{"id":5120,"date":"2024-04-25T13:22:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-25T13:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5120"},"modified":"2024-04-25T13:25:31","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T13:25:31","slug":"us-based-widow-found-dead-after-allegedly-being-scammed-by-ghanaian-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/?p=5120","title":{"rendered":"US-based widow found dead after allegedly being scammed by Ghanaian man"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>2 Minute, 37 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

An\u00a0Illinois<\/a>\u00a0widower was found dead hundreds of miles from her home after she was scammed out of $1.5 million by a man she met on a dating app.<\/p>\n

Laura Kowal, 57, had been in a relationship with a man she met on Match.com called \u2018Frank Borg\u2019 for over a year when her body was discovered in the\u00a0Mississippi<\/a>\u00a0River in August 2020.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her daughter, Kelly Gowe, received a call from a federal agent notifying her that her mother had been a victim of a scam and when she tried to contact her mother, discovered that she was missing.<\/p>\n

While trying to find clues of where her mother went, Gowe told\u00a0CBS News<\/a>\u00a0she found records that showed Kowal had wired Borg \u2013 who turned out to be a fake name \u2013 $1.5 million and a haunting note.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\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. I tried to stop this, many times, but I knew I would end up dead,\u2019 Kowal wrote her daughter in a haunting letter.<\/p>\n

On August 7, 2020, Kowal\u2019s body was discovered near Canton, Missouri \u2013 nearly four hours from her home in Galena, Illinois \u2013 and her car was recovered nearly 50 miles from her body, reported\u00a0WTVO<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

No formal ruling has been given for Kowal\u2019s manner of death, but her autopsy determined she died by drowning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s the scammers, It\u2019s the criminals behind those emails. It\u2019s Frank Borg\u2026 this character. He killed my mom,\u2019 Gowe said.<\/p>\n

\u2018And everyone that is involved in this scam in any capacity, that\u2019s moving the money, that\u2019s placing a phone call, that\u2019s hitting \u201center\u201d and \u201csend\u201d on an email \u2014 they\u2019re all responsible for my mom\u2019s death.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

Emails shared to CBS News showed within weeks of virtually meeting in 2018, Kowal and Borg were sharing emails telling each other they were in love despite having never met in person and he convinced her to send him money.<\/p>\n

\u2018She had all these buckets full in her life, my mom did, but there was this one bucket that was missing and that was companionship. And that\u2019s ultimately where we\u2019re at now, is because of that,\u2019 Gowe said.<\/p>\n

According to her obituary, Kowal loved tending to her flower and vegetable gardens, participating in local golf leagues and volunteering through therapy dog work with her beloved golden doodle Effie at a nursing home.<\/p>\n

Federal agents discovered that Borg\u2019s photos belonged to a Chilean doctor and his emails were traced back to Ghana.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nearly 70,000\u00a0people reported a romance scam<\/a>\u00a0in 2022, according to the Federal Trade Commission, a government watchdog.<\/p>\n

Reported losses hit a staggering $1.3 billion and on average, victims lost $4,400.<\/p>\n

\u2018Digital tools are making it easier than ever to target hard-working Americans, and we see the effects of that in the data,\u2019 said Samuel Levine, Director of the FTC\u2019s Bureau of Consumer Protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Romance scammers are routinely\u00a0setting up fake social media<\/a>\u00a0profiles to target victims online.<\/p>

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An\u00a0Illinois\u00a0widower was found dead hundreds of miles from her home after she was scammed out of $1.5 million by a man she met on a dating app. Laura Kowal, 57,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5119,"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":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120","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=5120"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5124,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5120\/revisions\/5124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sotnews.agency\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}