New York Daily News

Date-line scam trio face 15 yrs.

- BY CHRISTINA CARREGA

A TRIO of scammers accused of cooking up a scheme to take $50,000 from a Queens man by convincing him he’d flirted with an underage girl on a chat phone line now face up to 15 years behind bars.

Prosecutor­s said the elaborate con involved two Brooklyn men who pretended to be law enforcemen­t officials and the mastermind behind it all — a woman already in prison for a similar scheme. Magdalena Nixon, 42, Sandy DeWalt, 53, and Randy Jones, 49, face grand larceny, coercion and criminal impersonat­ion charges, authoritie­s said.

The victim, a 65-year-old Queens man, chatted with a woman on the Lavalife dating line sometime in July 2015 and gave her his home number, cops said.

But instead of her call, he got one from a man who said he was a detective and accused the senior of trying to hook up with an underage girl.

The so-called detective told the victim he could be arrested unless he paid various legal feesand a settlement, and shelled out for the girl to have therapy, prosecutor­s said.

Nixon, doing time at Albion Correction­al Facility upstate for a similar scam, allegedly instructed DeWalt and Jones on how to execute the threatenin­g calls and collect the funds.

The man made about $50,000 in payments through October 2016, when one of the men said something that raised his suspicions.

He changed his number and filed a police report.

Prosecutor­s are requesting other potential victims to call their office at 718-250-2340.

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