Brooklyn Woman Scammed Out Of Life Savings By Fake Pastor

BROOKLYN, NY — A Brooklyn woman lost her life savings — $28,000 in total — through a scam that involved a fake pastor and a woman who claimed to have just come into a large inheritance, according to police.

Dorothy Edge, 65, was heading back to her East Flatbush home earlier this month when she was stopped on the corner of Church and Nostrand avenues, near the Flatbush and Prospect-Lefferts Gardens neighborhood. A woman in her 50s told her she needed directions.

While Edge was helping, the woman said she was from South Africa and was in the country for her uncle's funeral; the uncle had left her with a large sum of money, the woman claimed, according to Edge and police. The woman said she wanted to donate the money to charity but couldn't do it herself and asked Edge to help. It's unclear why the woman said she couldn't donate the money on her own.

Then, a man dressed as a pastor and carrying a Bible walked by, and the woman told him the same story, police said. Edge, comforted by the presence of the alleged pastor, agreed to help make the donation.

But the woman wanted Edge and the pastor to "prove" their trustworthiness with the "sizable" donation by showing her that they had money of her own.

So Edge led them to her home in East Flatbush near New York and Snyder avenues. Edge retrieved the $28,000, which she kept in a sock.

She showed the woman and the pastor the money; the pair took the money and combined it with the alleged donation money so they could "bless" it. After the blessing, Edge was handed back a bag that allegedly had her money plus the money for the donation.

But when she got back to the lobby of her building, Edge opened the bag, and it was full of nothing more than shredded newspapers. The pair, pictured above, had driven away.

"I blame myself because I’m stupid, I’m downright stupid," Edge told the Daily News in an interview. "It was a pastor, and that was the reason I didn’t suspect him."

The trick is known as a "pigeon scam." Edge doesn't think she'll ever see the money again.

"I'm angry at myself most of all — at myself," Edge told PIX11. "Not even at them, because I was the one who handed over my money."

Image via NYPD