by Dotti
Fri Mar 15, 2013 12:18 am
Scammers make up AKO's, and copy specialty and skills information from the internet. so just having a soldier give you that information is NOT sufficient.
First of all, make sure the AKO ends in .mil (with nothing else.) If it ends in anything else, it's not a real AKO.
Assuming it passes that test: Your roommate needs to send him an email at his AKO (without telling him the contents of the email) and the scammer must reply to that email from his AKO address. It is important that this communication go both ways, so that you know he actually able to receive and send from the AKO address (not telling him the content is important, or he can pretend to receive it, and send an email with a forged header that looks like it came from an AKO.
If he tells her that it is not allowed, or his email isn't working, or gives any other excuse as to why they can't correspond using that address, then he is a scammer.
Pick some unusual or highly romantic phrases from his emails, and google them (in quotes) to see if they are stolen of have already been used by scammers.
In my experience most scammers will be caught in those tests alone.