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80-year old Jean Schoeny always imagined living her golden years with her late husband, Jim. But, he died in 2017, leaving her with only pictures to cherish.
“I have his wedding picture on my refrigerator,” Schoeny said. “I kiss him goodnight and good morning every day.”
Back in 2023, the Cincinnati-area resident was still grieving his loss when a man with the profile name of Brian Kean reached out to her over Facebook. They started talking online, then over the phone daily. It wasn’t long until they were engaged.
Kean told Schoeny his money was tied up. He asked her to pay medical expenses, buy a laptop for his employee and purchase their marriage certificate. Schoeny said she sold her late husband’s truck to help him.
“Whatever he wanted, I got him because I fell so deeply in love with him,” she said.
But, when he didn’t show up to meet her in-person, Schoeny realized that Brian Kean wasn’t real. Over the course of a year, she said she gave the man posing as him around $80,000.
Schoeny is one of many elderly Ohioans who have been scammed by people who pose as romantic partners. Last year, Ohioans lost more than $41 million dollars to romance scams, according to data from the Federal Trade Commission.
The state is taking steps to ensure other Ohioans are spared the same heartbreak. The Ohio Attorney General’s Office is launching a hotline, dedicated to helping people identify romance scammers early on.
It’s the only state-sponsored hotline of its kind, according to the national nonprofit Advocating Against Romance Scammers.
“Ohioans are losing their entire life savings, everything they work for, their retirement planning,” Ohio Attorney General Andy Wilson said. “It's all being squandered on criminals who are taking advantage of them.”
The long con
These scams can happen to anyone, said Delaware County prosecutor Melissa Schiffel, but the scammers typically prey on elderly people who may have recently lost their spouses or are living alone.
Over the last 20 years, Schiffel said scammers have gotten more sophisticated in the way they target senior citizens.
“The scam is always the same to defraud or abuse the elderly person, but it's just changed how it's done,” Schiffel said.
Back in 2008, she said their office mostly saw family members of senior citizens swiping checkbooks to write themselves a check. Now, she said it’s often strangers, sometimes outside of the country, that spend months to years messaging people online, gaining their trust and telling them they love them.
Once a relationship is established, the scammers begin asking for money.
“It's always just maybe a couple thousand dollars here, a couple hundred dollars there. But by the time you get to the end of the scam, you look back and you can see, ‘Oh my gosh, this person gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to the individual under false pretenses,’” Schiffel said.
Ohioans lose tens of millions of dollars each year from romance scams. The amount of money stolen has surged by nearly 30% in the state from 2022 to 2025, according to FTC data reports.
Oftentimes, there’s little recourse for victims. These cases are rarely prosecuted, Ohio Attorney General Wilson said.
“The defendant's overseas, the money's gone,” he said. “So, not only is nobody getting prosecuted, but you're not recovering money.”
A statewide prevention tool
Launched in July, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office Romance Scam Forensic initiative aims to offer a way for Ohioans to identify the scam before they lose their money.
If something feels a little off about a dating app or social media message, Ohioans can now call the hotline, 1-855-961-SCAM. The call center operators will ask for general profile information, then work with state investigators to check for fraud.
“We will do an intelligence workup on that and pretty quickly, we're going to be able to tell you whether or not you're dealing with a real person, a legitimate person, or whether or not the person's a fraud,” Wilson said.
Victims or their loved ones will also receive educational resources to help them prevent additional financial losses. Some cases may be referred to local law enforcement.
Wilson said it’s a tool that he wishes had been available to his loved ones.
“I have two people who are very close to me who have both been victims,” Wilson said. “One lost her house. The other lost about $150,000 … Both people that you would never think would fall prey to these types of schemes.”
The emotional toll
For Schoeny, the loss was more than just financial. She was heartbroken by losing someone she perceived to be the next love of her life.
“I just lost so much hope,” she said.
After her scammers’ disappearance, Schoeny had suicidal thoughts and had to seek out psychiatric care.
Those medical bills now sit on top of the credit card debt she’s still working to pay off – a little more than two years after her scammer disappeared.
“As far as anybody asking me for any money, no, don't ask me because I'm done and I will never do that again. And all I want is someone to love me for me.”
