Please help me

I think I am being scammed, I don't want to believe it though and feel incredibly guilty especially if he is innocent. However if he is a scammer, luckily for me if he is that we have only been in contact for a very short time. I am an english lady and I have been contacted on cupid.com by a guy who says he is a captain in the us army based in Kabul, Afghanistan. His first name is Jeffry and I am assuming his surname is Humprey. we exchanged messages on cupid for a couple of days before we exchanged email addresses. His is [email protected]. we have only spoken on cupid IM a couple of times. His cupid user name is 'gone ball' His profile states he is 46 years old.

He has told me that he was deployed to UK last year and he bought a house in Austell, Cornwall before he was deployed to Afghanistan. When his deployment finishes he wants to retire from the army and settle down in the uk, he has enough funds to invest in a business here. He has a 19 year old son who was in the UK but is back in the us until the end of the month and a german breed dog. He is divorced. His father was American (dead now) and was in the us military so he grew up around the world but mainly California. His mother is english, from Swindon. He holidays in Spain, has been to Barcelona and Vigo. It all sounds so genuine.

His use of the english language is strange and his spelling not good but I put it down to him being a bad speller and the difference in use of language between uk and us. His emails turn up in 2 different fonts I thought it was to do with where I was sending the emails from -my phone or my laptop. I started to get suspicious after watching a tv program last week on the subject of this sort of scam and went online to investigate further and what I found has made me very sad and distrustfull.

He sent me a couple of lovely poems for valentines day, one of which he said he wrote himself, but I have since found it on the internet, the other was a 'Roses is Red' one. I received another lovely one a couple of days later, again available on the internet.

After watching the program I emailed him telling him all about it and how it made me have doubts. He said he went and looked himself on the net and was appalled by what he had found. He agreed not to ask for money and we agreed that we would just keep emailing until he could get back to the uk. Yesterday the alarm bells went off when he said that he could get back sooner if a special leave request was asked for by a parent, spouse or girlfriend. I told him I wouldn't do this as this was what the scammers asked for and again we agreed to just keep emailing until he came back to the uk.

Photos and first email below, I hope I got this right!

http://scamwarners.com/main//guestupload/73153Jeff.jpg
http://scamwarners.com/main//guestuploa ... Jeff11.jpg

