by Scammers Stink
Tue Nov 08, 2011 5:29 pm
My mother is being scammed by someone in Nigeria, it started on a dating website thing I think. She says she's in love etc. etc. and refuses to listen to me or my wife, insisting that he's on the level.
His name is Robert Fiallos, or so he says. He says he's a mechanical engineer working on a pipeline project. He's supposed to live in Texas. His story is that he can't leave Nigeria because the police there won't let him until he pays all the men that worked on the project.
She's been sending him most or all of her social security check each month, and now has started recieving checks and money orders from other people that she's been instructed to cash and send via western union and money gram to him in Nigeria. The checks she's getting must be real, she's been doing it for so long that western union and money gram won't send any more money for her. They say it's a scam too. I haven't seen this type of check thing in any other message boards I've looked at, the one's I've seen have always involved the fake money orders etc. All I can think is that he's having her act as a focus point for a bunch of other people he's scamming real money out of.
This all seems illegal, and when my wife called the FBI they told us we had to contact the local police where she lives. She called the police and they said it definitely was money laundering and unless my mother made a complaint herself there was nothing that they could do.
The really sad part is that this IS NOT THE FIRST TIME that this has happened to her. Her last 'boyfriend' she met online was also in Nigeria. This guy's name was Paul (Can't remember last name, something German). His story was that he had several bars of gold that he went to Nigeria to collect from work he had done and needed to get back to the U.S. with the gold bars. He of course had many incidents that delayed him and needed money because of. She finally wised up about Paul, we'd told her he was scamming her many times with him as well, and she didn't listen then either. He scammed her out of 15k dollars. I didn't even know she HAD 15k dollars to get scammed out of.
I'm basically writing this on here so that anyone else this Robert Fiallos trys to scam that has the sense to google the name might come across this and not lose their money. I think with my mother it will probably need to come down to us getting power of attorney over her somehow for her own good. Of course then she'd probably never talk to me again. I just can't believe NOBODY will do anything about it. Completely blows me away.
His name is Robert Fiallos, or so he says. He says he's a mechanical engineer working on a pipeline project. He's supposed to live in Texas. His story is that he can't leave Nigeria because the police there won't let him until he pays all the men that worked on the project.
She's been sending him most or all of her social security check each month, and now has started recieving checks and money orders from other people that she's been instructed to cash and send via western union and money gram to him in Nigeria. The checks she's getting must be real, she's been doing it for so long that western union and money gram won't send any more money for her. They say it's a scam too. I haven't seen this type of check thing in any other message boards I've looked at, the one's I've seen have always involved the fake money orders etc. All I can think is that he's having her act as a focus point for a bunch of other people he's scamming real money out of.
This all seems illegal, and when my wife called the FBI they told us we had to contact the local police where she lives. She called the police and they said it definitely was money laundering and unless my mother made a complaint herself there was nothing that they could do.
The really sad part is that this IS NOT THE FIRST TIME that this has happened to her. Her last 'boyfriend' she met online was also in Nigeria. This guy's name was Paul (Can't remember last name, something German). His story was that he had several bars of gold that he went to Nigeria to collect from work he had done and needed to get back to the U.S. with the gold bars. He of course had many incidents that delayed him and needed money because of. She finally wised up about Paul, we'd told her he was scamming her many times with him as well, and she didn't listen then either. He scammed her out of 15k dollars. I didn't even know she HAD 15k dollars to get scammed out of.
I'm basically writing this on here so that anyone else this Robert Fiallos trys to scam that has the sense to google the name might come across this and not lose their money. I think with my mother it will probably need to come down to us getting power of attorney over her somehow for her own good. Of course then she'd probably never talk to me again. I just can't believe NOBODY will do anything about it. Completely blows me away.
