It started after a teenage girl sent a panicked email about getting her period while at school.
That desperate SOS—one every woman knows well—went from England to Pennsylvania, where Kate Kleinert, a widow who lived alone outside Philadelphia with her six hospice dogs, read it. Kleinert’s heart went out to the girl, who referred to her as “Mom” and was the daughter of a single-dad friend named Tony who Kleinert had been chatting with. Kleinert ran out and picked up a gift card and texted images of the front and back. She sent $100 so the girl could pick up what she needed from the school store. That single gesture kicked off a series of events in which Kleinert was bilked out of the nest egg she saved from her career and husband’s life insurance after she took time off to care for him in the years before he died. She eventually lost her home in an electrical fire after she was unable to scrape together the money to get a handy man in to fix her air conditioner. Kleinert, then in her late 60s, tried to extinguish the flames but she eventually had to flee the house in fear for her life. Her home burned to the ground. None of her dogs made it out in time.
In Michigan, the man who exploited Beth Hyland never even asked her for money.
