Faking it — scammers’ tricks to steal your heart and money

POF...Aston Bill...very charming...supposedly lives in Texas...was raised in Germany...in Lagos, Nigeria to build flare stacks for oilfield industry...credit card shut down by bank because he forgot to tell the bank he was going to be traveling to Nigeria...one thing after another occurs while he is there...just got a call the other day to not let him die over there....what a piece of work...I am beyond done with this...

Hi... I had trouble posting so I thought I'd start with a test-post. I met a man on OKCupid in January. I get a lot of attention, many want a one night thing and he stood out as being super nice. It's a long story worth sharing, if it save even one person, so I will edit it as I think of things. First off, I have not sent him Money and he has not gotten my bank info. I am still texting with him, partially because I have some clairvoyance and can see that he really is in trouble, partly because I Did fall for him, partly because a piece of me knows he "accidentally" fell for me, too, partly and most of all - He fits pieces of a lot of the stories here. One difference is that I did see him on Skype and it is the same man as the photos of him on Skype (50 accounts or so in Nantes, France) and on Facebook. He was the sweetest man I have ever met. The rest is what he told me so who knows: He lives in Nantes, France. He emailed me the story of his childhood. Born to a French father and Mongolian mother who were killed in an accident, he was raised by his Uncles family and abused and finally moved back to France where he was conceived and born. Jump ahead - He shows his birth year as 1967. He is very handsome. He only speaks French, I didn't care, I have had a couple of great relationships with men who did not speak English, and I do speak some French. We used Google translate. 2 weeks of yeah falling for him and the sweetest kindest words ever. He was divorced 6 yrs ago, one story was his wife cheated on him, the other was she left because he was in financial trouble, I know several people whose spouse left with BOTH those going on. It was similar to my story.. so I basically waited to see what would happen, since my last real relationship was a man in the UK, I didn't mind letting it unfold, and my Mom's parents has a long distance relationship for a long time before marrying for life. After 2 weeks he slowly showed signs he was sad with a financial crisis. He's a goldsmith and had borrowed from a friend. The funds froze the account due the the amount. 32,000 Euros. The he said the friend was in Dubai. And his English is poor, but he was asking for help getting to Africa to buy jewelry before the prices went up and didn't have plane fare. He tried to get me to do something I don't understand I think he meant he would set up an account and launder money through it here and he mentioned DHL. His words were messed up and he seemed very hurried at that point. He was told I am dirt poor right now. After 2 weeks of the romance bubble, both his and my accounts were hacked and each of us was receiving messages from a third person ( or 4th, 5th 100th...) I do know this from tech work years ago. The game continues. He never asked for sex, he did tell me to be quiet once, but the translation could have meant please, calm down, be still, or several other things. He had said all those things - you are the woman of my life, I want to come visit with my daughter, would you be willing to be Catherine's mother ( yes of course, I looked like her a bit and did not get to have children), I hate women who deceive hearts, looks don't matter, I am lookig for my soul mate - different for me, because I am judged only for my looks and get too much attention - he played down that part, said God put us together, we are together for life - and much much more. then......... he began to ask if I would never abandon him. I thought back to how he said he was going to visit and realized he word for work and travel is so close, that from the start he was asking what I do for WORK "travaille", not would I TRAVEL to see him, or can he TRAVEL to see me. He made one typo just on that word and I said no I don't travel right now, but yes I have. Jump ahead - somehow he got stuck in Africa Ivory coast - I can look up the Town, and said he was conned, the man never showed up. There is more. I am not ashamed I fell in love, I am not ashamed I believed he was the one conned ( I think he was stuck and perhaps in a gang - then woops, fell in love and his conscience started to bother him.) Again I DID SEE HIM ON SKYPE AND HIS FB AND SKYPE PHOTOS ARE HIM,Orlando Mailly, WHATEVER HIS REAL NAME IS) Ok that's a start. There are a lot of things that happened that I feel might helps someone so I might post more pertinent pieces of the 6 week story, He Texted me tonight. I was on the phone and he said "as I expected".. been getting smart mouthed like that....mad if I am not available. The truth is when I got off the phone I fell asleep, long day - woke up and went to Skype and he signed off moments after I signed on. ....I truly fell for him. I'm a intelligent woman, I have had self worth issues but just accept myself now, because men are almost always only attracted to my looks for the most part. No one wants to know me, and for the last 20 years, that's hurt my heart. I'm all about Loving the person for who they are, and I'm loyal to those I care about. But He hurt my heart - and even if my gut says nope he got conned for being naive, he Still tried to con me out of money, or get me to send it out of the USA and still is. He hurt my heart..... Beware Ladies. He's a very very sweet man in his words and if looks are your thing, he's a very handsome guy.

