Years ago, I knew an elderly gal (likely passed on by now).
She got notification that she had won the London Lottery..... MILLIONS of dollars... only problem is, she had to pay the tax.
She had by happenstance, recently sold some inherited family property so had $400K sitting around that she was looking to invest (this is where I was coming into the picture).
If I recall the gist of the story, she sent them $200K for 'taxes' as the rest of her $400K hadn't settled the estate process yet.
I spent H.O.U.R.S. with her trying to prove to her that this was a scam.
She finally started to thaw and "someone ELSE" reached out to her saying that she had been scammed by these people.... but THIS entity was going to get her money back, HOWEVER, they needed some funds up front to pay for the detective work to catch the crooks.....
(yes she was falling for 100% of this)
So the guy who's doing the work.... who as I recall lived in Switzerland (how would he know she won the London lottery when he didn't know her and lived in Switzerland is beyond me of course)
GASP, he was on the verge of catching them when.....he had a heart attack, had to go in for emergency surgery..... NOW he needs some funds to pay his medical bills, before he can finalize finding the crooks.....
(to be fair and honest, this was 20 years ago so I'm not as in tune with the details as I was then)
Anyway, somewhere along this process "THEY GOT HER MONEY BACK FOR HER!!!!!"
Yay!!!
Well.....sort of.
They recovered all the cash and were going to PERSONALLY fly from (London, Switzerland??) to PERSONALLY deliver the CASH to her in a suitcase.
Don't you know that they stuffed all that cash into a suitcase, jumped on a plane after getting all that raw cash through security. Flew to the Knoxville airport and, oh, those dunderheads..... when they rented a car at the airport to drive to her house to deliver the cash, they turned RIGHT instead of LEFT on leaving the airport, ending up in the small town south of Knoxville and got LOST.
Having hounded her for a couple years about this, they suddenly either forgot how to use their cell phones or email..... "finally found their way back to the airport STILL with her cash in their hands"...... and simply flew home.
This story had gotten SO convoluted and absurd that her own daughter finally threw her hands up in disgust and gave up on her mother trying to think clearly. This was also about the time I too decided you can't save everyone and with God as my witness, I (and her daughter) gave it a valiant try.
My understanding is she lost the entire proceeds from the estate ($400K)
Totally senseless and stupid of her.