by DisgustedinNJ
Mon Oct 21, 2013 3:47 pm
Thank God for this website. I came close to falling victim to one of these yahoos posing as a combat soldier in the US Army currently deployed in Afghanistan. I was contacted on Facebook by this person and I NEVER accept friend requests from people that I don't know. However, seeing that he was claiming to be in the US military and currently stationed in Afghanistan, I accepted the request. He contacted me almost immediately thanking me for accepting his request and claiming that he was really homesick and just wanted to touch base with people back in the States. I had my suspicions about his truthfulness right from the beginning (from reading other posts, I won't disclose here how I came about those suspicions - don't want to help the scammers improve on their game), but I convinced myself that he probably had a lot of stress being in a warzone, had a lot of worries being away from family and could possibly be suffering from PTSD.
His original claims to me were that he was 43, from Akron, Ohio, was on his second deployment to Afghanistan, had also been in Iraq, had a 5 year old son named Raymond and that his wife had died after giving birth to their son. Talk about tugging at your heartstrings! He almost immediately asked me to go on Yahoo messenger to chat. He claimed it cost too much money for him to use Facebook????? We chatted for long lengths of time (which I thought was strange - seemed like the man never slept) but he always had some charming answer for that (who can sleep when all I do is think of you). His language was kind of bad, but I didn't really put too much stock in that. He would ignore some questions I would ask or statements I would make and sometimes his responses indicated that he might be chatting with more than one person at a time. But still I dismissed it all or rationalized it away.
This went on for about a week. Then I think he was getting ready to hit me up because he mentioned that his son's birthday was coming up, he wasn't able to get him out anything from Afghanistan and that his mother (who supposedly is caring for his son) was ill. After dangling that bit of info, he said he wanted to change the subject because it was making him too upset. During that same conversation, however, he made mention that his mother had moved to another state within the past 2 years. When I commented about a recent tragic event that had happened in that state and that I hoped his mother/son were not close to it, his response was "I don't think so"!!!!
Well that was enough for me! I took to the Internet and Google and within minutes found this site. Even though I knew in my heart that something was not right, I honestly did not expect to find that this was some elaborate scam that has been going on for years coming from Nigeria and Ghana. That just made me sick to my stomach that these people would exploit our caring and compassion for our service members that are in harms' way.
I already blocked him from sending me e-mails, deleted my Yahoo account, unfriended him on Facebook and blocked him on Facebook. Within minutes of doing that, his Facebook profile disappeared. It has been about 4-5 days now and I see that the Facebook page has reappeared. The name he is using is still the same: Emrick Adams but only one of the pictures is the same. He is now claiming to be a Sergeant in the Army (he was a combat soldier during my scam attempt). I don't know if he is still using the Yahoo e-mail and IM account, but I suspect that he is: [email protected].
I hope this will help prevent someone else from falling victim to these dirtbags. I am fortunate - all I lost was several hours of chatting with someone that doesn't really exist. From many of the stories here, many others have lost much, much more.
His original claims to me were that he was 43, from Akron, Ohio, was on his second deployment to Afghanistan, had also been in Iraq, had a 5 year old son named Raymond and that his wife had died after giving birth to their son. Talk about tugging at your heartstrings! He almost immediately asked me to go on Yahoo messenger to chat. He claimed it cost too much money for him to use Facebook????? We chatted for long lengths of time (which I thought was strange - seemed like the man never slept) but he always had some charming answer for that (who can sleep when all I do is think of you). His language was kind of bad, but I didn't really put too much stock in that. He would ignore some questions I would ask or statements I would make and sometimes his responses indicated that he might be chatting with more than one person at a time. But still I dismissed it all or rationalized it away.
This went on for about a week. Then I think he was getting ready to hit me up because he mentioned that his son's birthday was coming up, he wasn't able to get him out anything from Afghanistan and that his mother (who supposedly is caring for his son) was ill. After dangling that bit of info, he said he wanted to change the subject because it was making him too upset. During that same conversation, however, he made mention that his mother had moved to another state within the past 2 years. When I commented about a recent tragic event that had happened in that state and that I hoped his mother/son were not close to it, his response was "I don't think so"!!!!
Well that was enough for me! I took to the Internet and Google and within minutes found this site. Even though I knew in my heart that something was not right, I honestly did not expect to find that this was some elaborate scam that has been going on for years coming from Nigeria and Ghana. That just made me sick to my stomach that these people would exploit our caring and compassion for our service members that are in harms' way.
I already blocked him from sending me e-mails, deleted my Yahoo account, unfriended him on Facebook and blocked him on Facebook. Within minutes of doing that, his Facebook profile disappeared. It has been about 4-5 days now and I see that the Facebook page has reappeared. The name he is using is still the same: Emrick Adams but only one of the pictures is the same. He is now claiming to be a Sergeant in the Army (he was a combat soldier during my scam attempt). I don't know if he is still using the Yahoo e-mail and IM account, but I suspect that he is: [email protected].
I hope this will help prevent someone else from falling victim to these dirtbags. I am fortunate - all I lost was several hours of chatting with someone that doesn't really exist. From many of the stories here, many others have lost much, much more.
