tom.wills48@ yahoo.com

Help my mom started chatting with this guy a month ago and she has fallen head over heels for him.
He has brainwashed her to believe he is a legitimate guy looking for love and she is his lady sent from God. He has been pouring on the charm and she's stupidly fallinf for it. I have found his email on scammer lists and found the information he's given her to be false. She believes every word is says, he told her he lives in New York and is the owner of Tom and Tom construction, he has 2 daughters, lives in a big house with a swimming pool and has tonnes of money. He recently told her he was coming to visit but ended up in South Africa on "business" getting gold and diamonds for his clients. He said he had an accident and someone stole his computer. Today I found out she wired him money which she denies but I know she did. Please help me if there's anyone who has heard of this guy I need to convince her this is a scam before she loses evrything she has.

Hi nikkishines,

sorry your mom fell for this scam. If your mom has already wired money via WU, you can try to call 1-800-448-1492 to cancel the payment if it has not been picked (but I have to say scammers are quick in picking money).

Romance scam victims are the hardest to convince, as they are emotionally involved. This email address is on the black list of ScamPolice Group: List 94. This should be enough. Other more experienced members can give more details about.

If he has your mom's real life details, you should warn her to drop contacts asap.

Mod edit: edited out last bit of this post as it was over the top. DJ

[AlanJones]

Hi nikkishines,

Going abroad and having an accident is one of the standard tricks that scammers play on victims to get them to send money. Also, scammers will "fall in love" and declare this love with the person they are writing to a lot quicker than any legitimate person would do.

As cutelilly says, the email address appears on scam lists already, so you could try directing your mother to those as proof of what he is.

Another thing that you could try is getting your mother to search for sentences from the scammer's earlier emails as these will likely be a script that he is using and may have been posted elsewhere (note though that no match doesn't mean that he is legitimate, just that his script hasn't surfaced yet). You could also post (or ask your mother to) some of his earlier emails here, so that we can give an opinion on their legitimacy.

One final thing you could to is try searching any photos he has sent on tineye.com or Google's image search to see if you can find where they have been stolen from.

Unfortunately I have directed her to all the false info I've found and pointed out to her the fact that his email is on a list of scammers. He has however brainwashed her into believing he is legit. I am fearful he will clean her out before she comes to her senses. She's been lonely for a long time and this guy has made her believe he is so in love with her, even to the point that she is pushing everyone that cares about her out of her life because she doesn't want to hear us tell her this guy is no good. I don't know what else I can do other than stand by and watch her lose everything and then realize what we've been telling her all along is right.

This is one of his emails he sent to her, ironically this is the only email where he has written good english the rest of them have been scattered and really bad grammer.

I am so happy to write and tell the world after many stops and starts, that I have finally found my soul-mate I will never forget the first I laid my eyes on the woman that I now have claimed as mine.

I do not know how to express the conflicting emotions that have surged like a storm through my heart all night long. I only know that first and foremost in all my thoughts has been the glorious confirmation you just gave me without effort, unconsciously, of course - of all I have ever thought of your mind and heart.

You have the greatest soul, the noblest nature, the sweetest, most loving heart I have ever known, and my love and admiration for you have increased so much since we've known each other that it still amazes me.

You are more wonderful and lovely in my eyes than you ever were before; and my pride and joy and gratitude that you should love me with such a perfect love are beyond all expression.

Honey, you have changed my life completely. You're the one who makes me beautiful deep within my heart. You're the one who makes me strong. You're the one who makes me feel so important; you're everything to me.

You show your love to me every day. I thank God that I have found a woman like you. Please forgive me for not giving you enough time to chat with me, but I promise I will make up for it once we are together.

All that I can offer you is a love and care. I can offer you a intimate care that will stick together through the good and the bad. I can offer you a family that will support each other every day my girls are your family as yours are my family too. Honey, that's all I can give...I hope that’s what you want.

I really wish that you were near me. I wish that I could just call your name when I needed you and that you would be there

Welcome to Eater, nikkishines!
I'm really sorry to hear that your Mum is involved with a scammer. It's hard to get through sometimes, when someone is so sucked into the scam, but please don't give up on her. She's really going to need your support when she finally realizes the truth.

