Every day we hear about how gullible men and women get
scammed by people who claim to love them and get them to send these scammers
money all the while they are lying and stealing not only trust but their hard-earned money. These people will use
anything they can to win your trust and most importantly they find your weak
spot and prey on it until they have you where they want you and then they leap
into action by getting you to sell your belongings, empty your savings account,
and crush your dreams of believing all the lies they told you. We all want to be loved, to be told we are
beautiful, handsome, funny, caring, the most wonderful person on earth and this
person says they want to share all these things with us.
I am about to share my own experience with one of these
people. Before we start though I will
say I didn’t give him any money and went with my gut instinct (albeit a little
late) on this because things weren’t adding up but I feel that it is important
to understand how easy it is to get drawn into these situations and how to spot
the red flags.
I was a member on a dating website and got an email from
a guy who said all the right things to start “Hello Gorgeous, How are you doing hope you are well by the Grace of God
as i am here,Well am new here on the site my name is Gray and will like to know
more about you after reading your profile, if you don't mind you can drop me
mail through my private email to tell you more about me and also send you my
pictures.As am not always here on the site ( majorgraymiller a t y a h u u d o
t cm ) hope to hear from you soon thank you...bye” First sign here is the improper use of “I”
and using things like “grace of God, God bless you”. Other telltale signs are
the incorrect use of grammar and the fact that they want you to immediately
email them through their personal email.
The reason for this is that it is harder to track and
report. They may even tell you to close
your account on the website because you mean so much to them they would just die
if they “loss” you to another man. Most
will claim to have an accent and be from another country like Italy to explain
their improper grammar.
My reply was very short and I said I was interested in
hearing what he had to say. His first
email to me was very long and seemed to spell out his whole life story and
included pictures of him as a very attractive soldier. You can’t go wrong with a soldier, right? You can trust them after all they serve and
protect us. Everything seemed to add up
at first.
So things are going well and within 2 days this person
is confessing his love to me and how he wants to spend his life with me and how
the ocean can’t keep us apart that it is only a matter of time before we will
be together and spend our lives together.
He said his wife died 5 years ago and left him and his 10-year-old son here
alone. Then it comes….he has a secret
that he can’t trust anyone with. He told
me that he had been given $2.5 million because he had saved the life of one of
Iraq’s wealthy men’s wife. Right off the
bat, I was very suspicious of this. first of all why this wealthy man’s wife
would be anywhere near where there was fighting and second that no one would
think twice of letting this civilian onto the camp with a briefcase and no one
searched it or questioned why the man would want to speak to him alone.
He claimed that the man was so grateful that his wife’s
life was spared he had to pay him the only way he knew how. And he had been sitting on this money for 3
months and needed to get it out of the country because they would be coming
home soon and he needed this money to start his new life with me.
So of course he needed to know the nearest airport
where this diplomat could drop off the package and he was trusting me with this
money because he had no one else in the world he could trust. I was to “pay” this diplomat for his services
as a tip since he would be paying him on his end as well. I questioned this as well because why would
the military let this “guy” in the camp to take things back stateside to family
members when soldiers were able to ship things home all the time. He made up some lame story about how he has
worked with this person for 15 years and everyone used this guy….blah blah
blah.
Other red flags to this were that he couldn’t make any
phone calls and I couldn’t see him on the webcam because security was really tight. I am pretty sure all camps have phones and
internet connections so soldiers can call home so he's telling me he couldn’t, was, of course, a lie of very many lies. He
did “risk” going into the commander’s tent so that I could see his face so that
I would know he was real. This person looks similar to the pictures that he
sent me which I am sure are done this way for a reason.
After a few days, he asked if I had heard from the
diplomat, and when I said no he acted like he was very worried and that
something had to have happened. Of
course, within a few hours, I get an email from the diplomat saying he had
arrived in Ghana and that things were ok but that the customs agents had taken the
package and were demanding to scan it unless the diplomat paid them $5000 so
they would “look the other way”. So the
diplomat says he could only come up with $2700 but needed the other $2300 so
that he could pay the custom agents.
My first question to “Gray” was, if this person is
traveling the world to deliver packages surely he would carry enough money to
deal with these types of situations. I
just kept asking him lots of questions but at every turn, he had an answer for
why. These people are very smart and
they have been doing this for many years.
When I told him I couldn’t give him any money he tried to play on my
emotions by saying that it was all the money he had and that he wanted to start
a life with me and needed this money to do it.
When I continued to say no he begged harder and made promises that if I
could just borrow the money from someone he would pay them back with interest.
I still refused and of course, NEVER had any intentions
of giving him money to begin with. I did some research and found out that the
pictures he had sent weren’t him and that he had scammed many women so I told
him I had busted him that I knew this person wasn’t him. Then he confessed that the pictures he had
sent me were his friend and that he really loved me and asked me to forgive him
and then he started asking about the money again. He kept emailing me and I finally had to block
his email, messenger, and Skype so he can’t contact me anymore.
I felt really stupid for falling this scam and after
doing more research online I found out I wasn’t alone and that many men and
women go through this every day and many aren’t so lucky to figure out who
these people are until they have given these scammers lots of money and have
had their hearts broken. I was lucky
because I am cynical I guess though his words had me fooled in the beginning and I
fell for his lies but got out when I grew suspicious. The best thing you can do is go with your gut,
if it doesn’t sound right or is too good to be true block, delete and ignore! If you know someone this happened to DON’T
lecture them on how they moved too fast or are too trusting, etc. just be there
for them and be a shoulder if they need it.
The last thing they want to feel is even worse than they already do.
Check out these websites for more
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