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I just want to say please be very careful on social sites. My mother was just recently scammed . She lost her husband about 2 yrs ago and i know shes lonely but this guy got her for 16,000.00 ! That was her entire savings !
Very upsetting that someone can take advantage of someone and still be able to sleep at night. I hope he chokes on it ! So this Christmas is not a good one for us. I just want to warn people that if someone asks for money and you have never met them its a HUGE red flag.
Be safe everyone and Merry Christmas to you all.I just want to say please be very careful on social sites. My mother was just recently scammed . She lost her husband about 2 yrs ago and i know shes lonely but this guy got her for 16,000.00 ! That was her entire savings !
Very upsetting that someone can take advantage of someone and still be able to sleep at night. I hope he chokes on it ! So this Christmas is not a good one for us. I just want to warn people that if someone asks for money and you have never met them its a HUGE red flag.
Be safe everyone and Merry Christmas to you all.NOOOO! Is there any recourse? Any way to report them?? Any way to stop payment? Oh I’m sure you already looked into all that. I just get frustrated when I hear about this happening to people.
I am so sorry this happened to her. I wish I had something useful to say to help.
Thank you for sharing. Hopefully she knows it isn’t her fault. These scammers are good. Very good. They prey on the good-hearted. Just shows your mom is a good one. Give her a hug from me, okay.
That’s terrible! Sorry to hear that! Did she think it was a family member or someone she knew or how was she scammed? I just don’t understand how scammers can con people for that much money! I hope he can be traced or caught or be charged so he can’t get away with that again! Did you guys report it to police to investigate?
I had mentioned this on the whine thread but be careful of depositing money in bank machines as well. My mom deposited $300 to her bank account a couple weeks ago at an atm in a bank and the next day she had 5 withdrawls from her account that all said foreign ABM withdrawls that stole all the money and left her with a negative balance! I think someone put a device on the bank machine to skim the card and steal the card number and password. I don’t know how they got away with it or how many people lost their money but at least the bank finally looked into it and refunded her money a couple days ago so it went back from a negative balance to a positive one. It is amazing how people will try and steal or scam money from people especially right before Christmas with no conscience!
Looking for rainbow or pink & teal grab bags!
Kim, It’s actually really easy for con men (and women) to prey upon people online. Take dracco’s mother, for example. Someone that’s lonely and soft-hearted make the perfect victim for these people. (A bonus if they’re older and not as internet-saavy as the younger people.) There are a lot of diverse websites available for men and women to try to find love again; conning someone for their money is usually that rather than pretending to be a relative. You meet someone online, talk to them a few weeks, eventually get to a point where it becomes “oh jeez, I have problems and need money or it’ll be awhile before I can talk to you again.” They may not even strictly ask for it, but the instinct of _someone you like needs help_ makes you WANT to send them money.
And that’s not even counting people who use such sites to hack other people’s computers (we had to watch an internet security video at work that talked about this a lot)–all it takes is you downloading (under false pretenses, such as ‘oh it’s a picture of me’) and opening a .pdf or some other file into which they’ve inserted a program of malicious code and voila! They have remote access to your computer. They can install keyloggers, which track how you hit the buttons on your computer, as well as ‘ransomware’ which encodes everything on your computer so you can’t access it (“unless you send X amount of money to so-and-so to have the encryption removed”, or get it fixed professionally). Plus they have access to everything actually on your computer, which is why keeping passwords in a .doc is really really bad.
In the past, before the internet became such a huge social networking function, these charming swindlers had to work much harder to get their schemes to work because they had to do it IN PERSON (or on the phone), but all of them are nothing if not charismatic. And in person they had to be very good at reading people.
Nowadays? They’re probably sitting naked at their desk chair crafting fake profiles on dating sites and the like, garnering sympathy from ‘other poor wounded souls’. With the increase in apathy toward our fellow folk as well as a rise in disregard for both common courtesy and a ‘noble’ mindset, a lot of these parasites are popping up because it’s easy money for them.
I also think that a lot of the folk from older generations at least have a sense of respect? Humanity? Chivalry? That is utterly lacking in more and more people. I know for a long while, my mom took people at their word on the internet, believing in the general goodness of people and refusing to accept they might be lying or worse. Fortunately my family is not really into the online social scene–plus we never had much in the way of internet tech–so she never fell prey to such things before she wised up.
My sympathies for your mom’s situation dracco. I hope that she’s not blaming herself and that she’s cut ties with him. It will be that much harder for her to resolve if she’s still emotionally attached to him. Lots of women in this particular type of situation go into denial/still believe in that person, and it’s difficult to make them enlightened. 🙁
Best of luck to you and her if you try to get the funds reversed. It’s not an easy process at all.
I am so sorry to hear about what happened to your mom. I’ve never understood how many people are willing to steal from others.
I hope even with this happening that you can still have a good Christmas together.