I googled:

I do not know how to express the conflicting emotions that have surged like a storm through my heart all night long.

A bunch of that message is from a letter that Woodrow Wilson wrote to his wife, Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, in 1915. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/filmmore/fm_ebgwilson.html

If you google bits of the rest of the message, I'm sure that you'll come up with the source, and find that he just took bits and pieces from here and there on the net. That's why "his English is so good" in that message. He didn't write it!!!

Googling his email address shows that it's listed at 4 different scam sites.

How did your Mum meet him?

nikkishines wrote

South Africa on "business" getting gold and diamonds for his clients.

I checked the email address
as he was online, I dropped him a line
my message

To [email protected]
Opened 2012/02/13
Location Accra, Ghana (86% likelihood)
Opened on 41-218-202-73-adsl-dyn.4u.com.gh (41.218.202.73:10722)

he is not in ZA like he claims to be
he writes from Ghana

this is his yahoo avatar

@ nikkishines

he's writing now constantly though I never met him
do you have some pics which could be uploaded?

Hmmmmmm it was lovely chatting with you ,it has been a surprise to me as i didn't believe that i could find someone here to have a nice chat with,any way am glad that we could made it through,how was your day so far?i cant wait to chat with u again and i will be looking forward to chat with u again,Am always glad to see your message and i promise to be faithful to u every time and wish u the best of luck in everything u do and may the good Lord help us to resist all the hurtful situation and to keep us strong in all we do and to makes us like each other more and more every time i care about u so much and i promise to make u happy for the rest of my life..have a blessed time,Also remember that we are too old for games and am not on here to fight rather to find someone special to be my friend and see what future will be there for us ,take care

Received: from [41.218.226.124]
Date: Wed, 22 Feb 2012
From: Thomas Wills <[email protected]>

This is the exact message he sent to my mom. She has cut back on her communication with him he calls asking for money and says if he ever loses her he's not sure what he will do.

Here are some of the pics he sent to my mom.

This is the exact message he sent to my mom. She has cut back on her communication with him he calls asking for money and says if he ever loses her he's not sure what he will do.

I am glad to hear she cut off communication with him.

What he will do is try to find more victims to take money from. That is what scammers do. Thank you for posting this information. It will help others as time goes on.

Today I found out my mom has been in contact with a supposed agent who is in the process of having thomas arrested. I think this guy is also a scammer she received an email from another guy who is supposed to be the lawyer in the case against Thomas he told her she will receive $250,000 for helping them find Thomas all she has to do is pay $3000 in legal fees to receive her money. I know this is all part of a scam but she's sent the money to them thinking she is going to get the big payout. She is almost broke and there is no way we can convince her this is a scam I can't believe she can't see through this. How and when will this all end?

[AlanJones]

Hi nikki,

Yes it is another scam. It is probably the original scammer using a different email address.

He realises that he has lost her as a victim with his original scam, so he is trying a new method to extract more money from her.

We have a whole section on Recovery Scams, here viewforum.php?f=14 which it might be worth trying to get your mother to read (in particular the two stickies).

Hi nikkishines!
I'm sorry to hear that your Mum is continuing to deal with scammers and I commend you for continuing to try to help her see the truth.
It sound like she is now being taken by a "recovery scam", where the scammer promises to help her get back the money that was lost. You can learn more about that on this thread:
http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3198

Is there someone in your lives that your Mum trusts and would listen to? Has she been willing to read up on romance scams here on Scamwarners?

So it's been a while now and my mom has now landed herself in a bunch of trouble. She received a cheque in the mail for $10,000 from a contractor which supposedly employed a man in the UK. She was to send te cash through western union to the gentleman in the UK. Western Union refused to have anything to do with it and informed her it was a scam. She then deposited the cheque into her personal bank account and sent the mony via money mart to the guy in the UK today the bank calls her account is in overdraft 10,000 dollars and they cannot trace the funds. Needless to say the bank wants their money and right away. She is broke, not evn 2 pennies to rub together. The guy supposedly called her back and said it was all a misunderstanding and the bank is incorrect. I don't know what to do anymore shes's just too trusting. My name is also on the account so I myself could be held responsible for the $10,000. Please if anyone has any information that I could pass along to her to help her realize this is very real.