A 39-year-old Florida woman faces attempted murder charges after she allegedly drugged a 69-year-old man she met on a dating app at least three times, with the Polk County sheriff calling her a "black widow" motivated purely by money.
Samantha Adams slipped benzodiazepines into a glass of whiskey she served to her victim at his Haines City home on August 17, leaving him hospitalized with an overdose, according to the Polk County Sheriff's Office. The 69-year-old man, whose name has not been released, passed out later that evening and woke up in a hospital bed, where staff told him he had suffered a benzodiazepine overdose, a drug he told investigators he had never taken.
Adams now sits in the Polk County Jail on $42,500 bond, charged with second-degree attempted murder, tampering with evidence, offering to commit prostitution, possession of drug paraphernalia, and additional drug possession counts. Investigators say they believe she may have targeted other victims, and the probe remains open.
Adams met the victim on a dating app, where she used the alias "Nala," and entered into a transactional relationship that lasted two to three months, the sheriff's office said. Over that period, the victim paid Adams for sex and even purchased a vehicle for her.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd did not hold back about the arrangement or its trajectory.
"The longer they knew each other, the more profound she became with her requests."
On August 17, Adams and the victim argued over the vehicle at his home in Haines City, a small city roughly 40 miles south of Orlando. At some point during the visit, Adams walked into the kitchen carrying her purse and returned with two glasses of whiskey. The victim drank one.
Adams then demanded $1,000 to continue their sexual relationship. When the man refused, she left. Hours later, he collapsed.
Hospital staff determined the man had overdosed on benzodiazepines. Fox News reported that the overdose caused acute kidney injury and metabolic encephalopathy, a dangerous swelling of the brain caused by toxic substances, and left him near-fatally unconscious.
When the victim woke up, he told police he did not take benzodiazepine medication and had no such drugs in his home. Sheriff Judd, relaying the victim's account, put it plainly:
"He said: 'I don't have any medicine like that. I don't take any medicine like that.'"
The August 17 poisoning was not the first time the victim felt something was wrong after sharing a drink with Adams, investigators said. He told detectives about at least two earlier occasions when he became disproportionately impaired despite consuming very little alcohol.
During one visit to Adams's residence, the victim became so unsteady after a drink that he fell. On another occasion, he left her home feeling drowsy and backed his vehicle into an Osceola County deputy's patrol car. In each case, the victim said the level of impairment did not match what he had consumed.
Those earlier incidents, once viewed in light of the August 17 hospitalization, gave detectives the pattern they needed. The Polk County Sheriff's Office opened its investigation on August 20, three days after the overdose.
Seven days into the investigation, on August 27, detectives arranged for the victim to contact Adams and agree to meet her at a shopping center. When she arrived, officers boxed in her vehicle and took her into custody.
A search turned up a prescription bottle registered to someone other than Adams. Inside it, deputies found 19 hydrocodone/acetaminophen pills, two and a half oxycodone hydrochloride pills, nine sertraline pills, one partial Adderall pill, and one partial Xanax pill, a small pharmacy's worth of controlled substances in a single bottle bearing a stranger's name. The New York Post reported that the stash included the same class of drug, benzodiazepines, of which Xanax is one, that nearly ended the victim's life ten days earlier.
Adams was booked into the Polk County Jail. Jail records show her bond was set at $42,500. No defense attorney has been publicly identified, and no plea has been reported.
Sheriff Judd made clear that his office views the August 17 poisoning not as an isolated act but as the most dangerous escalation of a deliberate scheme.
"That's how our investigation led to her. She tried to kill him. She tried to overdose him. She tried to extort him."
Judd told reporters the motive was straightforward:
"Her motivation is money, and as we have seen with this case, she is willing to go to great lengths to get money, including murder."
Fox News reported that Judd added: "There's lots of investigations still to go." The sheriff's office said it believes Adams may have targeted other men in similar fashion. Fox News also noted that a woman using the alias "Nala" had a prior history of predatory behavior in Lake County, where she targeted an elderly man to obtain goods and money, a detail that suggests the pattern may extend well beyond Polk County.
The sheriff's office has not disclosed how many potential additional victims it is looking into, or whether any other law enforcement agencies have joined the investigation.
The case fits a grim and growing category: predatory individuals using dating apps to identify and exploit older, financially stable victims. Adams allegedly spent months cultivating a paid relationship, extracted a vehicle, demanded cash, and, when the money stopped flowing, allegedly turned to poisoning. The 30-year age gap between Adams and her victim, the alias, the transactional nature of the arrangement, and the escalating demands all paint a picture of calculated exploitation rather than a relationship gone wrong.
For the 69-year-old victim in Haines City, the consequences were nearly fatal. He survived a benzodiazepine overdose, acute kidney injury, and brain swelling, all because, investigators say, a woman he trusted enough to share a drink with had been slipping drugs into his glass for months.
Sheriff Judd's warning to anyone who might recognize Adams or her alias was blunt: "If you meet this woman online, beware."
When law enforcement has to issue public warnings about a suspect still sitting in county jail, the question is no longer whether the system caught her in time. It is how many others she reached before it did.
