[00:00:09] At least 400.
More than 1.3 billion dollars.
That’s how much the Federal Trade Commission says romance scam victims reported stolen just in 2022.
According to the FBI, reported annual romance scam losses are triple what they were just 5 years ago.
And that’s just what’s reported.
Romance scams rob victims of money, but often so much more is taken.
Faith, love, trust.
The trail of heartache left behind by the criminals is hard to describe.
[00:01:31] I was in the middle of a messy divorce.
[00:01:52] Bob: That’s Linda Dyas.
I was worried that, that he was worried I didn’t have like a path in life.
He did not die from kidney cancer.
He ended up living to be 86 years old.
So it was a great ending to a lot of stories.
[00:02:53] Bob: She served her country in a variety of places during her time.
And that’s where I ended up staying and finishing my college degree was in Jacksonville, Florida.
Um, I was air crew on P-3 Orions.
We tracked submarines around the time that the Wall fell, and that Russia sold off all their submarines.
[00:03:19] Bob: Wow.
[00:03:14] Linda Dyas: So it was a very interesting time.
[00:03:21] Bob: I’m sure.
Were you stateside almost the whole time?
[00:04:03] Bob: So they do meet for coffee and well, it’s a surprise.
And he was dressed to the nines, he looked really nice.
He had his aviation glasses on, we hit it off, and he had a great big smile.
Which is really interesting because education is also very important to me.
As soon as we met, you know, he was nice.
[00:05:01] Bob: So Linda leaves that first date intrigued.
Well, more than intrigued.
We were the last people in the restaurant.
Like I said, he was just very interesting to talk to.
[00:06:30] Linda Dyas: Yes.
[00:06:32] Bob: What did that mean to you?
[00:06:33] Linda Dyas: That meant a ton to me.
I grew up Christian.
I grew up in Texas.
Minnesota guys aren’t exactly the same gentlemen that I’m used to in Texas.
[00:07:07] Bob: And that must have been incredibly refreshing for you.
[00:07:11] Linda Dyas: It was.
It was endearing and refreshing and sweet.
I was kind of blown away.
[00:07:18] Bob: So blown away that their relationship takes off like a rocketship.
[00:07:24] Bob: How soon did things move to the next level?
[00:07:26] Linda Dyas: Fast, probably too fast for me typically.
Um, about 6 weeks and he was at my house all the time.
He hadn’t moved in or anything, but he was there quite a bit.
She just thought he was the greatest.
[00:08:03] Bob: And it isn’t just mom.
Both Linda’s parents take a liking to him right away.
Rich and Linda’s dad start stopping war stories pretty quickly, well all three vets did.
But yeah, we did, we did.
They talked a few stories and, and I jumped, chimed in every once in a while.
But you know my military time was a long time ago.
… And they were doozies.
One day she stumbles on some forms that revealed Rich has started a college savings account for her son.
[00:08:53] Linda Dyas: And I thought, oh, how sweet.
And I don’t know, I just thought why not?
So we started looking for places together.
[00:09:42] Bob: And this was six months in?
[00:09:45] Linda Dyas: Hmm, three, three and a half maybe.
We moved into a place, and he took care of everything.
I wasn’t involved in the sale at all, so he bought a house.
And it was a great house.
It was in Woodbury on a golf course in the, in the right school district.
It was, it was a great house.
It is a fairy tale come true.
Well, not quite perfect.
[00:10:29] Linda Dyas: There were a few things that were really weird.
And he said that he was a Navy Seal.
But those weekends seemed really odd, very hard to get a hold of him.
Um, just kind of disappeared.
And I thought that was odd.
[00:11:10] Linda Dyas: It was summertime.
Things were going well.
All of a sudden he wanted to buy a boat.
[00:11:24] Bob: But then there’s an accident.
That’s complicated for the new family.
[00:11:31] Linda Dyas: Said that he broke some bones and stuff.
