I am being catfished right now!

[qualitychat]

I received a friend request on Facebook just now. This is definitely someone catfishing me. He comes from Austin, Texas but has pigeon English. He is a Marine Engineer living in Sweden. He does a very dangerous job. He is a nice looking man, he has sent me a photo. He tragically lost his wife 5 years ago due to medical negligence. Am I wrong in stringing him alone?

I'd ask for some money 🤭

I don't understand why you have your Facebook Messenger open to strangers in the first place?

They will possibly be computer generated images. There is a site called something like ‘this image does not exist’.

Am loving peoples work here.

@Mummyoflittledragon the photos didn't look like it. It looked like someone who worked in a port out and about doing his job. I expect they were lifted from a newsletter (or similar) because he was a good looking man.

Oh I see. Yes, all the more realistic I suppose. I presume it’s not a remotely racey photo. Hopefully the person is blissfully unaware of their image being used and there will be an expiry date to the picture as it will look grainy or old fashioned in time.

Snap, I was about to ask if they had a young child at boarding school. Someone at work got catfished by a bloke like that. Even when he didn't show up in Australia on the flight he was supposed to be on, she still believed he was real.

I've never received anything this exciting. I do occasionally get very dull messages asking if I'll be at yoga tomorrow and similar. 😴

Why you so mad? @shreknjumps

Nothing wrong with people replying and taking the piss. The more time spent with people like the OP is less time spent with real victims who are quick to part with their cash. Why would you have a problem with that?

[grin]

So what? No difference if she keeps him going or if he goes after another person who might be naive enough to fall for it.

Or do you think we should all send them money because it's a gang? FFS

GMAFB

I've had a few try to friend me on FB. They are always US citizens, military contractors, and based in the Middle East. The pictures are always either on a boat or in a uniform at some base.

I once spend over an hour describing my elbow bunion to one on the Fitbit community
He was declaring undying love ... I was declaring a need for cabbage poultice

Hopefully, they were able to transfer a cadaver head to poor Auntie Mary, and she is back to playing bingo and bridge. 😉

What ? ..... you mean ... my Keanu ? 😩🙃

I had a few, on Pinterest of all places.

I was playing along with one, also from Austin (seems a good place by the amount of times it gets chosen). Engineer, in oil industry, widowed, one child blah blah, the usual.

But all my replies were song lyrics. He clearly didn't know any of the songs, and ended up blocking me 🤣

I was very bored that day. Gave myself plenty earworms though .

Amazing that anyone would care about the scammers instead of their targets. 🙄

At the end of last year, we had to convince my friend's mother that the guy she was supposedly meant to be collecting from the airport for Christmas, wasn't actually coming. She would not have it, he did have her 100 believing he was real.

So we searched the guy in the pic so that we had as much proof as possible. The guy whose pic had been stolen now has all the stolen photos clear on his own profile. On it he says that the pics have been stolen and he is leaving it up to make woman being catfished to be aware of it. The problem is that they stole photos of him with his children as well, so even his children's photos were out there.

Thankfully this worked to let friends mum realise, but she's gone into quite a deep depression since.

I am ok with playing along with them, as I know they are not real. I bet loads of women do in fact. But sadly they are still able to extract funds from the most vulnerable.

I had a primary school friend of mine fall for this, the man was German or Swedish. To this day I’m still not 100% sure if he was scamming her or how he did it as he was very clever. But what man in their 20s/mid 30s at guess wants to date a mid 40s
mother and grandmother from Croydon?!

This friend had I think some learning difficulties but it was only when she was posing in semi pornographic poses on Instagram and messaging me loads there too that I got annoyed with her and said I don’t want to see your boobs on my feed! I ended up blocking and deleting her. Saw her by chance a few months later in a shopping centre with no engagement ring like he’d promised her and she looked down so I felt sorry for her, we exchanged a few words but I didn’t want to get into a long chat. If you’re single or divorced on Facebook or Instagram it’s so easy for these men to target you. I’ve been “conned” once but luckily realised after a week and then warned all my friends about it.

No one is saying pay the scammers? You don’t have to feel anything for them. Just block and move on.

He'll probably say he doesn't like ABBA.

Aunty - singular
Aunties - plural
Aunty's - (pertaining to/belonging to aunty e.g. 'my aunty's head fell off [thank you for that gem, will use infuture])
Apologies, this isn't entirely relevant to topic, but for some reason, Auntie has become the norm instead of Aunty, and it's just...grrr!

I actually knew one of these scammers in real life.
Bloke came from a family well known for their distillery business back home. Family money. Mum was always turned out beautifully. Gucci this, gucci that, brand new Mercedes bought directly from Germany in cash.
The family business was where money was coming from but the boys were all so hard working.

Turned out the business was actually love scams. They were found to be working in a group of 10 and they'd scammed so many women, and had so much money I could've believe.

His wife was not best pleased either.

PS If really pedantic, it would be Aunt, no 'y' !

He's from texts with pigeon English? Yes he's a scammer and you want to keep him occupied?

Whatever takes your fancy, but take care as
your fb may get hacked.

I'd dump and block, I dont need drama in my life.

And yes @qualitychat it's hard to know how people get scammed but some people are more vulnerable....

haha! I have had two of these and my profile clearly shows my husband in it!

The first was a "consultant surgeon" who lives in LA, also widowed, and has lots of cheesy filtered shots of a silver fox as his profile but he really likes me (despite me being a complete stranger in the UK)

The second is an attractive man quite a bit older than me who suggested he be my sugar Daddy and would buy me lots of designer bags/shoes/meals out and would love to spend all his money on me if I was to be his sugar baby (its just that to prove I'm serious, I have to transfer him £200 so he knows I'm "genuine").

Do people really fall for this horse shit? Both are now blocked. Go for it- string him along for as long as possible