Scam investigation yields relief for victim, funds for city of Monona

By Audrey Posten | Times-Register

The Monona Police Department has completed a more than year-long scam investigation that will hopefully return funds to a victim and net the city over $100,000 through forfeiture.

Austin Wille, now the Monona Police Chief, first took the scam report in November 2023. A local woman had been in what she was thought was a relationship with an overseas service member for around six months.

“They met online and he had a bunch of stock photos of a military guy. Eventually, he started asking for money and then more money, more money. After six months, it switched from a typical romance scam asking for money to starting to use her to launder money they already had. They were sending money in large quantities from where they were in Africa or India,” Wille explained. 

The total was around $750,000, according to Wille. The local victim alone lost $12,000.

After receiving one large check, a second for $167,000 raised the victim’s suspicions. 

“It clicked, ‘Hey, this isn’t right,’ because it was in her own personal account. So she came and made the report,” Wille said.

The account was frozen as the bank anticipated the money to disappear, pulled from the back end by the scammer. But after 60 days, the money was still there. 

“We said, ‘Well, now what do we do?’ What about getting a warrant to seize that money and try to get her portion back?” Wille said.

Doing so required him to pore through around 30,000 messages between the two, most via text message. Although the scammer and victim also communicated via WhatsApp, Wille said he was unable to access that correspondence.

Going through the information wasn’t hard, he said, but a long, time consuming process. 

“It would take forever to get to a portion where they were actually talking about something important or exchanging bank information. Some days, I’d get through 100 messages, then some days 1,000,” he recalled. “Obviously, being a small town, we still have to patrol and do all our other cases. Sometimes it got pushed to the back burner and I didn’t look at it for a month. That’s why it took so long. If we had the resources, it could have been done sooner.”

Through the messages, Wille learned the scammer was using Bitcoin and other online cryptocurrency apps. He told the victim he was on the front lines and was required to turn his cell phone off at night for security reasons. In reality, that was when the scammer would go home from what Wille assumes was a call center.

The victim grew worried multiple times, but the scammer talked her through it.

“He’d say, ‘You’re being mean,’ and she’d feel bad about it,” Wille said. “They know what they’re doing to play with people’s emotions.”

When the victim stopped responding, the scammer grew bolder. He called the Monona Police Department on more than one occasion, posing as her husband and asking law enforcement to complete a welfare check.

“That was something I’ve never seen before, where a scammer has gotten law enforcement involved to keep contact,” Wille said. “I’m sure that was nerve racking for her because they knew her address. She’s moved since then, which I’m sure has made her feel significantly better.”

Once the victim reported the scam, police learned through a reverse image search that photos of the woman’s overseas boyfriend were of a real-life service member in the U.S. A body builder with an array of photos on social media, scammers had swiped images of him for other dupes. The man was even featured in a news story talking about previous calls he’d received from people believing they were in love with him—or upset he had taken their money.

“If she would have done a reverse image search, she would have seen [photos] with the guy’s real name. He was also wearing an Air Force uniform, but said he was in the Army. And [the scammer] got the name wrong because you could only see half his name in a photo, so that was another clue that things were not adding up,” Wille said. “That could have raised some red flags and stopped this sooner. But she never thought that could possibly not be the guy in the photo.”

This is a cautionary tale for all, noted Wille, with the proliferation of scams. The Federal Trade Commission received fraud reports from 2.6 million consumers in 2023, and nationwide fraud losses topped $10 billion that year.

This scam case was the largest Wille had ever worked, the next closest ranging from $4,000 to $5,000. 

“There was one in town where they would tell [victims] to take photos of gift cards or Amazon credit cards,” he said. “There’s one where your package has been delivered, and another I get a lot is the tollway or downtown parking in big cities. The other big scam we’ve been seeing lately is your grandkid is in jail. They call the grandparent pretending to be the kid, saying they need $10,000 in bail money. You’d never see it again.”

“There are so many ways they can get you now a days. It’s impossible not to fall for one at some point,” he continued.

To keep this from happening to you or a family member, Wille stresses vigilance. Always double check the email or phone number a message comes from. Show suspicious requests to a friend or family member or ask law enforcement if it’s legitimate. 

“Have someone you trust, a second set of eyes, look at it. If it doesn’t seem real, if it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not,” Wille said.

Use technology like reverse image searches to make sure you’re talking to who you think you’re talking to. Ask the sender to send a photo of themselves doing something specific, like showing their face with a certain number of fingers held up. 

“Only a person who’s that person could do that,” Wille said.

If you’ve never met a person, don’t send them money. Be wary when the person contacting you gets pushy. 

“They are very good at what they do. They know how to say the right things. If it’s not working, they can pull out all the stops to keep people on the line,” Wille shared.

If you are scammed, don’t be embarrassed to report it.

“Embarrassment keeps people from coming forward or coming forward before they get in deeper. They don’t want to admit they fell for a scam,” he said. “It’s best to come forward when you can and have people help you out.”

Due to limited resources, Wille said it’s next to impossible for law enforcement to pin point the location or identity of overseas scammers, or to know how many victims they duped and the amount they defrauded individuals. By the time officials catch on to one scam, perpetrators are on to the next.

“It sucks,” he admitted, “but we’ll be here and keep plugging away at them.”

Wille is glad this situation has a better ending than most. Of the money seized from the account, the state of Iowa will take 10 percent for helping with the forfeiture, and he’s hopeful the victim’s $12,000 will be returned to her. The remainder will go to the city of Monona, where it can be used for law enforcement purposes.

““It has to be a non-budgeted item not related to wages for the enhancement of law enforcement in the town,” he explained. “The plan is to use it to purchase a squad car. Since we didn’t have a vehicle budgeted, we can use it for that.”

“The rest, we’ll never know who was out the money,” Wille reflected, “but the scammer didn’t get this amount, I guess.”