But right about then Linda gets an unexpected ping from a stranger named Missi on Facebook.
A stranger who says she has important information about Rich.
She didn’t have a phone number for me.
A moment that changes her whole family’s life forever.
The message from Missi says,…
[00:12:44] Linda Dyas: “I’m not crazy.
like read everything below, um, and initiate the attachment.
I think this is the guy that you’ve been dating.”
And the attachment was pages and pages of his arrest records and photos.
[00:13:00] Bob: Wow.
Pages and pages of his arrest records?
Missi’s message says she’s also dating Rich.
And when Missi googled that name, she found all those arrest records, all those news stories.
Derek Alldred had posed as a firefighter, as a surgeon.
He’d dated a woman in California and stolen $200,000 from her.
Linda reads all this and doesn’t know what to think.
[00:13:44] Bob: What was that like?
[00:13:46] Linda Dyas: I felt like someone hit me in the face with a brick.
I, how do you, you know, you’re starting to make a life with someone.
Everything about him was made up.
I mean it was absolutely insane.
It, it filled in some of the uneasiness I had, I had felt about a few things.
[00:14:37] Bob: And there’s something else to worry about.
Missi had found Linda because when Missi looked in that wallet, she found other suspicious items inside.
Linda’s name was on a couple of credit cards that she found.
It appears Rich had stolen Linda’s identity.
Linda’s world is turned upside-down, virtually instantly.
And he was floored, ‘cause he had met him before.
And he believed him.
And yeah, it was all real.
[00:15:13] Bob: Now Linda is scared.
She and her son are living with a criminal.
What should she do?
There is no easy answer.
And I’m scared.
So the police said, “Well he’s at the hospital.”
They wanted me to call them when he called for me to come pick him up.
Well I waited and waited…
[00:16:00] Bob: Rich never calls.
I didn’t even go outside.
[00:16:37] Linda Dyas: It was so bizarre.
And it was, um, they said, “Well open it.
He’s not even a real person.”
I really look, look forward to getting to know you better."
[00:17:19] Bob: I look forward to getting to know you better?
[00:17:28] Bob: He was plotting his escape route.
[00:17:29] Linda Dyas: Yeah.
Where did the money come from to buy them?
Linda is starting to really worry about that, but she’s got something else on her mind.
[00:18:09] Linda Dyas: We met over where he was keeping the boat.
[00:18:12] Bob: What was it like meet–, meeting her?
[00:18:13] Linda Dyas: It was bizarre.
She and I both are Monster Energy drinkers, and it was funny.
Other than that, she and I don’t have a ton of stuff in common.
So you know the Monster Energy was our thing.
(chuckling) It was, it was our connector.
[00:18:43] Bob: And they have a lot to connect over; the boat for one.
And I guess she spent a lot of time on the boat.
[00:19:22] Bob: So she was the weekday girl, you were the weekend girl.
[00:19:25] Linda Dyas: Right.
[00:19:27] Bob: Hmm, wow.
[00:19:27] Linda Dyas: He had, he had it all figured out.
Meanwhile, Linda’s troubles start to mount.
They wanted to arrest me for writing, for writing bad checks.
Well the checks didn’t even have my signature on them.
So yeah, that’s something I dont keep around anymore.
[00:20:41] Bob: And then they tried to arrest you for that?
[00:16:59] Linda Dyas: Yes.
Yes, they did.
[00:20:44] Bob: Wow.
[00:20:45] Linda Dyas: And I said, really?
Can I see your evidence, ‘cause at this point I was, I was pissed.
He wrote his name on there.
[00:21:14] Bob: Hmm, wow.
[00:21:34] Linda Dyas: Right.
[00:21:36] Bob: That’s incredible.
And he had intercepted the mail and um, and it never actually went into the IRA.
So he was spending my money, my retirement fund.
[00:22:01] Bob: He emptied your 401k.
And yeah, he emptied, he emptied it all um, very, very quickly.
