Romance Scam-John Pittman, SSG US Army

I met a man calling himself John Pittman on okcupid.com. We talked for a couple of weeks and then he asked me if I would get a satellite phone so we could talk. He said I could get it at the base, he said he would check on the price and let me know. He told me it was $750, but that was too much he said and he could get one where he was cheaper, just $500. He wanted to know if I would help, he had locked his accounts when he left for Afghanistan. I told him I did not have the funds (it seemed strange for a man to ask me for money). He pressured me a couple more times, but decided I wasn't going to send him any money I guess. We continued talking for a couple more weeks and then I found some of this stuff on the internet. When I googled this name previously I did not find anything untoward and I still don't. This may be a new name they are using. The pictures of the guy in uniform showed the name on the uniform as Pittman. On okcupid.com he was dressed in civilian clothes, but after we started talking he started sending me pictures of a man in combat fatigues, of this man standing in what looked like a camp like the army has in afghanistan, etc. He even had a picture attached to the yahoo messenger profile that looked like it was taken with a webcam. I also did a match search on the interenet with the pictures he sent, but did not find anything there either. I was trying to be careful. So, when I noticed these posts I traced the yahoo email header and it lead to a Nigerian IP address. Luckily, I did not send money because that raised my suspicion right away when he asked and I don't have the means to do that anyway. I feel angry and stupid that I believed him even if it was for a little while. I know I got off easy, some women have been taken for alot of money.
John Pittman -- [email protected] is the email he used. He was on okcupid as 1loyalman and he looked like a normal guy in street clothes when we started talking. He said he was in Afghanistan, he was always right on the money with the time in Afghanistan and he composed well structured sentences with good grammar.

I'm glad you managed to recognize this scam before you lost anything.

Please post some of the messages this scammer sent you, especially early ones and ones around the sat phone. Also, did he give you an address for the fake sat phone company?

These scammers often use scripted emails that they continue to reuse even after they change fake identities. Having those emails posted here can help others to identify scammers in the future.

He did not give a specific sat phone company. We even priced them on eBay to see how much they were used. I suggested renting one, but he said it would be better to buy it so we could resell it. I will retrieve the conversation and post some of it on here. He never gave any type of address, did not ask me to wire any money or anything like that. I looked through some of the people locate sites and there was one John Pittman that he seemed to be following his history. He repeated where the guy had been stationed and every where he had lived during his time in the service just like the background on the people search I did.

yahoo avatar

???

What Grunt has posted is the avatar that goes with the yahoo email address you posted.