A Florida woman who defrauded the life savings of an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor in a “romance scam” was sentenced to more than four years in prison Thursday, federal prosecutors said.
Peaches Stergo, 36, stole more than $2.8 million in the years-long scam. She was arrested in January and pleaded guilty to wire fraud in April.
Stergo met the victim, whom authorities have never publicly identified, on a dating website and asked for money she said she needed to help obtain settlement funds, according to court documents.
He then told a series of more lies, fabricating stories that he needed money to gain access to a TD Bank account or else he would never be able to pay the victim, prosecutors said.
Stergo also sent ruthless text messages, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Southern New York said in a statement.
Stergo called the scam his “business” and told his real lover in a text that the old man said he loved her; she added “LOL” to that message, the prosecutor’s office said. She also commented that he had been “broke” financially.
Stergo was sentenced to 51 months in prison, or four years and three months, the prosecutor’s office said. She was also ordered to pay $2.8 million in restitution. She will also lose the home she bought in a gated community, as well as more than 100 luxury items, including Rolex watches and jewelry, prosecutors said.
Stergo’s attorney, Ann Fitz, said the 51-month sentence was fair. Prosecutors requested 96 months, according to court documents.
Stergo suffered from instability and childhood trauma, which led to compulsive behaviors like drinking and gambling in the past, and cheating was also a compulsion, Fitz wrote in a sentencing filing.
Fitz said in an email Thursday night: “Ms. Stergo has expressed remorse for her actions and will do everything possible to pay restitution in this case.”
The scam lasted from around May 2017 to October 2021, prosecutors said.
The victim lost her parents in the Holocaust and moved to the United States when she was 20 for a better life, she wrote in a letter to the court, which is excerpted from the government’s sentencing request.
“For the next 60 years, I worked tirelessly to establish a successful business, family, and home in New York,” the victim’s letter states. “I am now 88 years old and the last thing I expected was to end my days the same way I began them: penniless and betrayed.”
The FBI warns that romance scammers sometimes use fake profiles to gain the trust of people on dating websites, which eventually leads to asking for money. In some cases, they solicit to invest in cryptocurrency by falsely claiming to have inside information and using fake websites.
Last year there were about 19,000 victims of romance scams in the US, with almost $740 million in losses, the FBI said.
There were about 24,000 victims in 2021, with reported losses of about $1 billion, he said.
