MomTx wrote:
Hi, I am new here and was looking on the internet for information on these Scammers. Just yesterday a friend of mine was nearly scammed and scared me to see how easy it was for a complete stranger to swindle someone. She has nothing and would have lost everything had she had cashed these checks.
This friend of mine had been telling me of a man she had met on the internet that has proposed to her and has proclaimed his love for her. He sent her flowers and Chocolates on several occassions. Emailed her photos of a very attractive young man claiming to be from Florida and working as an engineer in Nigeria. Instantly I was leary of this man. She had never met him in person and he was making arrangements to come meet her and begging to marry her. First thought was illegal visa - marry my friend to become a citizen. Then yesterday she told me he sent her money as well as envelopes to send to other people in the U.S. for him. Claiming that he needed her to send these people these envelopes so that he could get paid for his jobs and come home to the U.S.
Instantly I told her not to do anything with the Cashiers check for 5500.00 and to check for fraud first. I told her of the scams and how they work. Then I had her bring the "Other" envelopes to me. The Envelopes were mailed Fed Ex along with a Cashiers check for her. She was told to mail the other envelopes out over night for him. The Envelopes were tattered and old and brown and I opened them only to find over 100K In Fraudulent checks being sent to other people probably being scammed as well. I phoned the banks and of course they were all Fraudulent. The banks had me ship them with the information from the Fed-ex form to the banks. We mailed them all off and shreddded her check. The guy is still paging her and writing her to mail the other envelopes off and he was so sorry that he did not know her Check was fraudulent. He still claims he loves her and then at the end reminds her that he knows where she lives and if she does not mail out the other envelopes that he will come to the U.S. and Harm her.
I told her that he is not coming here and that he will move on to his next target. She is hurt I am sure, she felt this guy was truly in love with her. But it was all via internet and all fraud to butter her up to trust him.
I am afraid that other women are being swindled everyday, men preying on single women that trust people. I wish there was someway that we could get the warning out to these people, Pop ups in chat rooms that would forewarn these users.
My heart goes out to all the victims that were not fortunate enough to catch it before they lost money and I will continue to try and combat the scammers by making the public aware.
You should have sent the package of checks to the Secret Service