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5113"},"modified":"2024-04-25T13:55:14","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T13:55:14","slug":"drowned-widow-was-scammed-out-of-1-5m-on-dating-app-hoax-left-note-about-secret-double-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5113","title":{"rendered":"Drowned widow was scammed out of $1.5m on dating app hoax, left note about secret \u2018double life\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>2 Minute, 3 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

An Illinois widow found dead hundreds of miles from home had been scammed out of $1.5 million by someone she met on a dating app \u2014 and had penned a chilling note predicting she \u201cwould end up dead\u201d because of her secret \u201cdouble life,\u201d according to her family.<\/p>\n

Laura Kowal, 57, had a nearly two-year online relationship with someone she assumed was a handsome Swedish businessman named \u201cFrank Borg\u201d whom she met on Match.com after she lost her husband of 24 years to cancer, her daughter, Kelly Gowe,\u00a0told CBS News.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Gowe then got an alarming message from a federal investigator on Aug. 7, 2020, warning that her mom was feared to be the victim \u201cin a fraud scam\u201d \u2014 after which the widow vanished.<\/p>\n

Laura Kowal had been in a relationship with a man she met on Match.com who called himself \u201cFrank Borg\u201d when she was found dead in the Mississippi River.<\/p>\n

The panicked daughter raced to her mom\u2019s home in Galena, Illinois, where she found a troubling, handwritten note addressed to her, she told the outlet.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou were right in your judgment of me,\u201d Kowal\u2019s letter read.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been living a double life this past year. It has left me broke and broken. Yes, it involves Frank, the man I met through online dating.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI tried to stop this, many times, but I knew I would end up dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

The note also provided instructions on how to access her mother\u2019s emails, which detailed how her \u201crelationship\u201d with \u201cFrank\u201d morphed over time \u2014 and how she was manipulated into sending more than $1.5 million to a phony company called Goose Investments.<\/p>\n

Just two days after the call from the feds, Kowal\u2019s body was found floating in the Mississippi River near Canton, Missouri, more than 200 miles from her home in Galena.<\/p>\n

An autopsy was inconclusive and police ruled Kowal had died from drowning with no obvious signs of fair play.<\/p>\n

Her family is not convinced.<\/p>\n

Emails between Kowal and the scammer went from loving to transactional.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have never been ashamed if [a finding of suicide] was the outcome,\u201d Gowe told CBS News.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it\u2019s not because I don\u2019t want to believe that. There would be some closure that would come if we were able to prove that my mom committed suicide. \u2026 But do I believe that they have been proactively seeking out evidence in an investigation beyond suicide? No.\u201d<\/p>

\n
\n \n
\n \n \"Happy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Happy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sad\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sad <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Excited\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Excited <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Sleepy\"\n <\/a>\n
\n Sleepy <\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n \n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Angry\"\n <\/a>\n
Angry<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n \n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n
\n \n \"Surprise\"\n <\/a>\n
Surprise<\/div>\n
\n 0<\/span>\n 0<\/span> %<\/span>\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n <\/div>\n <\/div>\n\n ","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Illinois widow found dead hundreds of miles from home had been scammed out of $1.5 million by someone she met on a dating app \u2014 and had penned a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"yes","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"facebook_2277560469115098_106292521332774":"","twitter_aToxNzczMzI3Njk4OTg4ODUxMjAxOw==_1773327698988851200":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main-stories","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5131,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5113\/revisions\/5131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}