Her Husband Died Shortly After Their Pacific Palisades Home Was Damaged By Fire. Then The Scammers Came - Beritaja

Ellen Rudolph and her husband, Steve Lewis, were still trying to repair their Pacific Palisades location and rebuild their lives aft past year’s fires when, 2 months later, the devastating news came. Lewis had Stage 4 lung cancer.

Chemotherapy and immunotherapy didn’t work, she said, and expert appointments, therapy and security issues took precedence complete location repairs. Rudolph, 71, said she struggled to support up pinch her husband’s unwellness and mounting financial responsibilities. Lewis died astatine their impermanent Playa Vista flat connected Oct. 6.

“It was for illustration a freight train,” Rudolph said. “It went truthful fast, we didn’t person clip to propulsion our enactment together.”

By January, Rudolph said, she’d received an security cheque and saved immoderate money for repairs astatine her home. But then, she said, she received a suspicious matter connection about her PayPal relationship being utilized to bargain $450 successful cryptocurrency.

She had been truthful focused connected handling emergencies, 1 calamity aft another, that she clicked connected a nexus successful the matter successful an effort to put retired different imaginable crisis. Instead, scammers took complete her machine and targeted her slope accounts, and earlier the extremity of the month, she mislaid $38,000 meant to hole her home.

“I felt that I had been managing things beautiful well, until the scam,” she said. “And past the level sewage ripped distant from nether maine completely.”

Rudolph said she contacted constabulary and her bank, but she was emotionally drained. Not knowing what other to do, she texted her friend, Cantor Chayim Frenkel from her synagogue, Kehillat Israel, successful Pacific Palisades.

“I was a mess, I felt truthful shameful,” she said.

It wasn’t conscionable the database of tragedies that she’d had to look successful a azygous year, but a consciousness that she’d someway fto down her family and her precocious hubby by falling for the scam, Rudolph said.

Frenkel had been an aged friend, introduced her to her hubby successful 1999 and officiated complete their wedding successful 2012. He was location the time earlier Lewis died, she said, praying.

“I told her, ‘Ellen, I’m not going to judge this, and I’m going to fig this out,’” he said.

The synagogue had already started a occurrence money and raised much than a cardinal dollars to thief those affected by the 2025 fires successful Southern California, Frenkel said.

Rudolph had not received immoderate thief from the money astatine that time, but Frenkel said the synagogue was capable to springiness her a $10,000 assistance to thief hole her home.

After that, Frenkel group up a GoFundMe page connected Feb. 4 to raise the remainder of what she had lost. As of Monday, the fundraising effort had already surpassed the $28,000 goal.

Many of those donating are existent aliases past members of the synagogue. Others had likewise had their lives uprooted by the fire, he said.

But the fundraising efforts person been an bonzer illustration of the organization that continues to exist, Frenkel said.

“The occurrence did not return distant our spirit, it did not return distant our hope, it did not return distant our community,” he said.

For Rudolph, the harm to her home, the nonaccomplishment of her hubby and becoming a unfortunate of a scam shook her, she said, but the guidance of the organization has fixed her hope.

“It’s unthinkable really astonishing immoderate members of the quality title are,” she said. “They are generous and thoughtful and caring and loving, and get it.”