Number 7 Laurcene Isenberg In March of 2018, the authorities
recovered the body of Larry Isenberg from Lake Coeur d’Alene, in Idaho. About a month prior,
the 68-year-old was reported to have fallen from a boat, as he tried to fix its motor, and drowned.
At the time, he was on a fishing trip with his wife Laurcene, also known as Lori, who called in
the purported accident. A series of revelations followed that ultimately pointed to the woman,
who was also in her 60s, as her husband’s killer. Just days before the body was discovered,
it emerged that she’d embezzled over $570,000 from the non-profit organization where she worked.
Larry’s autopsy then revealed diphenhydramine toxicity as the cause of death and it was
suspected that he’d been poisoned with a lethal dose of Benadryl. A known subject of contention
between the couple had always been Lori’s tendency of giving too much money to her six daughters
from previous relationships. Nevertheless, there were handwritten changes to Larry’s will which had
modified it to leave 80% of his estate to Lori’s daughters and only 20% to his own children. In
2019, Lori was sentenced to 5 years in prison after pleading guilty to multiple counts of wire
fraud, while still under investigation for killing her husband. In February of the following year,
she was charged with murder, after the evidence solidified her ruthless scam.
Lori had killed Larry so that he wouldn’t find out about the embezzlement and then divorce her,
which could’ve seen her left with nothing from their joint-estate, worth over $1.5
million. She pleaded guilty to second degree murder under an Alford plea, meaning she
maintained her innocence but recognized she’d be found guilty if the case went to trial,
and was sentenced to life in prison. In court Lori admitted to lacing a drink with Benadryl,
allegedly intending to take her own life, but that Larry had drunk it while she was sleeping on
the boat. A judge would, however, tell her that the statement didn’t stand up to the evidence.
Number 6 O’Neil McGean and Brian Betts Two men, who’d at one point been in
a romantic relationship, were lured through dating scams and suffered eerily similar fates,
roughly six years apart. O’Neil McGean and Brian Betts had met in the 1990s and were
together for over a decade before splitting up with the former moving to Mexico and the latter
residing in Maryland. In 2010, Betts, a middle school principal talked to a man, later identified
as 19-year-old Alante Saunders, through a phone chat line. They’d agreed to meet at Betts’ home
and he left the door to his residence unlocked. Saunders and two teenage accomplices then burst
in and robbed the 42-year-old before fatally shooting him. The attackers were subsequently
arrested on murder and robbery charges, with Saunders sentenced to 40 years in prison. McGean,
who’d described Betts as the “love of his life” vowed to be more cautious with dating in the wake
of his demise. His wariness, unfortunately, waned in the years that followed. In October of 2016,
he met a man through a dating app and agreed to meet in a hotel in Mazatlan, the Mexican town
where he was living. McGean then disappeared along with $16,000 from his bank accounts.
Jorge Guillen Gonzalez, the man’s former lover and business partner, with whom he’d opened a café,
started receiving messages from kidnappers demanding $26,000. The message exchange,
initiated from McGean’s phone, continued for a few days but then abruptly stopped.
McGean’s body was then discovered in a yard, buried under freshly-poured concrete. At the hotel
where he’d been lured, the attackers beat him so severely that they’d punctured both his lungs,
killing him. His body was then wrapped in a hotel curtain, stuffed in a bag and transported across
town to be buried. Gonzalez, who was rumored to have been fired from the café by McGean
and banned from his home, was suspected to have orchestrated the plot. He maintained his innocence
but was arrested along with three other men. Number 5 Sara Daizli
In early October of 2021, disgraced former St. George Bank worker Sara Daizli was arrested in
her native Australia once more in a massive fraud case. Daizli had been investigated for months
leading up to her initial arrest, in December of the previous year, at a Sydney CBD venue. Footage,
which made headlines across the country, showed her being taken in the back of a police van
while wearing a skintight grey jumpsuit. The case against Daizli revealed her as the alleged
mastermind behind a fraud operation from which she’d ultimately incur roughly 127 charges.