I was conned out of going my boyfriend 2500. He promised to pay me back but it's been 6 months and I keep getting excuses. Can I have him arrested. I live in Pennsylvania are there and laws here on that?

I think the scammers got alot smarter. Mine goes by the name Franc, Francesco Briggs, met him on ok cupid. He was the most decent guy ever. He is not a widower, doesnt really tell asob story of his whole life, calls me by my name etc etc He claimes to be from Birmingham, mother italian, father american.

He had to travel to Nigeriato sort out a property issue there and now needs to get 35k together to pay of some dispute regardi g his propert which was seized. Running low on cash and is aski g if I could help him out someway. I told him no and that I would never do that. He understood and we are currently stillspeaki g. I am sure he is a scammer, he just not as obvious and will try again to get some money I am sure. Anyone came across this guy? Supersexy and handsome. Any came across this moresubtle kind of approach? Checked all his pics and couldnt find anythi g, checked his phone and it is a billphone from the uk. I still think he is a scam though...

I was talking to some one Named Michael Bodkin. Found me on Fb. Said he was looking for a friend and saw my profile pic.and friended me. He was from Rome Italy and now lived in Italy. Mother and father and twin brother were killed in crash when he was 2 yo. Was divorced caught his ex. cheating with his best friend...has a daughter Sarah 17 yo..Very into God .. Then one night he claims he had a revelation that we became husband and wife and that's when he knew he was in love with me... Engineer on an oil rig in the high seas gulf of Mexico .. Been for 4 months good English sometimes but at others omg!!! I became suspicious when I heard his voice... I told him he was a fake his voice was not Italian. I told him I was not stupid and told him he was a fake...he said he had no reason to lie to me or anyone..... Never asked for money ever..... Then he said he received an email from the UN security in Dubai where he has his portfolio and some valuables that they had to get there things out because there was a threat on the UN security where his valuables were.. He asked me if I could help I said how he said they would be delivered still no mention of me giving him money I was to just keep the valuables safe... I in turn said why can't your Daughter do it he said she was underage.. I told him I did not want the responsibility. I told him to get an attorney he said he could not leave the oil rig.. He told me he loved me and God bless me and I haven't heard from him since...

Gregory Silverson Phillips is male scammer in FL. Says he is engineer, is from Germany, son named Julian, contacted me on Facebook, pursuing romance, then went to Malta (lie) and tried to get me to send money.

Anyone talked to someone first name Harrison??

I met a man 3 weeks ago, through Facebook. He sent me a friend request. He claims to be a civil engineer and music recorder from Poland. He says he is pretty well known, but I cant find his name anywhere online. I goggled his picture and it was ok. As of now, he scored a huge contract for building in Lithuania. I have fallen for him. He said he was in love with me really quickly. A few weeks. His name is supposedly Erick Thompson. He has offered to help me with money if I needed. My heart says one thing but my brain says another. When I started asking questions, je acted like he did not understand why I didnt trust him. He says he is coming to visit me in May of he can get done with his program in Lithuania. Im worried. Just divorced after 24 years and very vulnerable. I have a 14 year old son. He does ask about him everyday. Dont quite know what to do.

