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David Rosetter, Navy Commander, Swindled His Own Parents with Death Threats & Mafia Hitmen

By Pete Kotz in bizarre, fraud
Tuesday, Jul. 27 2010 @ 8:00AM
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​This may qualify as the strangest familial extortion plot in U.S. history. It began in 2005, when Navy Lieutenant Commander David Richard Rosetter, head of the Military Sealift Command Office at Pearl Harbor, told his parents a weird tale...

Richard and Joan Rosetter, farmers from Granite Falls, Minnesota, were visiting their son and his wife Fia in San Diego when David claimed that Fia's sister, Tau, had been injured while working at Walmart. Because Walmart didn't want to pay on the worker's comp claim, the company had the family under surveillance, he said.

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Fia Rosetter helped convince her in-laws that the Samoan Mafia would kill them if they didn't send money
​Nine months later, the story would get weirder. This time David phoned his sister Luann in Rapid City, South Dakota to say Walmart was trying to kill him. He'd been helping Tau with her claim against the chain, and told Luann that Walmart wanted them both dead so it wouldn't have to pay worker's comp. The company's killers might also come after David's extended family, he warned his sister. She should watch her back.

Two months later, David and Fia visited Luann in South Dakota. This time, he convinced his sister that hitmen from the "Dreaded Burrito Gang" -- we're not making this up -- had been hired to whack David's entire family at Walmart's behest.

Fortunately, he said, the Somoan Mafia would protect them, since his wife and her sister were both Samoan. But just to make sure, David called his parents in Minnesota and urged them to come to Rapid City immediately. If they didn't leave within 20 minutes, the dreaded Burrito killers would arrive to whack them.

The Rosetter family, we can assume, isn't the most worldly bunch. For all its sins, we're pretty sure Walmart isn't in the contract murder business, no matter how cheap it is. And you have to be something of a moron or believe a gang of hitmen named after inexpensive bar food is out to get Minnesota farmers.

But David was a respected Navy commander. Surely they'd prefer to believe his tale rather than believe he'd gone nuts. So they went along. When his parents arrived in South Dakota, he told them they'd escaped just in time. The Somoan Mafia had whacked the Burrito killers before they could put a hit on David's parents.

Over the next year, David had his sister and parents lived in fear of fake hitmen. He convinced his sister to sell all of her stuff, change her name, even get rid of her dog and go into hiding.

Which left them ripe to fall for a new scam David was hatching by January of 2007. He called his parents to say he was in trouble. He'd had an affair with a Samoan stripper, who gave birth to their child. He'd also run up a ton of credit card debt.

But the Samoan Mafia was embarrassed by the affair. If David didn't pay them a pile of money to erase the insult, David and his parents would be "swimming with the fishes," Tau wrote the couple in one email.
 
Over the next months, the Rosetters would wire money to David after receiving instructions from David, Fia, and fictional Samoan Mafia boss "Uncle Mo" via email. By June of 2007, they'd sent their son $187,000. But they'd also reached a threshold forcing them to smarten up. They called the cops.

The FBI discovered that all of the emails came from the same internet address, including those from Uncle Mo. But it would take the feds, who consider a snail to have a blazing 40 time, a year and a half before they finally confronted David, Fia and Tao last January.

With email and recorded phone calls piled against them, all three confessed to swindling David's parents. They admitted to ripping off the aging couple because they simply needed the money.

No trial date has been set, but when you scare the shit out of your own parents, then use their fear to rip them off, it's doubtful a judge or jury will readily dispense grace. (Special thanks to St. Paul Bureau Chief Lorie for the tip.)

See our last Armed Forces story: Marine Gets 60 Years for Arranging Fake Fantasy Rape of Ex-Girlfriend.