To say more should be done to stop romance scammers

[nctoday1]

I was really upset to find out that my best friend, an intelligent and amazing woman had fallen victim to a prolific con artist who pretended to be someone else and took money from her.

This man has now been arrested but now I know his real identity and have looked him up online, I can see lots of articles about him and that he's been to prison already for these kind of crimes and he's had convictions for scamming dozens of vulnerable women. He was breaching restrictions to stop him having extra computers and phones, but it didn't stop him scamming my friend and other woman at the same time. He'd even been in trouble for getting hold of phones and contacting new targets from prison.

I think more needs to be done to stop this kind of thing. I was suspicious of him as he told stories about himself I thought were probably made up, but I couldn't find anything out about him because he wasn't using his real name.

It's one of those things where you think it'd never happen to you or you know you're suspicious of strangers and think you could never fall victim. But my friend was exactly the sort of person you'd think this wouldn't happen to, but the man spent a long time convincing her of his fake identity before he moved in and started taking money from her.

Is there anything you think can or should be done to prevent people like this from continuing with their vile scams? I'm angry and upset to see the effect this has had on my friend and she's just one of many victims of this con man and there are many others like him.
Does anyone know if there's anything already where identifying pictures of romance scammers and con artists can be checked?

It's the real life scams that worry me. Having met the guy, I disliked him but he was totally plausible and fooled me too.
She saw something with his real name on and googled it - there were lots of articles and his mugshot
I think he can be ordered to repay what he stole but he probably won't

I read a story about how a lady had a long relationship (maybe even marriage?) with an 'illegitimate son of a Rothschild', complete with passport. They had a son together. Turns out he was just a scammer and managed to get his hands on about half a million after she sold the house to fund some 'investments' or something. Truly awful. To her it just seemed like a normal, loving relationship!

One of my sister's friends fell for a man who lied about everything- not for money (she's cash poor) but just to keep her hooked.
He said he was SAS & MI6.

Now, my sister has another friend whose husband is in the SBS & he took this man's name to his contacts who'd never heard of him.
The special forces actually have a Walter Mitty Society who like to deal with these men that fake being in the SBS or SAS.
They take it as a grave insult.
The only reason this man wasn't'dealt with' was that my sister begged them not to touch him as he had part time custody (I kid you not) of his two lovely boys.

My sister also contacted the Police who then contacted her friend & said they wanted to warn her about this man under Claire's Law for previous abuse convictions!!

Yet my sisters friend still did not listen.
Despite knowing that he'd lied about being in the special forces & that he had abuse convictions!! He was a good looking charmer & she was hooked.

It actually took months to get her away from her boyfriend & she did leave him but was devastated.
She's an intelligent independent lady of early 40s but her fatal flaw is that she's been desperate to marry & have babies, & wouldn't consider having a baby alone.
Sadly this man has wasted a year of her time & it's almost too late for her to have children.

I agree more should be done to stop scammers. Perhaps cyber crime awareness of which this is one could be part of education, then at least you have some people hopefully more savvy. Prevention is better than cure.

Sbhy Are you thinking of this fella?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Gerhartsreiter

He claimed to be a Rockefeller amongst many other things!

Also on Facebook I've hidden my Single relationship status as I kept getting friend requests from scammers.

Always American or Canadian widowers in the armed forces or oil industry working in troubled hotspots.
In fact I felt quite insulted by the scammers as the profiles they'd chosen were a good 10 - 12 years older than me!
Plus they all had about one or two photos only & minimal friends, usually from India or Nigeria...

But I think that the ultimate 'scammer' had to be my great grandfather Reece.
He married his first wife & had 11 children in London by the 1890s, some sadly died in poverty, then he ran off up to Manchester; married my Great Grandmother Elizabeth bigamously & had 11 more children (2 more of whom died).
He was an alcoholic, a docker & bare knuckle boxer. He beat Elizabeth regularly but was eventually thrown out of the house by one of his own sons & died in his 60s in lodgings.
He NEVER told his second family about his first family!!
We've only just found out through going on Ancestry!

So my Grandad never knew he had an extra 11 half brothers & sisters....

I remember a man living a complete lie and he was friends with lots of rich people and staying with them but he only got caught out when he tripped up over tasting a bottle of wine that was cheap crap and he said it was great.

There will always be new scammers popping up, so realistically it doesn't really matter if there is a register or whatever.

People need to be responsible for themselves, its harsh, but true.

