How One Man Lost $740,000 to Scammers Targeting His Retirement Savings

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For nearly three months, Barry Heitin, a 76-year-old retired lawyer, thought he was part of a government investigation that felt like something out of the movies. He was actually assisting criminals in stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars — of his own money. Last fall, he spent just about every weekday doing the legwork and making withdrawals from his bank accounts as part of an intricate scam: He believed he was helping the feds safeguard his money and catch thieves who were after it. “They kept telling me, ‘This is a big case and we are going to stop a whole ring of people,’” Mr. Heitin said. “It was like a rabbit hole. I was going down the hole with them.” It cost him almost all of his retirement savings: roughly $740,000. Americans spend a lot of energy saving for retirement and worrying about losing money to the gyrations of the stock market. But these days, sophisticated criminals — on dating sites, on social media, in messaging apps or using malicious software — present an ever-growing risk to people and their savings.