Naperville man loses $200K — and the girl — in online scam

• Reprints

A Naperville man is out $200,000 after wiring money to an online girlfriend he didn’t realize was a fake.

The 48-year-old man called Naperville police Wednesday to ask for help rescuing the woman, who he believed had been kidnapped in London, police said.

He told police he started the online relationship 2 1/2 years ago. Since then, he had wired about $200,000 total to several different bank accounts in Nigeria, Malaysia, England and the United States, police said. An identification card the woman provided to him ended up being a sample driver’s license from Florida.

Police said when an officer told the man the “woman” he was sending money to didn’t exist, he “was in disbelief.”

Katie Foutz