Multiple Faces Detected
January 21st, 2026
In the latest episode of Scamfish, we interviewed a woman named Cynthia. She was scrolling through the app TrueMingle when she stumbled upon a man named James. Cynthia lives in Honolulu, Hawaii, and James claims that he is living in Mexico, so they have been dating long-distance for four months. However, she has become suspicious that he could be a romance scammer after sending James thousands of dollars in gift cards. While we were doing an investigation on James, she fell for another man who claimed his name was Michael. She was also beaten up by her husband’s family member for asking for money.
This story gets crazy, so keep scrolling to read more!
The First Romance Scammer
Cynthia wasn’t having a good day so decided to go onto TrueMingle to distract herself. She was grieving the death of her husband who she was happily married to for eighteen years and passed away seven years ago.
She wanted a companion to help cure her loneliness and that she could spend the rest of her life with. She fell mostly for his eyes in the photo and thought that he was really handsome. He would tell her how much he loved her and how much he wanted a life with her, and that’s what made her fall for him more.
She started to suspect that he could be a scammer when he started caring more about her money than her well-being. Cynthia sent him thousands of dollars in gift cards since she knew he could get real money out of it. She thought that she was helping him purchase food and pay his bills.
She thought that he was asking for gift cards since it was easier to send the money over to him, but in reality, he was asking for gift cards knowing that the money couldn’t be traced back to her. This is why if anyone starts asking you for gift cards, you should block and report them immediately.
She Got Beat Up For Asking For Money
She went to her husband’s sister’s house to ask for money in order to pay her romance scammer. While she was over at her house, one of her husband’s family members never got along with her and did not like the fact that she was asking for money.
He got really drunk and pulled her down to the ground kicking her in the head repeatedly with steel-toe boots. Someone called the ambulance and she stayed in the hospital for about a week until she got better. Her injuries consisted of missing teeth, a blood clot in her head, and swaying back and forth when she walks.
When she tried telling James what had happened, he did not care that she was brutally beaten by a family member. He only cared about the money that was promised to him but couldn’t receive. That’s when she became suspicious that he might be a romance scammer. She has not reported this crime to the police yet, but our team at Social Catfish strongly advised her that she needed to.
The Second Romance Scammer
While we were investigating James, she started talking to another man named Michael. As she was getting to know him, they decided to exchange explicit photos to each other. He started asking her for money, but Cynthia declined since she didn’t have any. He told Cynthia if she didn’t send him the money, he would sell her nude photos to PornHub and send them to her family members.
She sent him $250 in order to prevent her nude photos from surfacing on the Internet. She noticed that he was different from James since he wasn’t asking for too much all at once. When she first declined to send him money, he got really angry with her and threatened her until she sent the money. He told her that if she can’t send him money, he has to make his money elsewhere by selling her photos to PornHub.
David advised her that people were not going to buy her nudes. He stated that since it is the year 2021, people can get nudes for free anywhere in this day and age. He also informed her that if the scammer sent her nudes to family members or friends, then the scammer would lose his leverage to get money from Cynthia. This would guarantee that he wouldn’t get money from Cynthia and would not put himself in that situation. He states that he sees scammers make empty threats a lot and not do anything about them. His advice is to block him and let him disappear.
What Did Social Catfish Find?
Our team at Social Catfish ran a reverse image search on the first scammer and found out the photos belong to a man named Atlas Grant. He is a gay porn star and marine veteran living in New York. The scammer stole his photos since he had a public following but wasn’t as well known. We also ran an IP tracker on the scammer she was talking to, and it traced him back to Lagos, Nigeria where the majority of scammers are located.
David also informed her that the second scammer stole photos from a man named Tom who is from the Netherlands. He’s a businessman that works for a company called Carbonite. Since he is such a good-looking guy and known by a few for a business, his photos were stolen by scammers to scam women on the Internet.
When Cynthia found out that he was a scammer, she started crying every night missing him. She has tried confronting him a few times in the past, but when she did he would always accuse her of being a liar. She is coming to the realization that all the vows and promises that they made were nothing.
She loved him so much and still does when she looks into the eyes that she fell for. It said on his profile that he “wasn’t a scammer” and it hurts her so much to think that was all a lie. She describes the pain that she’s feeling from losing him as the same pain she felt when her husband passed away.
She doesn’t want to date anyone online anymore after this experience. After going through these scams, it makes her miss her husband more and wishes that he were still here. This was her first-time online dating so she wasn’t as aware of the scams that are happening today until she met these two scammers.
Social Catfish is Here to Help You!
If you think you’re dealing with a scammer or have had your pictures stolen, Social Catfish is here to help you!
If you want to be a part of our next YouTube video or blog post and share your story, now is your chance. You can educate our audience about what you have gone through and make sure no one else goes through the same thing. All you need to do is email ShareMyStory@socialcatfish.com, and we will get back to you with more details.
You can also reverse search any information you have on the Nigerian romance scammer to see who it is you’ve really been talking to. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image you can search it up in our search bar to see if there is more information on the suspected scammer you are talking to.
