A Miami woman said she lost hundreds of thousands of dollars after being "played" by a lover that she met through match.com.
Diane Standish said the man she fell in love with claimed to be a divorced German CEO, working on a California construction project.
But his phone calls, from several different numbers, always focused on a need for money, according to Standish.
It turns out Standish had been cat-fished.
"I went through my bank statements, and it was $270,000 dollars," Standish said, according to a report by Local 10 News.
The con man used photos of Flamur Gashi, a former Albanian ambassador, to create a fake profile.
"I never thought I could fall in love with somebody over the telephone but for some reason he just said the right things to me," Standish said.
A paper trail of bank records led police to an email in South Africa, but there the trail goes cold.
"He could be anyone, anywhere, I have no clue," Standish said.
The website Scamalytics keeps a blacklist of con artists who use false pictures and the website "romance scams" compiles lists of email addresses used by swindlers.