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Heartbreak:
Jamaica Lottery scam led to NJ grandmother's suicide |
November 15,
2007: A Jamaica-based lottery scam promising a $2.5
million windfall cost Ann Mowle her entire life savings of
$248,000 before the 72-year-old grandmother from Monroe
decided she had enough.
Mowle donated her clothes to charity, left her beloved toy
poodle Molly at a dog groomers and drove to Spring Lake on
Oct. 31. A pair of fishermen found her body on the edge of a
jetty at the Worthington Avenue beach the next day.
Investigators determined Mowle's death was a suicide.
Mowle's family blames the vicious year-long con for the path
to despair that ended on that Spring Lake beach. |
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The money she had
set aside to travel in her retirement and help her
grandchildren with college costs was gone. Attempts to
recover the funds with the help of authorities only led to
embarrassment. In Mowle's final months, she became a recluse
— too afraid to leave her apartment and miss the phone call
that would finally provide a return of her lost money.
"You're not talking about a gullible person," said her
daughter JoAnn Trivisonno, of Virginia. "You're taking about
a fearless woman. If this could happen to her, it could
happen to anyone."
Mowle, a college graduate who raised three children as a
single working parent, received the first letter promising a
$2.5 million jackpot in October 2006. To collect, she had to
pay $18,000 in fees, which Mowle sent. From there, the scam
spiraled out of control with a barrage of phone calls from
the con-artists who duped her into sending more cash.
As a former bookkeeper at Princeton University, Mowle kept
meticulous records of her year-long deception by the phony
Jamaican lottery officials.
Mowle left the documents in a tidy stack on her dining room
table in her apartment at the Rossmoor adult community
before she left for the last time. The records detail more
than 50 wire transfers ranging from $158 to $4,750 to
addresses in Jamaica between October 2006 and June.
Despite the paper trail including names and phone numbers,
investigators have had little luck in tracking down the
scam-artists behind the ploy.
Source: Star-Ledger |
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