Ellen Floren was not looking for love.
The criminals who lured her into an online fraud last summer approached her not on a dating site, where she might have been wary, but through the neighborhood hub called Nextdoor.
A man who said his name was James Gibson said he’d noticed her profile on the site. He also lived in her Chicago neighborhood, he told her, specifying a street. Could they have a conversation?
“He was very polite: ‘I hope I’m not out of line. I just found you very attractive,'” recalled Floren, who is 67 and a part-time educational consultant. They chatted on the site for a week or so. “Then it was, ‘Is it OK if we email?'”
She agreed. Soon they shifted to phone conversations, often lasting an hour, and to texting several times a day. “It became very seductive,” Floren said. How could she help sympathizing when he revealed that his wife and child had been killed in a car crash long ago?