A retired teacher said she was in the process of buying a house with her daughter when they learned that they had been victims of fraud. The pair were scammed out of almost $200,000 (£165,000) leaving them homeless and penniless.
Vicki Ragle, 69, from Colorado was in the process of purchasing a townhouse when callous hackers hijacked her emails and directed the funds to an account that was not associated with the estate agents.
Unaware of the scam taking place, Ms Ragle handed over her life savings to the company through online banking.
She had been sending emails to the legitimate estate agent company, lender and title company but somehow the scammers were able to intercept the correspondence.
Ragle, who had worked as a secondary school teacher for 42 years before retiring last year, said she received an email claiming to be from the legitimate company requesting that she send $196,662.81 to close the deal.
She duly sent the money but two days later, she went to the title company to complete the purchase and a staff member told her they hadn’t received the large sum.
“We went to closing on Friday, everyone was laughing and excited. We signed acres of papers,” Vickie Ragle told Fox 31 Denver.
She detailed the moment she realised she had been a victim of fraud: “The title lady said, ‘Where did you send the funds to?’ And I said, ‘I sent them to you,’ and she said, ‘We don’t have them’.”
Ragle explained: “At some point, the chain of emails got hacked and I started getting fraudulent emails, didn’t recognize them as fraudulent emails.”
READ MORE: Man serving 400-year prison sentence for 1988 robbery released
The 69-year-old mum added tearfully: “All I could think is now I’m homeless and broke. I’m 69 years old and now I’m broke and homeless.”
The FBI, Colorado Bureau of Investigation and Lakewood Police have subsequently launched an investigation into the incident, which happened earlier this month.
In the email to Ragle, dated March 1, the hackers wrote: “I went ahead and prepared the closing documents and closing statements with the closing date of Friday 3/03.
“Attached please find the final closing statement. The amount due to close is $198,662.81. Polite reminder, As we require funds to be remitted 48 hours prior to closing.
“Kindly advise when you will be ready to remit the closing funds so I can forward the title instructions for your actions.”
For this particular scam, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation said hackers will “will spoof or fake an email account from an interested party in order to get the true bank account changed to one they can control.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up by one of her daughter’s, Sarah, co-workers who say the pair have lost everything.
So far, they have reached $95,894 out of the $200,000 target.
Follow our social media accounts here on facebook.com/ExpressUSNews
