New twist on love scam - pay $800 for phone service

There have been a few reports about a slightly new twist on love scams. The scammers claim that they are in the military and tell the potential victim that they need to sign up with a certain telecommunications company in order to communicate. The service generally costs about $800 and uses an email addresses ending in military.com or engineer.com. Company names used are things like Telstat or Telex. One email address for the fake company is [email protected]. Another scam used these email addresses: [email protected] or [email protected]

The premise is that the service is a way to can talk on the phone without per call charges attached. Calls are supposed to be free after the victim completes registration and pays the $800 fee. Of course the fee needs to be sent via Western Union.

engineer.com is one of mail.com's free email names. military.com however is not. It really does belong to the US military. Either the address is spoofed, or www.military.com provides free addresses. If the second, they don't like scammmers claiming to be US military.

It was confirmed on another scam-related board that military.com does in fact allow anyone to sign up and get a free email address. Although it is about military related things, military.com is not government sponsored, and is actually owned by Monster.

Yes...military.com does give out free email addresses. They are not from the same provider as engineer.com or consultant.com, but free just the same. Apparently some scammers have discovered this and are now exploiting it. I am just trying to get the word out.