$225,000 just in the blink of an eye.
[00:22:28] Bob: Oh my God.
[00:22:30] Linda Dyas: Yeah.
[00:22:57] Bob: Linda’s problems aren’t only financial, however.
She has a child to worry about too.
[00:23:03] Linda Dyas: Oh, oh yeah.
I mean that word doesn’t even exist to a kid.
“What do you mean?”
“That doesn’t mean he can’t come around, does it?”
Well, yeah, he’s not a good guy.
They never really did anything further with the investigation.
I mean it was absolutely insane.
Um, and I tried to call the FBI.
I left messages on every phone number I could get a hold of for the FBI.
Nobody ever talked to me.
The sheriff actually of Washington County actually told me, “We have more important things.
It’s not like anyone got hurt.”
[00:24:19] Bob: Oh, my God.
It’s not like anyone got hurt?
They’re ready to let it go, but Linda can’t.
She’s determined to ensure that Rich pays for what he’s done to her family.
Um, he had destroyed so many lives.
And um, yeah, yeah, you know.
Um, that was my whole life.
That was everything I’ve worked for.
I couldn’t let it happen again.
[00:25:11] Bob: She couldn’t imagine sitting by and letting this happen again to someone else.
So Linda starts to furiously research the dark past of Derek Alldred.
The “what am I going to do?”
that was never harder to answer in my life.
Like where do you go from here?
[00:25:48] Bob: Where do you go from here?
Probably using other names.
So she and Missi team up.
But the pair do track down one long-time victim in San Francisco, Cindy Pardinni.
And they join forces with her too.
Cindy has been tracking Derek Alldred since they dated three years earlier.
Leads do pop up occasionally, but Derek seems to slip away just as quickly as he appears.
She’s about to take the Derek Alldred story national.
That’s the only way for people to really understand the depth of Derek Alldred crimes.
Rachel has made a career out piercing illusions.
[00:28:03] Bob: Hmm, and, and, and test their limits.
I mean it’s not just crime.
All sorts of subjects.
She has a personal reason for that.
[00:30:17] Rachel Monroe: Right, exactly.
And he would, you know, he would skip out on court cases.
[00:31:35] Rachel Monroe: It’s really confusing.
Even that’s like many, make any kind of sense of it.
She had to get the women to talk.
[00:32:00] Rachel Monroe: Well, you know, I reached to a number of the women.
I have nothing else to do."
[00:33:15] Bob: (laughs) That makes a lot of sense.
Well what was your firs impression of her when you met her?
I mean she’s just a sort of like a force of nature.
You, you kind of feel her presence in a room.
I think there had been like a, a local TV segment that, that had been pretty insulting.
He had never served in the military, and certainly never earned any medals.
And the Naval Criminal Investigative Service takes the crime of stolen valor very, very seriously.
[00:35:22] Linda Dyas: Finally, an NCIS investigator heard the story and called me.
And she drove out from Chicago, ‘cause there’s not an NCIS office in, in Minnesota.
Like this is the most incredible story.
And I said, “I just don’t want anyone else to have these.”
And she goes, “No, I, I will get these to the main office.”
Will Derek Alldred ever really face consequences for his crimes?
That’s next week on The Perfect Scam.
Call the AARP Fraud Watch web connection Helpline at 877-908-3360.
Their trained fraud specialists can provide you with free support and guidance on what to do next.
Be sure to find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
For AARP’s The Perfect Scam, I’m Bob Sullivan.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
After her divorce, Linda decides to take a chance on online dating.
Shes pleasantly surprised to make an instant connection with a man named Rich.
Hes handsome, charismatic and has an impressive resume a Navy reservist working on his PhD.
The relationship progresses quickly, with Linda and her young son moving into Richs new house.
One day Linda receives a troubling message from a woman name Missi who claims to also be dating Rich.
Linda discovers that hes been lying to them both.