She also reportedly had ties to the criminal underworld through her drug dealer husband,
David Sukkar, who’d been convicted to over 20 years in prison in Western Australia. He
was only 23 when he was arrested, in 2004, after arriving at the port of Albany with an estimated
220 pounds of cocaine on a South American cargo ship. Since 2016, Daizli had stolen the identities
of multiple people from drivers’ licenses and used her position at the bank to create fake accounts
through which she moved hundreds of thousands of dollars. She reportedly siphoned $350,000
from an elderly individual, basically stealing all of their life savings. In October of 2021,
Daizli was again taken into custody, along with three other suspects, after the police had seized
$400,000 cash, documents and electronic items. Three weeks before her arrest, the 30-year-old
had given birth to twins, cared for in her absence by Sukkar, who’d been paroled. In late October,
the mother-of-four posted the $1.8 million bail and stated an intention of combating the charges
against her, with a trial date potentially as far away as late 2023. The plethora of
charges on which she stands accused includes 72 counts of possession of false documents to obtain
financial advantage and 26 counts of possessing information to commit an indictable offence,
among many others. Even if Daizli is convicted on half of the counts, it would still likely
result in a custodial sentence. Number 4 Orowo Jesse Omokoh
In the late 2000s, an Australian woman began an online relationship with a 28-year-old Nigerian
man named Orowo Jesse Omokoh. In 2010, the pair met in Johannesburg and spent some time together
without incident. Jette Jacobs, then in her mid-60s, vowed to return to South Africa and be
with her lover again. Throughout their 4-year-long relationship, which mainly unfolded over the
Internet, Jacobs had sent Omokoh over $90,000. Family members warned the woman that she was
being scammed and cautioned her against a second trip to Johannesburg that she’d been planning.
Jacobs, unfortunately, couldn’t be dissuaded. On February the 9th of 2013, two days after she’d met
up with Omokoh, the 67-year-old’s lifeless body was found at her rented villa in Johannesburg.
Jacobs’ money, credit cards, jewelry and laptop were missing along with other personal items.
Omokoh, who in the meantime had returned to Nigeria, was arrested and charged with fraud. The
University of Ibadan undergraduate was discovered to have had 32 fake online identities. While it
was always suspected that Omokoh had had a hand in Jacobs’ death, he was never charged with murder
Today's topic was requested by Staxx Da Hustla, SpringJungle The 2nd
and Rena Manvelova. If you have any other topics you'd like to learn about, subscribe & let us
know in the comments section below. Number 2 Ailing Lu and Ji Hyun Lee
Two California women were arrested on September the 19th of 2019, after running a scam that saw
them earn close to $1 million in merchandise. Ailing Lu and Ji Hyun Lee, both aged 25,
were apprehended at an apartment complex in Los Angeles on suspicions of theft by false
pretenses and conspiracy. The investigation had been initiated following the events of
September the 4th when a man received a cold call from someone claiming to be an employee
of the Internal Revenue Service. They said that the man would be arrested if he didn’t pay them
with $2,200 worth of Target gift cards. In such cases, scammers would typically have their marks
read off the card’s serial number. The victim obliged but then contacted the authorities. They
worked together with Target Loss Prevention and looked over surveillance footage from multiple
locations to see who would redeem the cards, ultimately identifying Lu and Lee as suspects.
After the women were arrested, search warrants were executed at two locations linked to them,
with officers finding hundreds of thousands of dollars in electronics and other items that the
scammers had purchased with the gift cards. Number 1 Rachel Elwell
In 2021, a woman from Brownhills, England, gave a fraudster over $150,000,
convinced that she was securing his release from Eastern European loan sharks. 50-year-old Rachel
Elwell had met a man she described as “attractive and intelligent” through Facebook’s dating app,
in early 2021, and they struck up an instant connection.
The man claimed that he lived in nearby Coventry and the pair agreed to meet
in person once lockdown restrictions were lifted. However, the scammer then claimed he had to leave
for Ukraine on an engineering contract. He later convinced Elwell that he was being forcibly held
in a basement by criminals and made her believe that she was the only one who could save him.
It was an elaborate scam, involving multiple people seemingly confirming the man’s identity.
Elwell sent him about $10,000 from her own savings and then took out three massive loans. It appeared
as if the matter had been resolved and Elwell expected him to arrive at Heathrow Airport.
After she’d waited for over four hours, she was approached by Border Force officials who told her
she’d likely been scammed. Elwell then travelled to the Coventry address her prospective lover had
given her and found that no one by that name lived there. She’d subsequently hoped that her
banks would reimburse the money she’d taken out, under a code of conduct that protected victims of
fraud. The woman was further heartbroken as the banks concluded she wasn’t eligible for a refund.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather attempt a bank robbery without wearing a disguise OR have
your parents invest all their money in a pyramid scheme? Let us know in the comments section below!