Duped friends, neighbors, pastor out of more than $1 million
BROOKSVILLE, Fla. — This was the trip that would bring them the jackpot.
Doris Siegel and a friend boarded a plane to Amsterdam in August 2008 for a $1 million payout, money that would finally prove that the Nigerian lottery she'd told friends and neighbors about was no scam.
Siegel and her friend met with five men who called themselves Nigerian businessmen, authorities said. They were taken to the basement of a building and told they would need another $10,000 to see the big money.
When Siegel's friend gave them the cash, they were taken to another room and shown a stack of $100 bills. The men gave them one of those bills, with promises of more to come. The women returned home empty-handed.
In the months that followed, Siegel's luck turned from bad to worse, culminating in her arrest last week on organized fraud charges. Brooksville police have accused the 78-year-old retiree of duping friends, neighbors and even her pastor out of more than $1 million.
As investigators unravel this complicated web, they are left wondering this:
Is Siegel a victim so taken in by a ubiquitous Internet lottery scam that she stole from friends to feed her unrealized dreams of instant wealth?
Or is she a copycat scam artist who used the painful lessons she learned from the so-called Nigerian businessmen to rip off those closest to her, even inventing a fake Dutch lottery and a Guatemalan mission to siphon money from friends?
"She turned from a victim to a perpetrator when she started lying to other folks," Brooksville police Chief George Turner said. "She knew in no uncertain terms that it was a scam. And then she went to other folks and got them to put money up, with the promise of doubling their contributions."
Siegel remains at the Hernando County Jail with bail set at $50,000. But when police took her into custody last week, Turner said, Siegel pleaded with them to place her on house arrest so she could be home to answer a call she just knew was coming from one of her Nigerian business partners.
On Monday, detectives continued to interview possible victims and comb through Siegel's records and computer to get a sense of how much money she collected and where it might have gone. Police also have subpoenaed her bank records.
But Turner said it's doubtful any of the victims would recover their money.
Across the street from Siegel's tidy mobile home in the Hometown Clover Leaf Forest RV Park live Don and Eileen Gabriele, neighbors and friends for the past few years. Police have told them they may have been victims of the scam.
This was not much of a surprise to the Gabrieles. They said Siegel's stories never really added up: She said Scotland Yard was involved in the search for a payout. She repeatedly gave them the names of fictitious banks. And she was always asking for more money.
The couple estimate they have given more than $10,000 to Siegel since September 2007.
"We were really stupid," Don Gabriele said. "We don't know if she's scamming us or grasping for straws."
The Gabrieles finally confronted Siegel in December, when they noticed all the paperwork she had been showing them appeared to come from the same e-mail account. There was no letterhead, the formats of the e-mails were the same and there were a number of misspelled words.
"That's how they spell things in England," Eileen Gabriele said Siegel told them.
Other victims included friends and neighbors, a local businessman and her pastor at the Brooksville Seventh-day Adventist Church. Two of the alleged victims, including the woman who traveled to Amsterdam with her, are thought to have given Siegel at least $330,000 each.
Records show Siegel has had a Hernando County address since the mid 1980s but didn't move into the RV park until 2001. She doesn't appear to have many close family members. She shared her mobile home with a friend until the woman's death in 2001.
Siegel was president of a local travel agency, Around The Earth Travel Inc., until July. Neighbors said she told them that she lived off her Social Security check and meager savings.
"We just felt really bad for her," Don Gabriele said. "But who knows what to believe?"
In 2004, Siegel was apparently duped by the Nigerian lottery scam. She went to police, who told her that she had likely been victimized based on the correspondence she had received.
Siegel then used that information and deception, police said, to fraudulently obtain money from other people. Inside her home, police said, they found reams of paperwork detailing how to operate a lottery scam.
According to police, Siegel approached several victims from January 2008 through this month and asked for money, claiming she had won a lottery in Holland.
Siegel was captured on surveillance tape lying to several of the victims, police said, adding that she later admitted she lied to the victims to obtain their money.
Lottery scams take several forms, usually asking victims to put up their money in return for a piece of the lottery winnings.
Siegel also got contributions by claiming to have started a Guatemalan mission that does not exist, according to the police.
"There's lots of folks to this day who don't know they're victims," Turner said. "If it sounds like free money, then it's probably a scam."
Police are asking anyone who had dealings with Siegel or believes they were victimized to contact the department's Criminal Investigation Division.
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She would make a good Congresswoman.
As the saying goes "A fool and his money....". How on earth does someone spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get a big payout? I wonder if any of them thought, Hmm this seems a bit shady, we are being taken into a basement and told we have to pay $10,000 to see any of the money! Helping someone out is fine, but when your spending $330,000 to get more money, somewhere deep inside you have to realize or at least think that something is "wrong"!
What's ironic is my Fiances cousin is getting married this year, and she got scammed out of $3,000 of her wedding fund. All I could think is who uses their wedding fund money to help SOMEONE ELSE you don't even know, out-of-state set up a business=SCAM! My Fiances car broke down in January and I didn't even think of touching our wedding fund money to help get another car. We asked his parents, they gave us a decent amount we were able to pay back to get another car, and I still have our wedding fund money.
