The man on the phone had a south-New Jersey accent, the gift of the gab, and a low-key alpha male edge. He introduced himself as Pat, and said he was looking for love in his late forties.
Pam Schmidt, a legally blind 46-year-old from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, met the mystery suitor through the phone dating service Quest Personals in 2014. She thought he seemed sweet, with an inquisitive charm.
During their first conversation, Pat told her he valued personality over physical appearance. No need to wear makeup, he said, inner beauty shines the brightest. He asked questions about her life, and listened intently.
“What’s a typical day like for you?” he wanted to know. “What are your hobbies? Where would you like to travel?”
When the subject turned to him, he described his beach house on the Jersey shore and his private plane, and suggested taking her on a trip someday. They talked for more than three hours, with Schmidt opening up about her weight loss battle and feelings of loneliness. She hung up feeling cautiously optimistic.
“He smooth-talked his way into my heart. He knew how to pull heart strings,” Schmidt, now 54, told me recently. “It seemed like he genuinely wanted to get to know me.”
But when Pat called her back a few days later, alarm bells went off. “He said he was jogging and $400 fell out of his pocket,” she said. When he asked her to wire him money, “It was like, ding, ding—red flag.”
Schmidt told Pat she lived on disability checks and…