In the wake of his wife’s passing, a retired businessman from California found unexpected solace in a text message from an unfamiliar young woman. Unfortunately, what began as a moment of comfort quickly turned into a nightmare.

Larry Sorenson, a 71-year-old widower, has been mourning the loss of Rhonda, his wife of more than three decades, who succumbed to cancer last December. The couple had only just settled into their dream home in Brentwood, valued at a million dollars, when tragedy struck, leaving Larry heartbroken and alone.

In July, as Larry grappled with his grief, he received a message from a stranger named Tina. The text was intended for someone else, saying, “Hi Caitlin, I’m back from my trip to Napa Valley. Can you drop off my dog by tomorrow afternoon?” Despite the mix-up, Larry replied to clarify the mistake.

What followed was an unexpected exchange of messages. Tina expressed enthusiasm about their conversation, and Larry, perhaps longing for connection, continued to engage with her. However, this seemingly random encounter would soon derail his life in unforeseen ways.

‘Hi Caitlin, I’m back from my trip to Napa Valley. Can you drop off my dog by tomorrow afternoon?’, the text read. 

Larry responded that they had the wrong person but before long he found himself constantly going back forth with Tina, who said she was ‘excited’ by their texts. 

He confided in Tina that he was recently widowed, she told him that she invested in real estate, wineries and crypto, which intrigued him. 

After their messaging moved to encrypted service WhatsApp, the two exchanged pictures, he told ABC7: ‘To me, she is a good-looking young lady. And then she explained her whole beginning of her life. 

‘Being adopted because she was abandoned by her mother as a child in Hong Kong. And you start feeling like, a little I guess you want to comfort her a little bit. 

‘And so it just kept growing and growing to where you started really having feelings for this person, really caring feelings.’

Larry lost his late wife Rhonda, seen here at Crater Lake in Oregon, in December 2024 after a battle with cancer

He believed his misfortune had taken a turn when a person, known only as Tina, texted him out of the blue in July. The texter claiming to be Tina sent him this photo and said it was her 

They started texting every day he told the outlet, he would wake up and message her ‘Good morning sweetheart’. 

As the contact between the two ramped up, she encouraged him to start working out and the two emotionally bonded he added. 

In one text he said: ‘We have a lot to learn about each other and I am excited… how can this stuff happen?’

She replied: ‘Sometimes the right people find each other through the smallest cracks in time… you made me believe I can find true friends on the internet.’ 

After losing Rhonda, he thought he had fallen back into love. He told the outlet: ‘Losing her was tough. It was tough. I cried every day. It was real love, I lost that.’

‘So, after 35 years, here I am in a 3,000 square-foot home alone. You go to bed at night, there’s nobody there. You wake up in the morning, nobody’s there.’

The texts had spurred something on inside him, adding: ‘I got emotionally excited about it. I really did.

‘That first initial part of falling in love with someone is always so exciting. And she started showing emotions and caring about me and about what I did and who I was. It was very very uplifting.’

As their relationship ramped up, so did their future plans. The two discussed traveling the world while Tina spoke of her lavish lifestyle. 

Larry confessed to ABC7 that the constant messaging had got him ’emotionally excited’ 

After months of talking, Larry believed the two would spend the rest of their lives together 

Unbeknownst to him, there was no Tina. The whole thing was a sham to raid his savings 

He was hooked right in telling her: ‘You are so interesting, intelligent, caring, beautiful inside and out and I couldn’t help falling in love with you Tina.’

Larry confessed to the outlet that he was sure he would have a life with the woman, who suggested she could make him rich. 

‘She was telling me how she had traded $30 million in her crypto account, she showed where she had traded $3 million and got $1 million’, he said.

Unbeknownst to him, the whole thing was a scam to wipe his bank accounts.  

After three months of incessant messaging, Tina began directing him to wire money from his bank into online crypto exchanges.

At first it was small amounts, then he tapped his $1 million IRA account, cleaning out his whole retirement plan. 

His $1 million investment looked to have grown to $2.4 million, with Tina demanding he up the ante and pull whatever money he could from friends and family. 

Larry contacted the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission but nobody could help him

After losing out on his $1 million retirement plan, Larry could have to give up his house to pay taxes after he pulled his IRA

Larry added: ‘She wanted me to get money out of my house, money from my kids, anywhere I could get it. Friends, relatives, to try to get me up to $3 million.’

Banks turned him down for loans and credit lines, so he resorted to asking his daughter Megan for ‘a couple hundred thousand dollars’. 

Megan immediately twigged something wasn’t right, and quickly tried to pull the $1 million from his online account – but it was all gone. 

As well as losing his retirement, he may also have to pay the IRS some $400,000 in taxes after pulling cash from his IRA account. 

It means he will likely have to sell the dream home that him and his late wife had built together. 

He added: ‘My wife has been a part of it and I feel her here, so I didn’t want to sell it. What I’ve done has completely, completely flipped my life upside-down. 

‘I end up with no house. I’m 71, 72 years old and can’t live in California.’

In a last ditch attempt he contacted the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission but neither could help him. 

To this day, he still wakes up to Tina messaging him. In his last message he said: ‘It’s not a good morning.’