Date-line scam trio face 15 yrs.
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.