65-Y-O SCAMMED OF LIFE SAVINGS IN US

A 65-YEAR-OLD Jamaican woman residing in the United States (US) who was getting ready to return to her homeland with her sick husband has lost her entire life savings of US$28,000, or approximately J$3.6 million, to a pair of con artists, the New York Daily News has reported.

Dorothy Edge said she earned the money from baby-sittings jobs and kept it in a striped sock inside her Brooklyn, New York home, something she started doing before she obtained her green card and could not open a bank account.

Edge, whose husband, it is believed, suffers from dementia, told the newspaper she felt angry and ashamed that she allowed herself to be “suckered” by the two con artists, one of whom posed as a member of the clergy.

“I blame myself because I’m stupid, I’m downright stupid,” Edge told the Daily News on Saturday, more than two weeks after the May 11 incident. “It was a pastor, and that was the reason I didn’t suspect him,” she added.

The 65-year-old, in recounting her ordeal, revealed that she was returning to her home in East Flatbush when a woman, who appeared to be in her 50s, approached her and struck up a conversation.

According to Edge, the woman claimed she was from South Africa and was in the US because her uncle had died. She said the woman claimed that her uncle left her $200,000 and she wanted to make a charitable donation, but was unable do it because she had to leave the country shortly.

Edge told the newspaper that was when the woman’s partner – a man who also appeared to be in his 50s, with a Bible in his pocket and pretending to be a preacher – joined the conversation and promised to assist.

“If he had come up without the Bible and everything, I would have walked away,” she said.