My mom is in trouble...

She's been talking to this guy she met on a dating site. It's along the lines of I will send you $650,000, oops, there's this fee we have to pay, oops there another fee -- and my mom as stupid as she is, is buying into it and keeps sending him money through western union.

ONE. this guy in NIGERIA.
TWO. the forms the guy is sending her is fake. It's always claiming to be from NDLEA from the chairman himself. In order to get these forms, you have to pay $2,000 first, and then get the form. And there are grammar mistakes on the form...

The name this guy is using is JAMES CARLTON. Using the email address [email protected].

She talks on the phone with him all the time, I don't know the phone number.

This has been going on for a long time, and she won't listen to me. She's stupid. Her english isnt that good and she doesn't know how to use the computer that well, so she's ALWAYS been asking me to help her scan, fax, print whatever he wants her to do.

Our relationship between me and my mom, has become really bad because of this situation. This was sketchy to me from day 1 and she gets very upset when I don't help her. I stopped helping her, and she resorts to my little sister to help her scan and fax documents over.

I need help. I don't know what to do.

He has her bank account information, her passport number, and things I still don't know. I've been snooping and looking at her yahoo messenger chat archives and email accounts. He sends her super cheesy emails and chats to her with the word baby after each sentence. It's disgusting.

HE HAS A FLIGHT coming in TOMORROW.

What does this mean?? What should I do?

Please help. =/ I know the money shes sent him isn't retrievable but I'm worried about him knowing where I live, what my family looks like, my mom's bank information, etc.


Thanks

Welcome Kiyoko,

I'm sorry that your mother being scammed has brought you here. If you look through the forums, you will see you are not the only family member fighting this battle.

I will say that intelligence generally doesn't have a lot to do with falling for this kind of scam. We have seen highly educated, professional men and women who have been taken in. Since he is supposedly traveling to her, I am assuming there is likely a romance aspect to this scam, and the African romance scammers have a lot of experience and are very good at saying exactly what their victims want to hear. If you treat her like she is stupid, you will only alienate her further, especially since you can guarantee that he is doing everything in his power to convince her that you don't want to see her happy.

As far as the travel goes--the chance of him actually traveling to see her are actually very slim. Scammers often claim they are coming to visit victims as part of their normal scam routine. They may even show fake tickets, itineraries, visas, etc. The truth is they usually have no intention of traveling--often it is a setup for more money demands--the scammer will claim he was mugged, or detained at the airport because he was carrying too much money, or some crisis came up that only the victim's money will help. So the likelihood of him meeting your family, etc. would be very low.

But moving forward, there are several things you can do.
-First of all, if you can provide us with further information about the scammer and your mother, we can arrange for an email or even a phone warning from a member of our support staff.
-Second, it is very important that you don't treat your mother like a child or like she is incompetent. I'm not saying you should pretend that she is not being scammed, but you don't her to hold on to the scam further because she is too ashamed to admit the truth.
-If your mother has a church she attends regularly, sometimes enlisting the help of a trusted pastor or some other person she greatly respects will help her to see the truth.
-Make sure your sister is not enabling her--again, your sister should not alienate her, but she also should not be encouraging her either.
-sometimes sitting down with the family member and agreeing to work with her and allowing her to review the evidence for why he is "real" will help, because you can sit with her together as she learns he is not.

Another suggestion that might help.

Older people will often listen and trust the police, so if you could speak to someone at your local police station who understands this type of scam (and nowadays more police forces are getting to understand the problem) they might be prepared to help. This isn't to get her into trouble and she hasn't done anything wrong, but it may shock her into realising that she is the only person who thinks this scammer is telling the truth.

An older person will not so easily ignore the word of the police, but this does depend on you being able to find someone in the police prepared to help. A lot of police forces have special departments dealing with this type of fraud and you might be able to make direct contact to ask for their help if you search on the internet.

It's a dramatic solution but it may be the only way to shock her into seeing reality.

Thanks for both of your help.

My mom asked my grandpa after the guy told her his bank account information from some bank called Banco Gulf if it was real..

And my grandpa said that it was fake-- that was when she finally admitted that it was a scam.

If only I had argued with her more early on... she wouldn't have given him so much money....

Anyway,


My mom says she had only given him her passport number and a secondary bank account with no balance on it. Does she have to take any precautions about that? I'm not too sure what someone can do with a passport number and a bank account with no balance on it.

This is really funny; this is the website of the bank that he uses. He even gives her an account id and password that you can log into it.

If you look at the bottom of the website, it says

"Hosted by T35 Free Web Hosting. Casino Reviews - Free Image Hosting - Cheap Domain - Prada Sneakers - Web Hosting "

Lol.

http://bancobankgulf.t35.com/bancogulf-onlineID=1

I'm glad she now realizes the truth. Not too much to be done about the passport number, but if there is reason to believe he can access the bank account, it would probably be best closed, or he may try to use it to launder scam money.

As far as the fake bank website goes, I'm sure some of our fake site killers will be happy to see if they can take it down.

I'll work on this site tomorrow, it should be offline soon.

to see if they can take it down.

With such a dedicated team I have at my disposal, the question is not 'if' but 'when'