Feel scammed by so called Military Personnel

Hi,

Received a friend request on Face Book from one Major Miles paine ... then communicated via yahoo on [email protected]. very loving and sweet nothings in the mails. Till the time for leave request. He mentioned that I needed to send his reporting officer a Leave request (draft sent by him) to the email address [email protected]. Which I did send and to my surprise received a response from Col.Jimmy Alexandra as under:

[email protected]. January 19, 2011 2:40AM
Your request has been processed and verified by our Leave Request Department. We are happy to tell you that Major Paine Miles would be granted leave. But first, there are some process that has to be taken before he could leave the Kabul NATO base. Attached with this email is a document you are to print out, Fill and email to us.
Also is the Policy and Instruction abiding all Family and friends requesting for an officer's leave.
Read the Instructions carefully and make a solemn signature as the Beneficiary.
You are advised to do this as soon as possible as the department would not be liable for any delay caused.
Thank You.
Col. Jimmy Alexandra
Leave Request Unit,
U.S Army
Kabul, Afghanistan.

The following seems totally inconsistent:
1. How a person claiming to be a fiance or friend being made to request for leave of USA Military personnel.
2. The form Policy and Instruction for Leave request was signed by Lr.Col.Robert Gonzalez,
Processing Officer. and other signature required as Beneficiary.
3. Cl 8. "Returning officer .. liable to leave to his designed country 72 hrs after processing" and
4. Cl 9. " spouse or family of employee who is requesting for leave must pay all necessary charges accordingly"

Presumably he will leave for the USA whereas I am not outside the USA and what are the charges to be paid.
At this stage I googled "military leave procedures" and thankfully came across this site.

I am registering this incident as the names may or may not be familiar and someone somewhere may process these papers. Gut feeling that this is a scam and if it is not then pl ignore this mail.
God Bless!
tricia

Pl read as I am "outside the USA" against indicated "not outside the USA". In other words not a resident of the USA.
tks.
tricia

Just found out that there was a guy that I was talking to and begin the same thing. Because I know alot of military personnel, it did not sound right, so I googled when he asked me to do this. His name used is Edmund Hamilton. Of course the real Edmund Hamilton was a writer and is dead.

Welcome,

I'm sorry I missed this post for some reason, but there is no doubt that it is a scam. This is a standard US soldier romance scam, run by Africans. The policy that requires (or even allows) anyone from outside the army to request leave for a soldier exists solely in the minds of the African scammers who created it.

The truth is, you cannot request ANYTHING for a soldier--leave, phone, or anything else. As soon as you are asked to fill out a form or email a request to the US military, you can know for certain you are dealing with an African scammer, not an American soldier.

For both of you, if you can post the full information on the scammer--email used, emails he sent (remove your own email address first), it will help others to avoid being scammed. Scammers often use the same letters after they change names (we call them scripts), so even those emails can be helpful after the scammer has changed fake names.

Hi,
Thanks so much for confirming that this is a scam.
In my mail of Jan 24, 2011 have posted a mail received dt. 19.1.2011 from
[email protected].
Col. Jimmy Alexandra
Leave Request Unit,U.S Army Kabul, Afghanistan.
Signature on the leave form Lt.Col.Robert Gonzalez,

The one doing the romancing bit is going by the name of Major Miles Paine id of [email protected].
I am highlighting the names once again so that users will be alerted.
tricia