military dating scam?

I have been corresponding with a person who claims to be Captain John S. James, US Army stationed at
Camp Eggers. At first all seemed normal... The time of day for the contact... etc..Nothing seemed out of ordinary other than every once in a while, a phrase would seem strange but not enough to really alarm me. A couple of weeks into our communication, he said his laptop crashed... and he was using the desk top at the office. A couple of days later when I asked about it, he said the motherboard was fried.......Nothing else was said about it at that time.

He supposedly is to turn 62 on Dec 14th, his parents died in an auto accident in 2000, and his wife died in 2005, no children. I wanted to send a birthday card or some cookies, and when I inquired about his APO, he claimed that he had it turned off and to send it to a Mr. Archer with the UN that he had become friends with.
Could be plausible. I got some cookies, a birthday card, a pin drive with some photos on it.. and mailed it.
My heart was in my throat at the postage... $63.15 but I justified it... as because I am so grateful for our military it was just a small thing I could do.... Well then he said he had something he wanted to discuss with me... There were children they had rescued that were staying at the camp and they wanted to help them. Could I get 2 books - one for TOEFL study and one for SAT study for English. Again, this didn't seem out of the ordinary. But then this morning, I said you know, I work on computers for a living. Send me your laptop and I can order the parts and fix it. At that time he just said it was sweet of me to offer. Later in the conversation, he said, you know if you could send me an unlocked phone, we can talk on the phone. That got my attention. That is when I seriously started researching.

In the meantime, I had done some people search, tried tracking the email address, etc, but ALL of those places want money from you as well. So then I found the Camp Eggers site that tells about the camp and there was a blog site there. I started reading the blogs, and there was one after another of women who had been scammed, many of them by someone claiming to be a Captain, a few claiming by a Captain Steve James.
and then there was a Sgt James mentioned several times. And the Lt Col responding to these got my attention. He said no one in the military had to have their mail sent to anyone else.
I felt really foolish at that point..

It is disheartening to think that people are using our military, who give and sacrifice so much......
I am pretty sure I was scammed but it could have been worse.....
I am willing to share photos of this guy - or at least who he claims to be.....

What you are describing is textbook scam.

Just to reiterate for those reading this thread: APO's are not like US postal service mail boxes. Soldiers don't "turn them off." If he is stationed anywhere for the US military, he will be able to receive through OFFICIAL channels, which do NOT include sending the package to an individual.

You need to be very careful of email investigation and name investigation services, even the paid ones. Many of them do nothing more than basic searches that you could do yourself.

If you can post some of the emails this scammer sent you, as well as the email address the scammer was using, it can help others to avoid being scammed. Scammers often use the same scripted emails over and over again, so searching parts of the letters can also lead a target or victim to the truth.

To post photos, you can follow the instructions in my signature line.

thanks, but I haven't the first clue how to post the pictures or how to include messages he sent me. Most of the communication was via chat.... the email he uses is [email protected]

The address of his "UN friend" is [email protected]

Mark them as fake, put them on Upload Eater (http://www.scamwarners.com/), and post here the link displayed under the picture in your album that begins with "[img]".

A military person whose laptop crashed would not send it to someone outside or ask someone outside for help with it. He would take it to the military computer shop. An American captain would not be taking the TOEFL.

Please post the emails, especially the early ones. They may not sound suspicious to you, but to us it will probably be obvious where the scammer really is.