Thank you. Can he be investigated, and how would I go about having him caught doing this?

I feel i should state its not just guys doing this there are a alot of girls that do this also i made the mistake once just to see cause ya never know but ive gotten to a point where just talking within one convo lets me know how they are

This sounds so very familiar, I have been speaking with a girl from America,even if she has got a nu!ber that's from Nigeria that should have been the first flag really and should have stopped messaging her. But I continued to see if she was genuine. First she asked me to send her a tablet because it was her birthday, I said I couldn't because well I really couldn't,so that stopped and now she's decided that she's coming over to England to visit,meanwhile she will visit her dad in Ghana (kinda lucky) to get some money to visit here.. Flag number 2!! Why can't her dad just transfer money to her maybe it works differently I don't know anyway because she is now visiting Ghana she wants me to send her money to purchase a gold necklace to then sell while here in England but I've said already that I can't afford it, so now I've decided it is a scam since that was flag number 3 being very insistent on sending money to her. The name she uses is curry but her 'real name' is seyram Gaylord, now I've done a Google search and the only name that comes up is male, she's also sent several pictures and I can't find those anywhere there's 2 explanations 1 she has no online presence whatsoever (highly unlikely in the current world) or its a scam. I'm inclined to go with the latter what does everyone else think (yes I should have stopped and realised earlier but it's a mistake that I will live with) I should also mention that we met on zorpia which is a dating website but seems to be full of scammers and such...

Am about to find out 100% for sure if scammed. I am a very smart lady and embarrassed. Trying to save my house. What have I done to myself! Be very very careful!!!

Of all places, we met on FB Seal of Honor. Site. I blocked others but this person somehow seemed to have a connection with a couple others. Ugh!

HI ,I AM THINK I AM MET THE SCAMMER TOO FROM FB ,WE HAVE MESSAGE 4 DAY NOW ,DAY N NIGHT ..HE ALWAYS CALL ME MY LOVE ,DEAR ,DARLING ALL SWEET TALK TO ME .SAID WANT TO MARRIED WITH ME THIS YEARS ,WILL COME AND SEE ME SOON IN SEPTEMBER .HE SAID HE IS NAVY US ...I AM GUESS WAS SOMEBODY STOLEN THE OWNER PICTURE TO CREATED A FAKE FB ACCOUNT.HE HAVENT ASK FOR MONEY YET .BUT IM FOUND OUT AFTER 2 DAYS HIS FB ACCOUNT THE FRIEND LIST WAS HIDE ,WHEN I AM ASK HIM ,HE WAS ANGRY SAID FB FRIEND IS PRIVACY ,SAID IM NEVER TRUST HIM ,SOMETIME I AM FIND OUT I AM NOT TALK WITH A SAME PERSON ... HE EVEN SEND ME HIS PICTURE WHEN AWAKE ,IS THE SAME PERSON IN FB PICTURE.

Harrison Clem, Harrison Jr Clem, Harrison G Clem. Harrison J Clem. Facebook names. Scammer. I have reported to Facebook, reported here, FTC and reporting to other agencies. I also Harrisonclem and who he says is his son johnnyclem on Yahoo now.

Also the number Harrison Clem is using is 206-317-4839. It is a Seattle phone number which is where he stated he is from. He mentions his Bishop friend that gave him money (200,000) to get his lumber home from China. Then over time things started to happen.All sounded so real, photos sent, conversations, i even engaged a law firm who deals with people being held hostage in China until they pay up. I finally got him to give up a home address when i would not send more money. The first address didnt check out by 2 realtors in Seattle. I was told it was his warehouse so he gives me another address. That address did not check out as his and actually went up for sale the very next day! Belongs to a different person since 2006.

