credible background checks? family member scammed

[AlanJones]

She may not only face financial problems, but possibly legal ones as well. As T5 said, the money may well come from a hacked account, or possibly another one of his victims may be asked to send it to her. One thing is certain though, the only person using their real details in this is your mother, so when the other victims start to complain, hers is the only name that the police will find anything for.

There's a couple of similar ones here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=118102&hilit=architect and here viewtopic.php?f=13&t=118711&p=288901&hilit=architect#p288901, but pretty much all of the non-military romance scams have the scammer being overseas for some reason and needing money.

Another thing to ask your mother about is his accent. When she spoke to him did he have a non-American accent? He'll very likely have given a story about being from a mixed-heritage, perhaps part American and part European, to explain the fact that his accent is not an American one.

Well you guys were right.

After I presented the evidence of the phone number, the suspect ties with the business, etc. she still wasn't convinced. Then I called the actual business he referenced and asked about him. Still not completely convinced (this man managed to swindle her so the con was obviously good) I started searching his email, username on the website, and did a Google Reverse Image Search on the picture from his match.com profile in one of her emails. That pulled up a hit on rommancescam.com on a thread that had 8 pages of pictures with Russian Painter and Journalist Alexey Lushnikov. I found the exact profile picture and when she looked at the page she found additional pictures of him that had been used as well. Then she finally believed it was a scam.

She reported it to IC3 and she called the local FBI field office. I spoke to them as well and it doesn't sound likely that she's going to get anything back. They said they will be speaking to her bank and trying to work with them, but the money is probably gone unless the last wire transfer wasn't fully processed on the other end. I'm guessing it's gone because it was at least 2 weeks ago although I didn't get exact dates of these transfers before.

He did text her again today around 5 PM but I don't know if that helps much. The FBI agent said that someone else in the region was victim to a similar scam, and she lost a similar amount of money and they were bold enough to keep communicating with her even after she said the FBI it talking to her. They said to ignore the FBI and listen to them.

If anybody has any recommendations on follow up actions for her to take now I would appreciate the advice.

Thank you all for your feedback as well. Some of these tactics for finding more info on this did help me identify that it was a scam and convince her.

If anybody has any recommendations on follow up actions for her to take now I would appreciate the advice.

You are now on page 2 of asking for the same advice asked and given on page one.

I do not know how we can help you much further.

Outstanding . The only other thing you can really do is to publicly post the details he is using . The money already sent is probably gone for good , but at least you averted a larger future catastrophe.

Public posting these details will help warn other potential victims of this romance / money mule scam .

Thanks for posting to Scamwarners .

Locking shortly no useful post by Op.

@JD75ca, the support team and members who have vast knowledge of romance scams have attempted to help.

We are not a chat forum. We are here to help victims.

With vague and kept information there is not much we can do.

I am locking this thread. I see nothing else we can offer at this point.

Please Pm me if you decide to post the information requested in this thread.

Please seek the advice of a Family Attorney to protect your mothers wealth.