Aurora Police are looking for two people connected to a scam that left a mother out of $20,000 last November.
Virginia Mendoza was out shopping for Christmas ornaments at Hobby Lobby when she was asked to help claim a lottery ticket.
The suspects told Mendoza they needed money up front and she asked her sister-in-law to borrow it.
Mendoza says the scam came right around the time she was getting out of a depression.
ORIGINAL STORY: Woman loses $20K in phony raffle scam
Christmas for Virginia hadn't been the same since her mother passed on December 23 more than 20 years ago.
“I was hurting a lot and I was always sad and depressed," she said.
Just this year, she was starting to feel happy and enthusiastic about Christmas again.
"I was always asking God please help me, please take me out of this depression, I want to be happy I want to enjoy life," said Mendoza.
The day she got scammed, she was buying Christmas ornaments for her nieces.
“I was just trying to help this lady and she took advantage of me," she said.
To pay her debt with her sister-in-law, Mendoza started selling cakes, food, raffling off her jewelry.
To this day she hasn't paid everything back but she says she's not allowing this scam to steal her happiness too.
“I felt so dumb, so stupid and miserable but on my way back home I remembered I had told my husband I’m not going to let Satan take this joy away from me," said Mendoza, "I’m going to get out of this, I know I am."
