Woman Uses Romance Scam to Take $2.8 Million from Holocaust Survivor

Peaches Stergo, a 36 year-old woman from Florida, has been arrested after allegedly committing a “years long scheme” in which she stole an 87 year-old Holocaust survivor’s life savings. The Department of Justice claims that over the course of more than four years, Stergo took over $2.8 Million from the survivor, according to CBS News.

CNN claims that according to an indictment, Stergo met the unidentified man on a dating website six or seven years ago, and by 2017, she asked him for money to pay her attorney so she could receive settlement funds she claimed were owed to her, but according to prosecutors, the settlement didn’t exist. 

Over the next five years, Stergo allegedly fed the victim continuous lies to receive monthly checks in increments of $50,000. Stergo even went as far as impersonating a bank employee, sending fake invoices, and creating a fake email account that to reassure the victim he would be repaid if he kept depositing money into the account, according to CNN. 

CBS News claims that Stergo used the money to buy a house in a gated community, a boat, multiple cars, and take expensive trips. It wasn’t until the 87 year-old man confided in his son about what had happened that he found he was being scammed.