I read all the scam stories on this site and believe me they all are convincing. I was scammed too but caught myself before the MONEY HELP QUESTION came up. I was contacted through FB. I accepted his friend request thinking he was a friend of a friend. After 2 months of talking, IM and his stories not making much sense I confronted him with his lies. He used all the keywords, Babe, Sweetheart how was your night, I hope you slept well and he used the word Mum for Mom and slipped and wrote what tribe I'm from. Boy, that was a give-a-way! Please ladies out there DO NOT FALL FOR THESE FAKE PEOPLE who profess to love, want to have a life with you or any other promises. My scammer is Gary Michael Smith, lives in New Rochelle New York, phone number 925 which is now disconnected and does not match the area. I'm sure his FB profile is stolen from some nice guy who has no clue. Oh, and be careful of the Google phone number call that they want you to accept. I read on a previous post on this site something about it. Really don't understand how it works but after reading about it triggered my memory because something similar happened to me. A name like Gary Smith with an India accent who I could hardly understand. Wow! What a SCAMMER. Read everything you can about how these people work. I had no idea people like this existed. I used my common sense to detect the scammer than read how they all work. READ, READ, READ...educate yourself first before you talk to someone you do not know. Thanks for reading my post.

Has anyone been contacted by a guy claiming to be from Liverpool that he was adopted by a couple there and that he is a widower and has two children a girl the oldest and a boy, my friend is seeing this guy and he claims that he is working in Benin Nigeria and had recieved a cheque from his last job site but he can't cash it there so he wants to send it to her to cash his name is Shelling Osamudiamen. Says he is about 55 and went to Liverpool university

A year ago this month I was approached by Talon Catecish in an Over 50 Meet-Up group. Said he saw my profile (we didn't really have profiles in this group, just things we were interested in). Included a picture of a very handsome man in military uniform. I replied "hi" to him and he immediately asked that we get off the Meet-Up group and converse through email. I have an email address that I don't use for much and gave him that one. He immediately sent me a very long email saying he was on deployment in Afghanistan and was retiring in 4 months. I got the whole story - orphaned young, wife and daughter died in train accident. Born in Holland, but somehow ended up in the US military ? At first he was from Illinois, then changed to Tennessee. His grammar was pretty bad and he used odd phrases. He would say he couldn't wait to "read" from me instead of hear from me. He wanted to put a ring "in front of my finger" instead of on it. I asked about things like favorite movies, food, etc. The movies he said he liked were teenage chick-flicks ! Very odd for a 52 year old military man. And I didn't even know what the foods were that he said he liked. I had to look them up. I would ask what time it was where he was. I actually googled it so I would know, and he gave me totally the wrong time. When I brought it up he got flustered and said he was actually somewhere else now. He would say he had to go out on the field with his troops, yet 15 minutes later he was back and emailing me ! I told him I really needed to hear his voice so I gave him my cell phone number. One day I get a call from North Dakota and all I heard was static then disconnect. The phone kept ringing every few minutes and same thing. I was at work, so turned my phone on vibrate because it was getting distracting. Then finally I hear a voice, very bad connection that said "Hi, this is Talon". Then disconnect again. This voice definitely didn't match the picture. Definitely a deep, black voice. In between his calls he would text me how frustrated he was about the bad connection. I asked why the calls were from North Dakota. He said something about the app he was using. Being suspicious I started googling his name. Also checked LinkedIn and every site I could think about. It came up nowhere. He didn't exist. Then I just goggled his last name. Catecish is not a very common name (and it was on all the pics on his uniform). And I did get a few hits - about an Army Major returning home with his troops to Houston Texas ! There were pictures with the articles and it was the same guy I was talking to. His name was actually Nick Catecish, he was 39, not 52, married with a child. I actually found his facebook page and all the pictures that I had been sent were apparently stolen from the real person's facebook. He kept trying and sent me more pictures, one with him and a small child (the real soldier's child). He said it was his adopted child. I did ask how a career soldier, widower, could adopt a 2 year old child ? He said he had a nanny in Florida to take care of his son. He kept texting and then came the money text. could I please send some money to his child ? I said no man has ever asked me for money and I would never send money to someone I had never met. He tried to make me feel guilty saying how would his son feel that I wouldn't take care of him. Crazy. This whole thing lasted about 3 weeks. I totally stopped communicating with him. Doing research on scammers I learned that you don't want to make them mad. It's better to just disappear instead of telling them you know they are scammers. He kept trying for about a month. Even sent me a picture of "his" injured leg and said he almost died. It was just a picture of an ankle with a few stitches. He even said he would "run out" of the army for me. Like a 20 year career military man ready to retire would do something like that. So, yesterday, a year later, I get an email from a Tony Dixon, saying we met quite awhile ago at a Harley event, but his computer broke and he's been searching for me ever since. Attached were two pictures of a very handsome 50ish man. And then the sentence - I hope to "read" from you soon. This was the same email address I used with my original scammer. Ugh....again ? This one I'm definitely not even answering. Wonder if its the same one again just using a different identify ? I never sent any money, but when I think of the 3 weeks of my life wasted on that scum and what it did to me emotionally. I find it hard to trust again.