Don't be dishing out masses of money to anyone unless you're prepared to write it off totally in the end. All sorts of shit can happen when money is involved.

Not much can be done except educate people. If they don't want to listen, you can't force them to.

This all sounds horrifyingly familiar OP, not got family in the west Midlands has he, your friend's con artist?

I feel sad for her, I hope she isn’t embarrassed and ashamed. I do wonder how people fall for the internet dating ones when you’ve not met the person and suddenly they are in a car crash abroad and they need money to save their life or their mums life but when you think your in a genuine relationship and have spent time with them it would be so easy to fall for it and so hard to admit what’s happened. They are called conmen for a reason and are so skilled at portraying themselves as a genuine person and often at being the perfect man of their dreams. It takes a lot to admit admin you were conned, to go to the police and tell your friends. For every woman who has been to the police before I dread to think how many victims didn’t

The thing that people forget is that these scammers are GOOD. It's their job. They specialise in finding out what your weakness is and jemmying it open to make you vulnerable, and then - whoosh - they are in and out so fast that you hardle even feel the money leave your account.

Yes, scams are talked about. But you don't feel it's a scam because they've worked hard to make sure you don't. I reiterate, they are GOOD at what they do. They've got the advantage of having done it before, many times, most people are used to others being basically honest so they don't have the experience of having 'been here before'.

My best advice is to reverse google images. Most people have an online presence these days (if not - why not, and don't believe the conspiracy theorist guff), and google the hell out of them.

I've not been scammed myself, but I know how the psychological tricks work, and I know that I could be 'got at' with the right approach. A man tried once, but fortunately I was broke as hell so was very quickly dropped!

I just feel quite frustrated because I knew my friend wasn't going to listen to me because she was so enthralled by him, but I tried to find out as much as I could and there were lots of news articles with his name and picture, I just didn't see them because I didn't have the correct name for him. He pretends to be a barrister.

To pp - I don't know if he does have family in the West Midlands but he's originally from Milton Keynes.

I'm beyond annoyed that this has happened to my friend - it's had a horrible impact on her and I'm not surprised, as I said earlier in the thread - I really didn't like him but he's very convincing. I've met a lot of barristers through work and he did an outstanding impersonation of one.

It's not acceptable that someone who the police are supposed to be watching managed to carry out the same crime as what he'd already been convicted for several more times and even move in with a victim.

That's sad Op.?so they dated in real life very tricky. Huw did he ask for money ? It's seems a long game to get £5k I suppose he builds up.?

I worked with someone for a year who clicked on every attachment that arrived on scam emails. Her pc was constantly being cleaned by IT and we often had to get off the sever and shut down for half days because she was connected to server while malware ran through.
I used to ask her every time if she was expecting a document from [email protected]. Did she have a contact with that email? Did our company do business with customers with those types of email? She would admit 'no', but was curious in case it was important. It was as if she woke up with no memory every day. Some people will fall for scammers and can't be helped. If you had met her, you'd think she was an intelligent, worldly person. Bizarre.

Also on Facebook I've hidden my Single relationship status as I kept getting friend requests from scammers.

Always American or Canadian widowers in the armed forces or oil industry working in troubled hotspots.
In fact I felt quite insulted by the scammers as the profiles they'd chosen were a good 10 - 12 years older than me!
Plus they all had about one or two photos only & minimal friends, usually from India or Nigeria...

I had my relationship status set to married but it wasn’t until I set a photo of myself with DH as my background that I stopped getting friend requests from scammers. Always widowed, never single or divorced, either senior US military or hospital doctors.

I know someone who nearly got scammed once, and she's as cynical as it gets, works in finance / compliance. By someone who claimed to work almost, but not quite, in the industry (they met at two professional seminars, only later to realise that it was something where you could register as a member of general public online for a very small fee), and all his stories added up - where he worked (around the corner), what did he do etc. He even had very plausible "grrr, a terrible day today at work - fancy a quick coffee in 30 mins outside? Just want to see your face to make it better" moments, and then would turn up in a suit and a tie, visibly frazzled.
It went on for 6 months before he had a (very plausible) money emergency and asked for £5K, to be repaid back to her literally next week after the pay day. She called his office line then, asked to speak to name-surname and of course the person who answered wasn't him - but she was almost on her way to the bank. All his tracks disappeared immediately after she mentioned calling his office - and at that time she still had hopes it was some sort of misunderstanding.