Romance scammers turn victims into "money mules," creating a legal minefield for investigators

In the first months of her online relationship with a man calling himself Frank Borg, Laura Kowal was showered with love notes and spent hours on giddy phone calls. By year two, those exchanges were methodical and transactional, with Frank instructing Kowal how to set up fake companies and bank accounts to move money.

"I believe that she got so deep into this scam, and realized she was being scammed, and when she tried getting out of it, she became what is known in these scams as a 'money mule,'" Kowal's daughter, Kelly Gowe, explained. "They got her hooked into it."

Laura Kowal's experience of being drained of her savings and then manipulated into helping overseas-based scammers hide and move money — even setting up new fake profiles for them — is part of a diabolical new twist to the nation's romance scam crisis, law enforcement officials told CBS News.