I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a better New Year.Looking for:
"COSMIC SHIFT DRAGONS and KI-RINS" and the "OCTOPUS TANUKI TEST PAINT #1"My heart goes out to those caught up in situations like this. It happens WAY TOO OFTEN. Unfortunately, if the money was sent of her own free will, there is no recourse. If it was something presented to her in the form of goods or services, only then is it fraud (in Canada anyway)
If this is a ‘fresh’ money transfer, can she reverse the transaction? The bank might want a police report…but this is not a matter for the Police, so I’m not sure how to proceed…Without knowing the whole story, it’s hard to say. Sorry, I’m just brain storming…
So, Dracco, is this dead in the water, so to speak? Has your mother made any attempts to recover the money? I’m disappointed the bank didn’t offer her more in terms of protection…some banks come to know your spending habits, and not unlike your credit card company, red flags go up for irregular spending (or they should). I have heard of people almost getting scammed, and their bank says “hold up…this sounds fishy, are you sure you know what you’re doing?”, which usually makes them think twice, and get better informed.
I don’t like to suggest people “throw money” at their problems, but if this person’s identity is not in question, perhaps your mother could consult with a civil lawyer? If they offer a 30 minute free consultation, as some do, she’ll at least know her options (if any) Again…I’m just thinking out loud…I’m sure all of this was thought of already.
Wanted: "Dragon Fruit" Male Dragon ~ "Fire Berry", "Paradise", "Dragon Fruit", "Tie Dye" ~ The brighter, the better!
This guy claims hes in the Army and hes madly in love with her. Convinced her it takes money to buy leave papers and to pay another soldier to take his place. I tried telling her it does NOT work that way and I found an article on the Army website calling this the “Romance scam ” . Unfortunately the bank claims it couldnt stop the transfer and then told her they no longer want her banking with them. So shes out 16 grand and a bank.
I think what bothers me right now is shes still talking with this person and claims she wont send anymore money . She really doesnt have much left.
no matter what I say she wont stop. I just hope she doesnt send him anything else. we did inform the police here but they didnt do anything at all. She even gave them a supposed full name and social number but the cops in this tiny town didnt even look it up. All they said was its probably fictitious. With all the evidence she still hasnt stopped talking to him . I dont know what else to do other than to let her learn her own lesson.
She gets angry with me anytime I say anything about it.Oh my gosh! My chest hurts reading that.
Wanted: "Dragon Fruit" Male Dragon ~ "Fire Berry", "Paradise", "Dragon Fruit", "Tie Dye" ~ The brighter, the better!
This guy claims hes in the Army and hes madly in love with her. Convinced her it takes money to buy leave papers and to pay another soldier to take his place. I tried telling her it does NOT work that way and I found an article on the Army website calling this the “Romance scam ” . Unfortunately the bank claims it couldnt stop the transfer and then told her they no longer want her banking with them. So shes out 16 grand and a bank.
I think what bothers me right now is shes still talking with this person and claims she wont send anymore money . She really doesnt have much left.
no matter what I say she wont stop. I just hope she doesnt send him anything else. we did inform the police here but they didnt do anything at all. She even gave them a supposed full name and social number but the cops in this tiny town didnt even look it up. All they said was its probably fictitious. With all the evidence she still hasnt stopped talking to him . I dont know what else to do other than to let her learn her own lesson.
She gets angry with me anytime I say anything about it.If I were you, I’d go to a news station-local or if you live in a small town, go to the next biggest city. News crews love stories like this. THE POLICE SUCK!! Don’t get me started with my experience with them. Essentially, I felt my life and safety were in danger and they told me to 1-go somewhere else and 2-treated me like I was crazy. Call the news crew. Call the news paper. Make an infografic (I will help you/do it for you!) telling your mom’s story but leaving her name out. Make the story go viral. Publicize the name of the bank and rat them out. THE SQUEAKY WHEEL GETS THE GREASE! This story makes me so angry. My mom would do something like this and yes, get mad at me if I brought it up. You have to stand up for her if she won’t stand up for herself. That scumbag needs to lay in the bed (of nails) he made!
He has her soft heart. I’m so sorry.
Do you have his supposed name? Maybe Google that and add scammer and see if he snows up and show her that? If you can see some of his letters and documents, they can be looked up too.
Will she look at links you show her? Here are just a few I’ve found.
http://www.fakewarriors.org/phonies/phonies1309.htm
http://marriedtothearmy.com/are-you-dating-an-army-soldier-or-a-fake/
http://asp.tacticalgear.com/the-nigerian-leave-request-scam/
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/consumerawareness/fl/Fake-US-Soldiers-Robbing-Women-Online.htm
http://guardianofvalor.com/con-artists-using-fake-military-documents-to-swindle-money-using-soldiers-identities/
https://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=71370
There has to be some way to convince her this is a scammer. It will break her heart though and I’m so sorry. I did this with another person, he was falling for a Russian girl who was madly in love with him. He sent me her beautiful letter to show me how true she was. I sent him a link with her letter on a scam site. He got hurt.
Unfortunately, this kind of scam is extremely common. There are some tells, such as the person being in a non-US country for work (engineer, military, etc.), often a Middle Eastern or Central/East African country. They will sometimes even make phone calls and have conversations with the victim, but something will always come up (last minute) when they’re going to meet in person. The scammer will often use a picture of a fairly attractive person, but not too attractive (at least if the scammer is male/victim is female), sometimes including “their child” in the picture. Finally, it’s not uncommon to find that the victims of these scams don’t talk about it because they’re too embarrassed that they “fell for it”. They feel stupid and ashamed. My mom fell for it and I’m pretty sure that her sister did, too.
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