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The CEO of Match.com has said that 'things happen in life' after an Illinois widower was found dead following a romance scam.
Laura Kowal, 57, had been in a relationship with a man she met on the site called 'Frank Borg' for more than a year when she was discovered dead in the Mississippi RIver in August 2020.
Daughter Kelly Gowe, received a call from a federal agent notifying her that her mother had been a victim of a scam and when she tried to contact her mother she discovered that she was missing.
Speaking to CBS News, Gowe revealed she found records showing that Kowal had wired Borg - who was not real - $1.5 million and left her a haunting note.
Following a yearlong investigation by CBS News into online romance scams like the one Kowal was caught up in, the outlet managed to catch up with CEO Bernard Kim.
When asked about those who had lost their life savings to scammers, he told the outlet: 'Things happen in life. That's really difficult.'
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When asked about those who had lost their life savings to scammers, he told the outlet: 'Things happen in life
Laura Kowal (pictured), 57, mysteriously drowned in the Mississippi River after being scammed out of $1.5 million by a man she met online
Kim continued: 'I have a tremendous amount of empathy for things that happen, but our job is to keep people safe on our platforms; that is top foremost, most important thing to us.'
The investigation by the outlet uncovered how overseas-based criminals had managed to steal more than $1 billion last year from victims.
Senior law enforcement officials told CBS that the scams are not new, but are being accelerated by the easy access con artists have to vulnerable, lonely Americans, who use dating apps.
In the note to her daughter, Kowal wrote: I've been living a double life this past year. It has left me broke and broken.
'Yes, it involves Frank, the man I met through online dating. I tried to stop this, many times, but I knew I would end up dead.'
On August 7, 2020, Kowal's body was discovered near Canton, Missouri - nearly four hours from her home in Galena, Illinois - and her car was recovered nearly 50 miles from her body, reported WTVO.
No formal ruling has been given for Kowal's manner of death, but her autopsy determined she died by drowning.
'It's the scammers, It's the criminals behind those emails. It's Frank Borg… this character. He killed my mom,' Gowe said.
Gowe found records that showed Kowal had wired Borg $1.5 million and a haunting note from
