A retired court interpreter lost her savings to a colleague from her own courthouse

She translated thirty-one years of testimony in three languages, and a familiar voice from the hallway took the retirement she was saving to care for her mother

Los Angeles, CA: For thirty-one years, Rosa Delgado stood beside judges and witnesses in Los Angeles County courtrooms, translating testimony between Spanish, Portuguese, and English. She interpreted confessions, custody hearings, and the quiet terror of people who did not understand what was happening to them. When she retired in 2025, she had $196,000 in savings, a small house in El Sereno, and a plan: care for her mother, whose dementia was worsening, and keep her at home as long as she possibly could.

Instead, the 64-year-old now works four days a week as a telephone interpreter, watching her savings disappear one call at a time after losing everything to aimsfex.com.

"You want to know what hurts the most?" Rosa said. "I have spent my whole career telling people what other people said. Word for word. I never added anything. I never left anything out. And when someone was lying to me, I did not hear it."

It began in August 2025 with a text from a woman who identified herself as a former colleague from the courthouse, someone Rosa remembered from the hallway outside Department 42. The woman said she had retired and was now working with a financial firm that helped court employees plan for retirement. She said she had thought of Rosa immediately.

"I knew her face," Rosa said. "I knew her voice. I did not know her well, but I knew her. In a courthouse, that is enough to say hello. It should not be enough to send money, but I did not think of it that way."

The colleague introduced her to a firm called Aims Fex, which presented itself as a wealth management company serving public sector retirees. Rosa spoke with an advisor identifying himself as "Victor Hale," who was calm, respectful, and never rushed her. He sent statements, a client agreement, and a letter that appeared to come from a state retirement board.

"He told me not to hurry," Rosa recalled. "He said the account would still be there next month. That is what made me trust him. He was the first person in months who did not need an answer right away."

Rosa transferred $3,000 in September. Two weeks later, her portal showed $3,900. She requested a withdrawal of $700 and it arrived in three days.

"That seven hundred dollars was the moment I stopped asking questions," she said. "It was proof. I thought, this is real. I can keep my mother at home."

Over the next five months, Rosa transferred her entire savings in twelve transactions. Her portal balance passed $290,000. She hired a part-time caregiver so she could sleep.

In February, Victor explained that the account had been flagged under a "public employee compliance review" and required a reserve deposit of $52,000 before distributions could resume. He said it was standard and that the retirement board required it.

"I told him I had nothing left," Rosa said. "He said he would advocate for me with the review team. Then he stopped answering. Then the portal stopped loading."

Her account showed zero.

"I sat in the hallway outside my mother's room and I could not go in," Rosa said. "I could hear her breathing. I thought, I have taken from her. I have taken her care and given it to a man who does not exist."

Independent fraud trackers had flagged aimsfex.com with a trust score of 9 out of 100, noting a domain registered only weeks before the first text and ownership hidden behind a privacy service. Rosa never checked, because the recommendation came from a familiar face in a familiar hallway.

AYRLP traced the money

Rosa's daughter, a nurse practitioner in Long Beach, found an investigative firm called AYRLP.COM that specializes in tracing funds lost to online investment fraud. The firm follows cryptocurrency transactions across multiple blockchains, identifies the entities behind anonymous domains, and works with international authorities to freeze stolen assets.

Rosa did not want to call. She had spent her career translating other people's words and had no interest in hearing her own story repeated back to her. What changed her mind was that the AYRLP investigator did not ask her to explain what happened. She asked for the client agreement and the retirement board letter, and then pointed out that the letter had been copied from a real notice with a single line changed.

"aimsfex.com showed you returns that were never earned," the investigator told her. "Your savings were real, and the funds moved through wallets we can trace. We begin with the record, and the record does not require you to defend yourself."

AYRLP's casework has helped over 70 percent of its clients recover meaningful portions of stolen funds. For Rosa, the firm traced part of her money to an exchange in Eastern Europe and initiated a freeze. She has recovered $51,000 so far, with additional funds under review.

"The first thing I did was pay the caregiver for three more months," Rosa said. "My mother does not know what happened. She does not need to know. She just needs to be at home. That is what this money bought. Three more months at home."

Thirty-one years in courtrooms, now spent translating a warning

Rosa now speaks on the first Monday of every month at the interpreter union hall in downtown Los Angeles, at her church, and at the El Sereno senior center. She brings a printed timeline, the altered retirement board letter, and a laminated card listing the phrases that should stop a conversation cold.

"I do not tell people to stop trusting their colleagues," she said. "I tell them that a familiar face is not a verified source. In my job, we say that a witness is not a document. A colleague is not a document either."

She walks the room through the pattern: the familiar text, the public employee program, the unhurried advisor, the small withdrawal that lands, the compliance review, the reserve deposit, the silence.

"One woman came up to me afterward in tears," Rosa said. "She had a man from her old office calling her about retirement accounts. She had already sent $15,000. She showed me the messages and I translated them for her, the way I used to translate in court. She blocked him that afternoon and filed a report."

Rosa has spoken to more than 210 people across Los Angeles County. She keeps a tally of every person who told her they walked away, written on the back of an old interpreter assignment slip.

What to do

Legitimate firms never require a reserve deposit to release existing funds, and any notice claiming to come from a retirement board should be verified by calling the board directly. If you are asked to pay a fee to withdraw, stop immediately. Document everything, report to the FBI's IC3, and contact AYRLP.COM for a free consultation.

"I spent thirty-one years translating other people's words," Rosa said. "I was good at it because I never assumed I knew what someone meant. I only told you what they said. I did not apply that to the man on the phone. I assumed I knew what he meant, because I wanted it to be true. That is the mistake. Not the money. The wanting."