Romance scams have such an impact on their victims that they can often cause them to behave completely out of character. In this week’s Scamfish story, we cover John, a 53-year-old man who broke his own moral code out of love for the illusion created by his romance scammer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Marriage is hard. John found this out first hand. John was a faithful husband for decades, but he was heartbroken when he came home from work one day and found the police at his home. He feared the worse, and perhaps that’s exactly what happened. The police were there to escort his then-wife, out of the house. Because after 20 years of marriage, she was leaving him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
John was devastated, and he was searching for ways to cope with the emotional pain. The crippling loneliness was almost too much to bear. So he turned to online dating to help heal the wounds left by the feeling of abandonment left by his wife’s absence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While on a dating app, John met a woman named Ava. She was around his age, and they seemed to share a lot in common. It also seemed that she really liked him, because as soon as they started talking, she got possessive. She told him that she wanted to move the conversation off of the dating app. John thought this was odd, and when he asked why, she told him it was because she “Didn’t want anyone else talking to her man”. John agreed to delete the dating app, and he even sent her a screenshot to prove it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ava was an international Gem dealer who specialized in trading special stones. She told John that she was traveling to Malaysia for a big business deal. But she was having issues with some unexpected transaction fees. John was confused. She claimed to have grown up in the business and have learned the trade from her father. If she really<\/em> been a special gem dealer, wouldn’t she have already known about the fees? But, at this point John was in love, so he sent her the money she needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After John sent Ava the money she asked for more and then more. And eventually, John ran out of money. He had no more money left to pay his bills, and the bank started coming after his car. Needless to say, John was in a tough spot. But Ava didn’t stop asking. She still needed the money to close the deal. So John knew what to do to get the money. He had family that he hadn’t talked to in decades. They had the money he needed. And he knew how to get it from them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n John came up with a story that he needed the money to complete a project in his business, and once he got the money back from the job, he would send it all back to them. But in reality, he was sending the money to the love of his life whom he met online, and he didn’t know whether or not she was real, or a scammer just talked to him for his money. But, he was willing to take the gamble with their money, in hopes that it would all work out. After all, she sent him a screenshot of her bank account with over $300,000. So he believed that she must have been good for the repayment of the loan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the conversation continued, John started to see more and more that Ava didn’t seem to know her business as well as she claimed. She kept running into unexpected fees. She kept needing his help to fund her business. This lead him to start to ask the question “what did she do before she met me?…” John started a thing that maybe she was an international gem scammer, a part of a ring of jewelry scammers. So he started to do his own research. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When John looked into her businesses, he found that all of the content on her website was simply copied and pasted, and the language was changed. His hunch seemed to be right, it looked like Ava was a jewel scammer. So he reached out to Social Catfish to confirm his findings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When our team looked into this case, it was worse than John thought. “Ava” wasn’t an international jewel theif. Ava was actually a personal image entrepreneur living in the united states. And, she was also “fake” as far as John was concerned. This is because her images were stolen in a romance scam, and the person John was talking to wasn’t anything like what they claimed to be. In fact, she might not have even been a woman at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now John is left in a tough position. He is left to heal from the divorce, and the romance scam, along with the damage to his identity and integrity that was done by scamming his family to please his scammer. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These stories are more common than you might think. In fact, they happen all the time. Every day even. So, to avoid this situation happening to you, it is imperative that you make sure that you have all of the information you need in order to find out whether or not you’re being scammed. Avoid langding in the same situation as John and so many others. Use the search bar below to run your first image search today!<\/p>\n\n\n\nHow The Scammed Became The Scammer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
When it All Falls A Part<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to Avoid The Downward Spiral of Romance Scams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n