Watch out. I just found out some of who have been scammed are now getting calls from a number in NY that is tagged as scammers. It is 631-318-3183. Google the number and there are many complaints and very recent. One person said this number showed up on caller ID and when she picked up it was her neighbor. Number not even close. Something is up with this.

the guy apparently im dating online uses the Barclaya bank of Ghana where he will get an inherittance of 3M USD.. that case i instantly didnt believe that, but i didnt tell him.. He needs a wife coz hes been widowed for 3 yrs now wanted to start a new life.. he thinks im so stupid to fall in love with him in an istant .. he promised me the moon and stars.. now he needed some money to process the inherittance he doesnt have money left he said and wouldf need 1150.00 USD he asked me for sone help but i refused.. today, i blocked him so not to bother me anymore.. PLS DO NOT WIRE ANY MONEY TO THIS SCUMBAGS.. BE VERY VIGILANT AND SKEPTICAL

answer him quick, about two weeks after I checked his profile and I saw his profile, friends and pictures. I fell that he was not a bad person because everything look so real. I accepted his request and he quick responded me to thanks. We talked for about three week and two days ago he asked me for $400.00 dollars.

I want to report him, how can i do that?

Anyone heard of Tony Craig? Lives in Texas , travels to Spain and Africa on business. Has daughter named Jennifer. Supposedly a civil engineer

Just an update on my latest scammer, Tony Dixon. He doesn't give up and keeps on emailing me. Says he's a lonely man, wife was a drunk and ran off with his only daughter. Originally from Serbia (actually says from Serbian). He came to the US to start a new life. His first email he is in North Dakota, later email from Ohio. I finally emailed him and said I'm not interested, I never would have given anyone this email address, and if we did meet at a Harley event, I would have been there with my fiancée ! And you apparently don't even know where you live. His answer was that he is so lost in thought thinking of me that he typed the wrong state ! Wow - how stupid do they think we are ? I've never sent a picture, or told him a thing about me and yet he is falling in love for me. He just keeps on emailing. The latest one he just got a huge contract worth a lot of money. I'm guessing its going to be in Nigeria or Ghana where most scammers are located. I wonder when he'll get the hint that I'm not going to play the game with him ? He's gone from he would like to be friends to calling me sweetheart. I bet pretty soon he'll be calling me his wife and asking for money. If nothing else, it's entertaining.

Anyone run into a scammer using rob spraklin? He/they have dukes a vulnerable elderly widowed relative of mine out of at least $2k.. Wants to come to Canada , lives in Utah, working in Nigeria and needs money ... Again and again . Has no video, but uses messenger, says he's German but speaks with a Nigerian accent. Pls help as it is very difficult to convince this relative they are being scammed...

Oh I forgot to mention , his voice is very distinctive, says he is American but was raised in Spain but doesn't speak spanish, yet he has a strong mixed accent.

I think I have been scammed by someone posing as military personnel. Is there an agency who investigates? Please advise.