According to the Federal Trade Commission, romance scammers stole $1.14 billion from Americans just last year. Yet experts say the amount may even be higher than that because many victims are too embarrassed to report the crimes as criminals get better and better.

NBC10 Responds spoke with one victim from the Philadelphia area who wanted to share her story, however.

Kate Kleinert told NBC10 it started back in 2020 when she was browsing Facebook and a man named “Tony” sent her a friend request. Kleinert’s husband had passed 12 years prior.

“I never, ever, ever accept those friend requests,” she said. “But for some reason, just one day I did.”

Tony was a handsome man who said he was a surgeon who was working on a contract with the United Nations in Iraq.

“And he had read my profile on Facebook, liked dogs, liked gardening, liked all the things that I liked and wanted to get to know me better,” Kleinert said.

A few days after meeting each other, Tony asked Kleinert to move to what is now known as Google Chat so that they could speak to each other.

“It was just nice having a conversation with the man against just in every day,” she said. “Every night he would call and say, ‘How was your day, honey?’”

After a few months, the conversation between the two turned romantic. Tony then asked Kleinert to send a gift card to his daughter at a boarding school in England. Kleinert figured it would take weeks to send the gift card. Tony told her to take a picture of the front and back of the card and send the picture, however. He then asked for a similar gift for his son as well as gifts for himself.

“There was always a request for Tony,” Kleinert said. “Needed better food where he was. He needed a better signal to be able to call me. He needed to bribe someone to be able to get better food or what have you.”

Kleinert said she sent so much money to Tony that she was having trouble paying her bills.

“My cellphone got turned off every month until I could scrape together money to get it turned back on. And my electricity had been turned off,” she said. “I went through my savings, my 401K, my husband’s, the rest of his life insurance.”

As the amount of money she gave Tony grew, so did their relationship plans.

“The plan was Tony would come here on leave but then put in for his retirement and not go back,” she said. “And we would get married and then we would go get the children and just have this wonderful life together.”

Kleinert said they set December 10, 2020, as the date that they would meet. Tony was supposed to call when he landed at the airport.

“I had a new dress. I did my nails. I redid my nails. I did my hair,” she said.

Tony never arrived, however. Kleinert got a call the next morning from someone who claimed Tony had been arrested at the airport.

“But now they needed bail money to get him out of jail,” she said. “$20,000 they wanted me to hand over. And all I could do was cry because I didn’t even have $20 to my name at that point.”

It was at that moment that Kleinert realized she had been scammed. At that point, she had lost around $39,000.

Kleinert later shared her story with her family as well as law enforcement. She also struggled for years to recover financially, a struggle that was amplified when a portable unit she used to replace her broken air conditioner caught fire in the summer of 2022, destroying all her possessions and killing her six dogs.

Even after that, she said she got another call from Tony, asking her for more money.

Eventually, Kleinert was able to buy a new home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, using the proceeds from her home insurance. Kleinert currently works with the AARP Fraud Watch Helpline to protect other people from scammers.

“It means a great deal that I can reach out to other people and maybe help one person not fall for the same thing I did,” she said.

As for Tony, Kleinert said she eventually found out he wasn’t a doctor or the man she saw in the picture on Facebook. Instead, he was a 55-year-old Nigerian man.

Tips on protecting yourself from scammers

Theresa Payton, a cyber security expert, told NBC10 that just about anyone is vulnerable to skilled scammers.

“They could teach a masterclass in human behavior,” Payton said. “How to manipulate. How to build trust.”

Payton believes social media companies should do their part to protect people.

“For example, when they get a friend request, being able to say this account is not very old or this account says they live in America, but it’s Indonesia, like a little checklist before you accept a friend invitation,” Payton said.

Payton said the red flags to look for are if the relationship is escalating quickly or if they ask for money in any form. She also recommended that anyone interacting with a stranger online should put the person’s picture in a reverse image search. If it comes back associated with multiple names and accounts, it’s a scam.

Payton says time is of the essence for victims of scams to minimize their losses. If you or a loved one have been victimized, call your bank first, then law enforcement. You can also file a report on the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center website.