Doris Siegel had the very first winning lottery system to be posted on LP..To bad she got caught..
She is just as crooked as those in charge in the "City of Satan" - Washington DC!
Nope! I beg to Differ. Washington Scams The Whole Country! They Have Doris Beat By a Long Shot!!!
jrosina your not Doris are you?..My oh my..
When one stops and thinks about it, this situation came about due to the Federal Governments inability to stop the Scamming of American Citizens from Nigeria, which has been going on for Years!
You would think after hearing about these scams for years, American Citizens would get smarter.
My 2 Nigerian emails made it a lot easier. All they needed was my bank account numbers to deposit my 6 million dollars and my credit card numbers for the small transaction security fee and my social security number and mother's maiden name to make sure I was who I said I was.
It wasn't from a lottery win but just a deposed African King needed to get his money out of the country quickly and decided my bank account would be the best place for it and would pay me 6 million for letting him put it there.
He sounded like a real nice guy. Terrible speller though.
Getting smarter? I don't think so!
Grand theft?
What would you call this?
<Texas Lottery>
Now, that is a really good "Racket"
I would not call it a racket, but:
PreDraws
Sales end about 30 minutes before the "final" draw.
All combinations sold are sent to some computer somewhere, long before the final draw.
------------
Even before computers and lottery terminals were used, lottery draws didn't have to be honest, but to me it looks worse now.
-----------
I don't say that the lottery draws are not honest, but I don't say that they are, I say that I don't know, but that they can be either.
Many years ago, I got my own Nigerian email, can't remember, but I think that it was about the same as yours.
In the world of the con the victim prefers a beautiful lie rather than the ugly truth...only seeing what they want to see and not what is!
Doris , the scammer wound up in the slammer.
I lived in Brooksville for awhile, saying it's an area filled with crooks and fools would be an understatement.
"... they gave us a decent amount we were able to pay back to get another car." Hum, don't be a "fool" too. Your fiance's name is the ONLY name that should be signed to his parent's loan (why would it have even occurred to them to accept someone else's name who isn't even related to them, you being merely a close acuaintance?).
Why is it that so many fiances (both male and female) brainwash themself into believing that they are married when they aren't? Why isn't it known that most people who are engaged DON'T complete the final step of becomming married, instead parting? Why is it that so many couples think it's okay to spend more than $3000 of their own money on a wedding -- or worse, take out a loan? I wish folks would slow down "dual" expendatures ... during "engagements," whether intentially or unintentially, one party often become some of the biggest cons that folks in any country get sucked into, sometimes never able to recover from after parting from their unloving or unthinking fiance.
As for cons that contact we e-mail account holders -- daily, via the e-mail, I am contacted by: barristers, military personnel, widows on their deathbed who refer to unknown me as "dear," and the good 'ole FBI -- I am offered partnerships via wire transfers, etc.
HAHA too funny!
All I can say is incredible! I wonder how she KEPT getting people to give her money? Not only money, huge sums!
Who said we got a loan? I said they "gave" us a decent amount, meaning cash. But why should I have to tell anyone that? We also gave them back cash, and since I have lived with him for 3 years and together for 4, it's not a problem having my name on things. Brainwashed? I'm not stupid, I know what it means to be a "Fiance" and not a wife, and considering we have a child together and are getting married in a few weeks, I don't really think it is a problem. I take it your not married, because even going to the justice of the peace cost money, and weddings are VERY expensive, and even a cheap one is at least $3,000 and it is worth it, I don't care what anyone says.
$3,000 to git married? Whoa! My last one cost 60 bucks outside Ft Apache AZ. I hope they haven't gone up that much case I gotta do it again!
And you will...............
I'm gonna have to have a shot gun wedding to get my man to marry me.
Hmmm...HUNTER OR TRAPPER? LOL
I get Nigerian emails pretty regularly. Not just Nigerian, but other African, Asian, and other parts of the world. I just ignore them. This scam has been around according to my research as early as 1920. Back then it was known as the Spanish Prisoner scam. Basically, someone of importance was imprisoned in Spain and money was needed to get him out. Of course, anyone who helped would be rewarded once he was released, but of course rescue after rescue failed and more money was needed. The requests for money kept coming, but he never gets out.
This scam evolved over time to be what it is now. It was sent through snail mail, then when FAX machines got big, it jumped to FAXes, and now it's jumped to Email. As long as people participate in it and there's money being made, it will continue. There's even a popular Nigerian song about it called "I Go Chop Your Dollar," which can be found on YouTube.
Today there are even people called Scambaiters who fight against it, by doing things drive the scammers up the wall, like making them take embarassing photos or videos of themselves, getting them to spend money traveling to pick up nonexistant funds, making long distance phone calls, etc. Not sure if this vigilantism making a difference, but at least some are fighting back.
If you have to give some money to get money, it's definitely a scam.
that's the same thing i was thinking....they will NEVER get me.....EVER.... i get Emails like that all the time in my spam box.....
she probably hit em with the really good sob stories first ..lol
They showed promos on ABC last night that they are going to do a story on her on GOOD MORNING AMERICA this morning. The show comes on at 7:00 am and ends at 9:00 am. Don't know how long the story may be.
I'm laughing so much, my stomach hurts!