A Clermont woman is in jail after allegedly impersonating a Ukrainian soldier to defraud a 71-year-old Georgia woman of more than $176,000 in a large-scale romance scam.
Shari Ann Salois, 64, was arrested this week on a Lake County warrant for a scheme to defraud, grand theft, and money laundering.
The elaborate catfishing scam began to unravel in late 2024, when the victim contacted the Hall County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia to report the fraud. Because Salois lived in Lake County, the case was transferred to the Clermont Police Department.
Salois, according to a probable cause affidavit, pretended to be an Army volunteer stationed in Ukraine online. Using images stolen from a random man’s Facebook and Instagram profiles, Salois wooed the victim on X (previously Twitter) and convinced the elderly woman they were dating.
The victim, duped by the phony relationship, paid $100,565 in PayPal transactions and another $76,490 at Bitcoin ATMs.
However, the victim soon recognized she had been deceived. She became an internet sleuth, tracking down the PayPal account to Salois’s Chestnut Street address in Clermont and reporting her discoveries to local authorities.
When a detective approached Salois for questioning, she attempted to change the script. She claimed to have been a victim of the same fraudster, stating that she was only a “money mule” who received money and sent it via “”Western Union as instructed by the scammer. She swore she hadn’t kept a cent for herself.
The detective requested proof, and Salois agreed to upload her chat records to a flash drive. Instead, she ignored the police department. For months, she ignored calls and directed the detective to a blocked voicemail.
The disappearance ended in April 2026, when a detective handling an unrelated call in the vicinity noticed Salois simply seated outside her home. When pressed about the missing material, she was “very dismissive,” according to the affidavit.
The detective then subpoenaed her bank and social media records, which immediately undermined her claim.
While Salois claimed during her interview that she was unemployed and lived on a fixed income, bank statements showed her account exploding during the exact date of the fraudulent activity. Instead of sending all of the money to a mysterious foreign fraudster, documents show Salois was living off the victim’s money, utilizing the PayPal transfers to pay utility bills, buy groceries, and shop at local petrol stations.
A warrant was issued for her arrest last week. The Utah resident was placed into Lake County Jail on a $225,000 bond.
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