Being Scammed?

Two weeks ago, I was in a dating n friends' website n i knew tis single dad. He gave a touching profile on how much he loves his son. So I contacted him thought it would be cool to give him some encouragement.

Then i got to know his son n was told he got leukaemia.

I even spoke to the son on the phone. He said he was in london. He really had a london number, but also a nigeria number. I felt strange.

then few days later, he said his son had a relapse

n coincidentally Nigeria has a bonemarrow on blackmarket for him to come over. He said he brought money n went

then he realised his money not enough... so he was so desperate, even crying on the phone to me, begging me for help.

I was so worried that I prayed for him n his child n helped him ask around for money to help. At first, i sent usd 400. then he said not
enough so i tried to ask for other help. then i sent another 1400usd.

then he said finally he got the marrow but Nigeria ppl needs h im
to bribe them to get the bonemarrow thru redcross back to england.
then he said he needed usd 1500.

I thought it would be great to help the child cos his condition apparently turned worse

Then in the end, he didnt expect Nigeria cab drivers charge so much processing fee... and so on... I felt so strange at tis point. when i questioned him, he got angry n frustrated... he sounded really pitiful in the phone...

What do u think of tis case?

Hi Confused and welcome.

It definitely sounds like you are being scammed. Scammers will use this story quite commonly and you may have already figured out that there will be no end to the requests for financial help as long as you are willing to send money.

Scammers often set up phone numbers that appear to be going to the UK, but in actuality are redirecting numbers. In other words, they have a UK prefix but are actually being re-directed to their mobile phones in West Africa. The phone number likely started with +44 - 70?

Did you have any email correspondence with this person? If so, please post an email from him (omit your personal information) and we will help you take a look. Please include full headers for the email. If you aren't sure how to do that, we can help you.

Please do not send any more money. Your instinct that this is strange is probably accurate, it is very likely a scam.

Hi, Confused, and welcome to Scamwarners.

I'm sorry to see that you have been targetted by a scammer. They prey on the compassion and generosity of people for their own gain.

They will often use the story that they have a child, and that the child becomes ill or has an accident. Then the requests for money will begin. The child does not exist. The person you spoke to on the phone is either the scammer's own child, acting on his father's orders, or possibly an adult speaking in a child's voice. In either case, it is playing on your sympathies.

Whatever information you have on this scammer - emails (with complete headers), phone numbers (both UK and Nigerian), and any other information he has given you - should be taken to your local law enforcement agency. I'm sorry to say that, due to the international aspect of this, not much can be done toward getting an arrest, but every time such a crime is reported, it keeps the police aware that it is occurring. I'm also sorry to say that your money is gone. You probably sent it via Western Union or Moneygram, and they are untraceable. Even if you thought you were sending it to the UK, it was most likely picked up in Nigeria.

Please be aware that there is no law enforcement or governmental agency that will offer to recover that money. If you get an email offering to get your money back, ignore it - or better yet, print it out (headers and all) and include it with the evidence from the initial scam. Its only worth will be as further evidence.

Keep posting here if you have questions. Someone will always be here to answer them.

Hi Confused,

I'm sorry to hear about your situation.

This is a common tactic used by these low life thieves.

Like Jillian said, please post an email from him to include the complete header so that we can verify who this guy is.

Hi guys,

thank you for your comments. He asked me to send photos to his yahoo account but he
never sent me email reply from his mail account. He always communicate on yahoo
or msn messenger or phone... only email replies were through the dating and friends website.

Cheers

Please do post any information you have on him and we can do some research. His phone number, email address and yahoo or MSN ID might help us find more information on him.

Hi Confused,

Glad you made it over

As you will see in our love scam section you are certainly not alone in being conned by these lowlifes.

As the others have suggested, give us any details you can and we can most likely find evidence that it is a scammer you are dealing with.

There is no way to get your money back I am affraid but we can help you to see that it is a criminal you are dealing with and help you to not lose any more money.

The person came online again. He stopped calling me for these two days. Is there a Barclays bank in london Heathrow airport?

He kept saying if i sent him money tis last time, he would be able to withdraw money n sent me back immediately he reached london. I checked the london heathrow airport website. the bank is not listed there.

He said he tried to transfer money from his barclay account to africa... but apparently the bank needs a committee meeting before money can be remitted to him... sounds funny right?

cheers

It sounds like more lies to try to convince you to send more money.

As I said in the PM, send me details privately by email or PM if you prefer and I will look into it right now

I have done quite a few searches over the last few hours and found a few things of interest which I have shared via PM with Confused.

