In one woman's mysterious drowning, signs of a national romance scam epidemic


by CBS News

CBS News— The scammer who drained Laura Kowal of her $1.5 million nest egg and sent the widowed healthcare executive on a path that ended with her death in the Mississippi River, hundreds of miles from her western Illinois home, called himself "Frank Borg."Frank drew Laura into a relationship after she connected to his profile on the popular dating website Match.com. Over months of giddy cellphone calls and in hundreds of florid emails, Frank manipulated her by drawing on publicly-posted details of her...

CNN—One climber dies, one survives with traumatic injuries after 1,000-foot fall off mountain in Alaska’s Denali National Park. One person is dead and another is seriously injured after a two-person climbing team fell 1,000 feet while ascending a mountain in Alaska’s Denali National Park on Thursday. The two roped climbers were climbing the “the Escalator” route on Mt. Johnson, which is a “steep and technical alpine climb on the peak’s southeast face” involving a “mix of steep rock, ice, and snow,” according to a release from the park. Another climbing party on the same route saw the fall and alerted the Alaska Regional...

CBS News—Widow's tragic story sheds light on romance scam epidemic. Laura Kowal was looking for love online and ended up being conned out of $1.5 million before her mysterious death. A year-long CBS News investigation found that experts believe law enforcement isn't keeping pace with romance scammers like the ones who victimized Kowal. Correspondent Jim Axelrod reports the first of a four-part series, "Anything for Love," a look inside the nation's romance scam epidemic. [Don't miss Part 2 of the investigative series "Anything for Love" on the "CBS Evening News...

NBC—California Woman’s Mysterious Fatal "Fall" in the Middle of the Night Turned Out To Be More Sinister. Find out what investigators discovered after Susann Sills' husband Eric told them he'd found her dead at the bottom of the stairs in their California home.