Editor’s Note: Lovefraud’s Resource Perspectives features articles written by members of Lovefraud’s Professional Resources Guide.
They Aren’t Who They Say They Are
By Skipp Porteous, Sherlock Investigations
Skipp Porteus profile in the Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide
People contact Sherlock Investigations every week that have been taken by someone they met online. To make matters worse, the perpetrators die off before the benefactors even realize that they’ve been had.
We’ve all heard of the Nigerian scams. (It’s amazing how many people still fall for them.) They contact you by email claiming to be the wife, husband, son, or daughter of someone who had control of a lot of money. They want you to help them retrieve the money. If you help them, they’ll give you, say, a 20 percent commission.
The other day we had a guy who fell for this. He contacted us because he wanted to know if a certain person was the head of The Bank of Africa. He was already in over his head when he emailed us. He had called a number in Africa and spoke to a “lawyer.” The lawyer assured him that he could help him negotiate the red tape to retrieve his money. His only fee would be $850, in advance.
The fool sent $850 to Africa by Western Union. A week later, the lawyer said that he needed another $5,500. That’s when he contacted us. I told him that he’d be had, and not to go to Ghana to try to find the guy and get his money back. People have been murdered trying to do this.
There are many, many scams on the Internet. Some people list themselves on dating sites or other social networking places. After weeks or months sending back and forth engaging email or instant messages, they win your heart. Then, they usually want money or sex.
One potential client sent a guy $6,000 for supposed necessary knee surgery. When our would-be client started to get suspicious, he got an email from someone saying that the guy who had knee surgery died of a blood clot. Without a doubt, it was the same guy who received the money. Time to move on, he thought.
This week alone we received pleas for help concerning three different people who “died” during the course of an Internet relationship. A guilt-trip was even placed on one woman. The writer said, “It was all your fault that he died.”
Young men often fall victim to scams because they engage in online chat with young females who are charming and beautiful. Of course, the photos they send are not usually themselves. One person was sending out photos of an Italian porn star. We tracked him down and found a fat kid living with his mother. We even got a surveillance photo of him.
But, in one case, a guy had been having an online relationship with a girl from the Philippines. He hired Sherlock Investigations to check her out. She actually turned out to be who said she was, and he went to the Philippines and proposed. Now, they’re happily married. This is true, but unfortunately, uncommon.
A lot of people are greedy and think that they can get something for nothing. It ain’t gonna happen, folks. The bottom line: Don’t give money, or yourself, to someone you don’t really know.
The Lovefraud Professional Resources Guide is a listing of professionals who can help victims escape from entanglements with sociopaths. All professionals in the guide are recommended by clients or colleagues. We’re looking for therapists, lawyers, child advocates, private investigators, forensic accountants, expert witnesses and social services organizations. If you know someone who can be an effective advocate for victims, please submit a referral.
Brilliant and timely post. Thank you.
Every morning my e-mail filter culls about a half dozen such scams from my in box. Then there are about 20 phishing schemes, 15 attempts to sell me sex or pornography products, and one or two forwards of forwards with corny jokes or political messages.
This last catagory is particularly pernicious, in that that is one of the ways my e-mail address gets “mined” and used by somebody who thinks I must want more cr@p in my in-box.
Mostly I don’t know what’s in there, until someone asks me i f I got such and such message from them… …and of course it was one of those oh so annoying forwards of multiple forwards, but they actually needed me to take action…. arrrghh! So I root around in the debris file until I find their daggone message, and tell them that next time the want to communicate, don’t disguise their vital message as spam!
Any way, there are folks in the world who actually read their spam as if it were mail, and respond to it accordingly. I know this because I had to gently smack my dear mother in laws hands and program her email filters so she couldn’t even see those heart rending missives from the 3rd world! Don’t fall for that stuff folks. It’s pure horse hockey!
P.S.
Lovingly help the more vulnerable members of your family to set up their email filters properly. Have their junk email file automatically empty on a regular basis. It can save untold heartache, not to mention cash.
TOTALLY OFF TOPIC
Hey all!
It may surprise you to know that a militant Christian like myself reads the JWR faithfully each morning.
It’s good stuff. I particularly benefit from the Rabbis’ columns. Any how, I thought this was a particularly useful commentary:
http://www.jewishworldreview.com/hillel/goldberg_mishpatim.php3
99% of our human interactions are with relatively normal folk. Doing our best by them is arguably at least as important as learning to avoid the N/P/S.