I have asked Nick Smith for some help with a phone call that will prove the scam and give confused the peace of mind that there is no boy in the hospital by the supplied name.

As it is 1am here I need to get some sleep but I need one last piece of information for Nick to be able to make the call.

Confussed, if you could please post that one small detail here, Nick will be happy to make the call for you

Thanks Ralph,

its St Mary's Children Hospital in london

Hi confused....

As you know, Ralph asked me to look into this as I live in London and it's way past Ralph's bedtime.
What a coincedence, my partner actually works at St Marys in Paddington.

Anyway, I just called them for you, and as we suspected, there is no patient by the name of Crane, or even anything similar.

As the other warners have said, it has all the hallmarks of being a scam. You need to cease contact with this man immediately.

If you could also post up that phone number (the UK one) it will probably confirm what we already know... it will in all likelyhood be a redirected number which can be anywhere in the world.

Just so other warners (Ralph in particular) know where we are at with this, Confused has given me permission to post a bit of PM traffic that has happened today.
I also think it's helpful to post up the phone number so that search engines will find it.

Confused wrote:

Hi Nick

Do I need to confront the Dad on the Hospital issue? So there is not barclays bank in Heathrow airport too?

If u r stranded in a place without credit card, does that bank need to hold committee meeting before they can transmit u money?

The telephone UK number is +447011140179

thanks

Nick Smith wrote:

The phone number is indeed a redirected number owned by PNC Telecom Service. This means that the user has "bought" the number to appear as though he is in the UK, but in reality will be elsewhere. If he also has a Nigeria number, then this guy will be in Nigeria.

There isn't any Barclays Bank at Heathrow Airport. UK airports don't have bank branches, the only financial services at Heathrow are change offices such as Travelex. They also act as Western Union agents. A search of the websites for Barclays and Travelex branches confirms this.

UK banks don't hold meetings to decide whether to transmit someone money. They either can, or they can't, depending on the individual bank policy. My bank would just make money available to an affiliated bank in another country, I'd just need to present my passport. In this case, your scammer is stalling for time, in order to get more money out of you.

I wouldn't bother confronting the scammer about the hospital issue, he'll only come out with more lies to cover up his previous ones. He'll probably claim that "Hitch" is in a different hospital altogether... that's if he can be bothered. He may just ignore you and move on to his next victim.

Thank you very much Nick for your help

Last night I did a lot of searching and there isn't much out there on this scammer so I will go through what I was able to find and post it here together with an email address.

Sometimes posting their details publicly is the only way to prevent their scams

I will go through the PMs sent back and forth last night and pick out some of the usefull bits of information, I will apologise up front that this may look a little messay but it will contain a few searchable items that a potentail victim may find

Firstly, the scammers uses the name Alexander Danny Crane his profile uses the name Dannycrane a search on that reveals many hits, Danny Crane is the name of somebody from the TV series "Boston Legal" to shorten the odds I included the word profile to the search terms and found this http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%2 ... tnG=Search

The scammer claims to work in the oil industry as and engineer which is very common for African scammers he claims to work for Texaco

He has a profile on this site http://dating.singaporeexpats.com/membe ... dd&index=2 using the name dannycrane, you will need to register to see any details of the profile

The things I find interesting about his profile, (I had to register to view it) is the age of the person he is looking for and the sex of the person he is after, scammers are notoriously NOT fussy with their ideal mates and this is a prime example

Male/Female , 18 - 49 , Pen pal/Activity partner, Language exchange, Teach/tutor language, Casual dating partner, Meaningful relationship partner, Marriage partner, Someone to talk with about travel, Travel Companion

He has used these details to describe himself in chat

He said his name is Alexander Danny Crane
Said he just resigned from Chevron. A petroleum engineer.
Said he graduated from a uni in britain... start with "W..."

He also said he is supposed to be quite well known in his industry..

The email address he uses is [email protected] no hits on a search of the email address, from all accounts he does not send emails, all his scamming is by chat and by phone

He claims to have a son Hitch Crane who is in hospital and who needs money to save his life, likely story

Further searches found this profile which was confirmed as being the same person http://www.ziggs.com/apps/profile/Inter ... ?uid=49826 this profile says he is in Miami

The phone numbers provided are these

the Africa number is +2348054075021

the UK NUMBER is +447011140179

Searches on the numbers reveals no direct hits but the UK number is a redirect number as suspected, a search on ( 4470 111 scam ) shows a lot of scammers enjoying the benefits of a UK redirect number http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=44 ... tnG=Search

I have little else to add at the moment but I will be asking for a little help on this so hopefully we can create a better picture