Scammers will go to great lengths to confuse and distress their victims in order to take their money. The end goal of a romance scammer is to get the victims money at all costs. In this week’s story, we cover a woman named Martha and her emotionally and financially devastating romance scam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martha was married for 35 years, but because of her husband’s love of partying, she decided it was time to get a divorce. After her divorce, she was single for 15 years when her daughter talked her into online dating. That’s when she met Alex, and that’s when her life changed. But not for the better…<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martha and Alex started talking and right away, Martha said that it was like talking to a best friend. They started talking all day every day. Everything seemed to be going perfectly. But this would become a problem. One day, when Martha was texting Alex, his messages suddenly stopped. When Alex finally reached back out to her, he sent her a disturbing picture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was of Alex’s leg. It had a giant gash in it. He said Martha was distracting him with her constant messaging, and he wasn’t paying attention, and because of it, he got seriously injured. He had to go to the hospital, and what’s worse, his job was forcing him to pay for the machine that broke when it cut his leg. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martha was devastated, she felt guilty about the whole situation. Alex asked her to pay for all of the damages, and she agreed. But because she is so close to her daughters, she had to hide all of the money she was sending. In total, she sent over $12,000 through giftcards. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now that she paid the fees, everything seemed to be back on track in her relationship. Alex was even going to fly to Denver to meet her, and while they were together, they were going to have their wedding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martha was excited. she went to the airport to pick him up after his flight, they would finally meet in person. But she got worried when she didn’t hear from Alex as he boarded his flight. She texted him and called him with no reply. She waited all day, and when he never showed up, she cried all the way home. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Alex finally got back in touch with her, he said that he was prevented from leaving the state until he paid for the equipment he broke when he injured his leg. Because of this, Martha sent him another $12,000. In total, Martha lost over $24,000, but Alex was finally on his way to meet her for their wedding. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So Martha went to the airport to meet Alex. She waited for 8 hours and cried the entire time because he never showed up. This time, when she went home, she got an email from a doctor with a picture of Alex. The doctor claimed that Alex got into a car accident, and he asked Martha to pay for his medical bills. This is when Matha knew that something was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She came to Social Catfish. By conducting our research, we were able to find out that the “doctor” who reached out to her was simply a stock image stolen from the internet, and “Alex” was a name made of by a scammer and assigned to images that were stolen from someone’s Instagram account. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Martha’s story is shocking, but it is not unique. The truth is, these types of things happen every day. You can make sure it doesn’t happen to you. To avoid being a victim, all you need to do is upload the photos of the person you’re talking to into the search bar below and click “enter”. Run your first search today!<\/p>\n\n\n\n