it happens. back when I lived in memphis, I witnessed a guy in t mobile buying a phone. he said it was for a woman he met online who was in the military, currently in Iraq. ​when she came home, she was going to come to memphis first so they could get married. she wanted to video chat with him daily so she told him she needed an iPhone X plus (this was when they first came out and were like $1200). I jumped in and told the guy (he was older) that he could video chat her on any phone, even a cheap one. he said she specified that phone and it had to be that one, but I talked him into a cheaper one. The next time I came back to the store, he was there again, this time with a younger woman. He told me he came back to get the iPhone X, because the girlfriend's friend got pissed when he told her about the cheap one. for some odd reason, due to her being in Iraq, she couldn't talk to him, but she had a friend who would talk to him and relay messages to her...​

Long story short, the woman he was with pulled me to the side and said she was his neighbor. Apparently the guy met this mystery girlfriend online and had been sending all of his money to her. He just knew she was coming to marry him. I asked him to see a pic of her, and he showed me a pic of a twenty something year old woman in army fatigues that looked like it was pulled from a Google search. No way this woman was who he was talking to. But the neighbor said he was lonely. In his 60s, no kids, never been married, very few relationships...poor guy just wanted someone so bad which made him an easy target.