82-year-old grandfather commits suicide after falling in love with mysterious woman on dating site

An 82-year-old grandfather committed suicide after losing his life savings to cruel scammers posing as mysterious lovers on Facebook.

Dennis Jones fell victim to a scam known as “pig slaughter,” in which scammers “fatten up” their victims with a fake online romance before luring them into investing in fake cryptocurrency schemes.

Jones’ family said he died on March 4 “embarrassed and ashamed” after falling in love with the woman named “Jessica” – even though he never met her in person.

Heartbreaking final messages from his children reveal that the loving father and grandfather from Maryland was becoming increasingly depressed due to his financial losses.

In a correspondence with “Jessica,” he wrote: “I’m having dark thoughts about my life and that it’s over. It certainly looks like my financial life is over. Bankruptcy, litigation and all that shit. It’s going to be very painful and I’m not sure I can handle it.”

More and more Americans are falling victim to this cruel scam, which is said to be carried out primarily by Chinese gangs. At the beginning of the year, the Secret Service said it had recorded a “lot” of cases.

Devastated children Matt Jones and Adrianne Gruner said they had planned to meet their father on the anniversary of his death to help him recover after he told them about the fraud. Adrianne added he should have moved in with her family on their farm in Virginia to rebuild his life.

Matt was stunned when police officers showed up at his door an hour after the scheduled meeting and told him Jones had committed suicide. The family assumed he was going for a long run – something he loved to do.

“Our father was always a positive, happy person from the day I was born until six months ago,” he told CNN. “This was literally the only thing in his life that changed him, and it just destroyed him.”

So-called “pig butchers” are active on various social media as well as dating and messaging sites such as Facebook, Tinder, WhatsApp and LinkedIn, among others.

After entering the lives of victims like Jones and providing them with a comfortable existence, the scammers convince them to invest in fraudulent cryptocurrency schemes and even “phantom properties” that do not exist.

In messages shared by the family, Jones told “Jessica” that he would “have $9,000 in my trust wallet by Saturday.”

“I’m sending 2500 a day to Uphold and had 1525 in there. So now there’s 4000 in there, tomorrow 65000 and on Saturday 9000.”

“Jessica” replied: “Is there now a limit on transferring to the wallet?”

In another message to “Jessica,” Dennis told her how guilty he felt for “cheating his family” by giving away all his money.

“He says, ‘These are basically evil people, I didn’t know there were people this evil,'” Jones wrote in a message that Matt read.

“The greatest pain is that I have abused my family’s trust. This is unbearable,” he added.

Despite all the pain her father had to endure, Adrianne believes that “Jessica” really meant something to him.

“I am convinced that he loved the person he thought was behind that profile,” she said.

Matt added that he knew something was wrong when he learned how his father died.

“When I found out it was suicide, I was 100 percent sure it was a hoax,” he told CNN.

According to his obituary, Dennis was a passionate photographer, sailor, guitar player and volunteer.

After graduating from Georgetown University, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard before pursuing many careers, including marketing, sales, and real estate.

His family described him as “a little activist” who frequently debated politics online and “had a boundless curiosity about current events.”

He was married to his late ex-wife and mother of three of his children, Martha B. Hague.

“You know, he died full of embarrassment and shame, financially devastated and heartbroken,” Adrianne said.

Click here to resize this module

“If it helps someone else or another family to share our story, then it will have been worth it.”

In August, another loving father from New Jersey fell victim to scammers and nearly took his own life.

Real estate agent Michael Holloway, 62, was defrauded out of $500,000 by online scammers who lured him with fake connections and then persuaded him to spend all of his retirement savings.

Holloway was so distraught by the cruel betrayal that he reached “rock bottom” and was “ready to end his life” – and was eventually taken to hospital by his worried daughter.

In an exclusive interview with DailyMail.com, Holloway explained how he was targeted on social media – and that he was initially suspicious of potential scammers trying to contact him.

“When I made a successful deal, I would post it on social media and suddenly people would contact me – and they always mentioned investing in cryptocurrencies. I told them to forget it – I knew what they wanted and I was on to them,” he said.

But in early December 2022, a woman named “Hui Hui,” who said she was from China, contacted him.

“I complained to her that so many people were trying to get me to invest. At first it was more of a friendly conversation,” he said.

Holloway admitted that he was going through some problems with his marriage at the time and was in a vulnerable state. The online conversation turned romantic – with plans for the two of them to possibly meet up.

Several other female victims have also shared their stories with DailyMail.com

Law enforcement sources expect losses from online fraud to continue to rise next year as criminals continue to stay out of reach.

The industry has set up factories and secure compounds where fraudsters are reportedly held against their will and forced to extort everything they have from people.

The FBI estimates that tens of thousands of American victims were defrauded of nearly $4 billion in pork slaughter scams last year, an increase of 53% over the previous year.

According to the FBI, Americans lost a record $2.57 billion to cryptocurrency investment fraud in 2022 alone, almost three times the amount stolen in 2021.