Multiple Faces Detected
June 12th, 2022
On this week’s episode of scamfish, we speak to a man named Rob who met a woman named Sarah on Facebook dating. The two started talking right away, but there were two problems. The first problem was that Rob is in a long-term relationship with the Mother of his son, and she lives with him. The second problem is that Sarah lived overseas and they were having a hard time coordinating their schedules to meet in person.
Rob was also in a difficult situation as far as his relationship was concerned. Although he loved his girlfriend he says that he was no longer physically attracted to her because she “let herself go”. He also says that she is a good girlfriend because she makes him sandwiches every day, but the one big problem with the relationship is she argues too much, and she doesn’t like to leave the house and do the things that he likes to do. All of this caused him to sign up for Facebook dating and seek a replacement for her so he could move on.
That’s how he met Sarah. He says as soon as he saw her pictures he fell in love with them. She was fit, and had red hair. She satisfied everything that Rob was looking for physically. She even seemed to be really interested in him. After they first started talking, she quickly tried to get him to tell her he loved her. She would tell him that she loved him and she would beg for him to say it back. Before long, he started to tell her beloved her too.
This is when a third issue materialized. Rob had been married for a decade almost 10 years ago. According to Rob, the relationship failed because “all his wife cared about is money”. He started to see the same pattern in Sarah. “No matter how much money I sent her”, Rob said, “she was never satisfied”.
Sarah moved to the UK, and she needed Rob to fund her lifestyle. He sent her $2,000 every other week for hotels, food, and living expenses. Rob sent Sarah a total of 200 gift cards amounting in $16,000 – $20,000. All of this while still living with his long-time girlfriend and their son. When asked about whether or not she knew about his 9-month-long online relationship Rob said “Oh no, she would leave and probably take my son with her”. But Rob also said he wanted to leave her. He told Sarah that he would call his girlfriend when they met at the hotel and break things off for good.
The suspicion intensified when Sarah told Rob that she needed $65,000 in lawyer fees in order to collect the inheritance that her dad left her. She told Rob that if he didn’t pay it she would just find another man who would. Rob was able to talk her down to him having to only pay $50,000.
Before sending this money, Rob started to have second thoughts. He started to see red flags and decided it was time to get answers. He reached out to social catfish and we were able to find the real woman that he had been talking to. In reality, she is happily married. The person that Rob was really talking to was a romance scammer stealing her images.