In general, I believe that healthy relationships are a great hedge against the N/P/S. A strong fabric of good relationships in a community make it harder for N/P/Ss to create havoc. Healthy relationships require constant work and diligent study.
That’s why I pay attention to this sort of material from various perspectives. The JWR rocks. It’s consistantly insightful and encouraging. It’s also free!
An aside: while some folks get taken online- in dating and money schemes- sometimes, the narcissistic get their just desserts…
I linked to one such payback-
http://holywatersalt.blogspot.com/
Thanks Holy Water Salt,
You always make interesting contributions.
Excellent article! I should have read it a year ago before I loaned money… oops GAVE money to someone.
An excellent article! It is amazing to me how many people get caught up in these scams, and some for tens of thousands of dollars.
But look at the Bernie Madoff scheme, not much more sophisticated, but just with more “window dressing.”
We’ve all been “had” by the Ps, so none of us were immune from being scammed, we were all “sold a bill of goods” by someone who said what we WANTED TO HEAR, and many times sold us something that was “too good to be true” but we fell for it because we wanted to believe it. We wanted it to be true. We trusted people because we are trustworthy.
Having grown up somewhat in the world of “horse trading” I grew up somewhat skeptical of people who wanted to “sell” me something, and so would have a certain amount of caution with people outside the family, but then MY FAMILY scammed me, because I wanted to believe them. To believe that what they were “selling” (love) me was real.
I think any of us can be “had” if the conditions are right, but I do think, too, that our experiences with the psychopaths can ARM US to be more cautious and to be wiser in our dealings with others!
IN the end, I think the experience, as painful as it was, was worth the “tuition.”
In Nigeria, that $850 is probably like 2 years of salary to them. Just a tidbit of information: If you buy anything online with a credit card, make sure the url address starts with https. Look for the “s”; it means it’s a secure site. I recently got a very official looking email from WalMart saying I was randomly selected to receive $350 for doing a 2-page survey. I was pretty skeptical. I did the survey and everything looked so official with links to the Walmart site, contact information, etc. Then a screen popped up asking me for all of my bank account information, including my pin number!!!! And it was not a secure site. I immediately called Walmart who told me it was a scam. So I turned them in to the FTC or whatever that organization is. Can I turn these people in here? Will LF investigate stuff like that?
StarG: Just search for your local FBI headquarters where you live. Save their e-mail in your directory. Anytime you get a scam via e-mail … forwarded it off to the agents at the FBI.
I do this half a dozen times/year … and just tell them, heads up folks … this is the latest scam coming across the net. Makes the scammers do some real work since they have to shut that site down and start another. Like my sister says “Oh, well”.
Works for me (LOL).
Piece of cake, piece of pie.
Of Topic, but….is it really?
Thanks for sharing that link, HolyWaterSalt….
Considering I am lacking cable/network access, and the more common appearance of my t.v. is a blank, black face reflecting the light from my nightstand lamp (except when watching dvds) in which I gleefully explore the amazing imaginations from beloved authors while reading their books…..I hadn’t heard of the uproar and outrage created by that awful, horrible humanoid known as Stephen Fowler who was cast on “Wife Swap”
I have, however, read over the numerous comments from said righteously outraged and furious Americans on the Stephen Fowler Sucks website.
Hey, we all us, the LoveFraud tribe members have most likely met 1, 2, 3, too frikkin many people just like this wanker Fowler so his abusive behavior IS extremely shocking and unwarranted by are we surprised? I think not.
We’ve been involved with some of the most vile people on the planet and I personally consider Fowler to be amateur bully, dictator and terrorizor.
The STEALTH predators are much more adept at hiding their empty hollow innards with a carefully constructed facade created to woo, seduce, conjole…THEN after a while, devalue and/or destroy, then discard. Like yesterday’s newspaper nonchalantly dumped in the trash bin without having any second thoughts, care or concern for the hurting people they leave in their wake. So sad. And sick!
But if you read all the super great and awesome comments from pissed off Americans regarding Fowler’s reprehensible words and behavior, they WILL reaffirm the solid truth that there are MANY wonderful, loving and compassionate people in the world.
If you are recovering from a devastating heartbreak and find yourself on a precarious lean towards a bleak pessimistic view of humanity in general….I would humbly suggest reading this brilliant comments on that webstie.
OH YEAH! We are the good and we are everywhere!
Take THAT, you slimey predators!…….haha