A long-running Facebook scam that used Tom Selleck’s name to win a Bermuda Dunes woman’s trust came under renewed scrutiny Thursday after authorities said the woman and her husband were found dead in what investigators believe was a murder-suicide. Donald Whitaker, 80, and Karen Whitaker, 79, were discovered May 15 in their home after someone requested a welfare check, and both had traumatic injuries when deputies arrived.
The Riverside County Sheriff’s Office said Karen Whitaker had been a victim of financial elder abuse, but investigators said the unknown scammer or scammers were not involved in the deaths. Selleck is not accused of any wrongdoing or involvement. The case has now become a grim collision of fraud and family tragedy, with the alleged impersonation scam hanging over the final weeks of the Whitakers’ lives.
Joy Miedecke said she had known the Whitakers for more than a decade and watched the scheme unfold slowly after Karen Whitaker posted memories of a high school friend who had died about a year ago. Someone later messaged her and claimed to know that friend too, Miedecke said, then went further and built a false identity around the actor. “Somebody got a hold of her on Facebook and said they were Tom Selleck, and that they had dated this girl years ago,” Miedecke said.
From there, the messages turned into a pattern that Miedecke said became harder and harder to shake. Karen Whitaker shared her phone number because she thought the man on the other end had something in common with her, and the requests for money began in November, when he asked her to buy an $80 ticket to an event and told her to send the money via a gift card. “He told her how to send it, and she immediately did,” Miedecke said. After the event was said to have been canceled, the same person returned with a new pitch: she could buy a whole table for her friends for $800. “He kept writing her and gaining her trust and becoming her friend. And then he decided that he was going to have the event again and told her you can buy a whole table for all your friends, it’s $800. She immediately sent him $800. That was the beginning,” Miedecke said.
Money kept being requested after that, Miedecke said, and when Karen Whitaker finally told friends about the messages, they immediately recognized the setup for what it was. “Of course, immediately we said, ‘No, that’s not Tom Selleck. This is a scam.’ But she wouldn’t believe anybody,” Miedecke said. That stubborn belief is what made the case so painful for the people around her: once the scam had worked its way into her trust, it did not let go.
The sheriff’s office said Thursday that the deaths remain under investigation, but it said there is no evidence the impersonator or impersonators were involved in the killings. For now, the timeline points to a woman drawn into a yearlong fraud, then found dead with her husband in a case authorities say was murder-suicide. The unanswered question is not who posed as Tom Selleck. It is how a digital lie that began with a Facebook message ended in a home where two people were gone by the time deputies arrived.