X-Message-Delivery: Vj0xLjE7dXM9MDtsPTE7YT0xO0Q9MDtTQ0w9MA==
X-Message-Status: n
X-SID-PRA: Jeffery Humprey <[email protected]>
X-AUTH-Result: NONE
X-Message-Info: JGTYoYF78jFejCOY9gJTWpO6EM6TEU+ol/H/GI/HuI44b9u4CrCKO2O7r0lLH4FBnYIawOpSIDoWfkcsXz2yE01OhJzcKagMVxFUbhDgiRQ=
Received: from nm29-vm0.bullet.mail.sp2.yahoo.com ([98.139.91.236]) by SNT0-MC1-F11.Snt0.hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675);
Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:22:19 -0800
Received: from [98.139.91.61] by nm29.bullet.mail.sp2.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 15 Feb 2011 19:22:19 -0000
Received: from [98.139.91.22] by tm1.bullet.mail.sp2.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 15 Feb 2011 19:22:19 -0000
Received: from [127.0.0.1] by omp1022.mail.sp2.yahoo.com with NNFMP; 15 Feb 2011 19:22:19 -0000
X-Yahoo-Newman-Property: ymail-3
X-Yahoo-Newman-Id: [email protected]
Received: (qmail 45231 invoked by uid 60001); 15 Feb 2011 19:22:19 -0000
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=yahoo.com; s=s1024; t=1297797739; bh=/1h7JzmXEtAZrVVA5V3Y5NrKsBiP2WRef9rsB/7ramQ=; h=Message-ID:X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=RoUCt8C90QnDNXkyl0961BQWIZH8yDl89jaYn9Eo2Tj6jweeV3RcTMFoKRBzqaHnjETcKz0DRovN6EcOtMmZO+z7vca5H2kcAnGE9sqLgRJ1ZE9gMwLpHoLb5xJkJ0hKjjtgtqQoPadblmCW245SA2zfwUzOQ7jp5dJZQgX5hJ0=
DomainKey-Signature:a=rsa-sha1; q=dns; c=nofws;
s=s1024; d=yahoo.com;
h=Message-ID:X-YMail-OSG:Received:X-Mailer:Date:From:Subject:To:In-Reply-To:MIME-Version:Content-Type; b=NSBHoILSsE33udIvDISXO2dHjLMq1QeuVf3rspRZTM8141b8xebPu1PxPLAp1UPshZPu/3k/qDk8hpLMjHL/CHkK/tor3j5LwzAmjkznpNUeLd+tvm3/tgM9u1G5dy0MklI7NEdS/0vf8ocerwNQ/J+ebr9pTg8rskNKBUtsRM8=;
Message-ID: <[email protected]>
X-YMail-OSG: X0_ib_cVM1l5u0MO0Mo1Ghn.je4CqLA3TK2u1q0vmZMDI2z
m8HJwzHcmUPeALb6LJGAYDZqOJJXSkTA8kvf2p2lqDNGpTF1Y1PI4kHdq6h6
dPvnMwEzBdyCHwdbGjqRfm51mqP1GHPdo0dxy4kv9J83QxcngDy006IOYCzF
aZejctgASzHIMf22lKMrTUzJ2aHF4NKzRTuQgCzhAmOblf3Dhe23KYRA9o9k
oT5UnvFQg98MFwL.ESC81EkZVVkqmDY__XErKZKYyJvjfMwkCstXIA5gT4Ek
TicMSQ_fqXtEVfA1y9pcMzx6YeROu9m3Hd8L8Pf4_Y2ysZlxmEg--
Received: from [69.31.68.52] by web114118.mail.gq1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:22:18 PST
X-Mailer: YahooMailClassic/11.4.20 YahooMailWebService/0.8.108.291010
Date: Tue, 15 Feb 2011 11:22:18 -0800 (PST)
From: Jeffery Humprey <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: hi
To:
In-Reply-To: <[email protected]>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="0-2075166226-1297797738=:45173"
Return-Path: [email protected]
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 15 Feb 2011 19:22:19.0892 (UTC) FILETIME=[AA028340:01CBCD45]
--0-2075166226-1297797738=:45173
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
lovely photos. well what I do here in Kabul, you know am a captain and I go=
t a team with numbers of soldiers which I control, its very demanding at ti=
mes, passing instructions and all sort, am in the weaponry, am a combatant =
soldier which means am always in war front, hope that doesnt scare you away=
now Karen, this is my second time here in the middle east. Well for my hou=
se in Austell for now, am gonna have to come over to take you there myself =
so you can see everything for yourself, love surprises, cant really tell yo=
u about it for now lol and my son is in U.S at the moment.
--0-48233474-1297797738=:45173
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
<table cellspacing=3D"0" cellpadding=3D"0" border=3D"0" ><tr><td valign=3D"=
top" style=3D"font: inherit;">lovely photos. well what I do here in Kabul, =
you know am a captain and I got a team with numbers of soldiers which I con=
trol, its very demanding at times, passing instructions and all sort, am in=
the weaponry, am a combatant soldier which means am always in war front, h=
ope that doesnt scare you away now Karen, this is my second time here in th=
e middle east. Well for my house in Austell for now, am gonna have to come =
over to take you there myself so you can see everything for yourself, love =
surprises, cant really tell you about it for now lol and my son is in U.S a=
t the moment.<br><br>---

100% scam, I'm afraid.

The small sample of his writing tells me he is African, not American. This part

if a special leave request was asked for by a parent, spouse or girlfriend.

confirms it beyond a doubt.

There is no such thing. Friends and relatives CANNOT request leave for soldiers, period, NO exceptions. The very fact that he brought it up means that he is a scammer, plain and simple. He dropped it because he knows you aren't going to pay it right now. As long as he thinks you are still interested in him, he will back off for a while on the requests, be extremely romantic, and try to get you more invested in the "relationship." Once he feels you are convinced, he will bring up coming to visit you, and if you accept that, he will either try again with the leave request, or create an emergency that will require your money to fix.

The best thing to do is to drop him now. Don't try to get him to admit he is a scammer (more often than not, the scammer will cling to the stories of his innocence, but occasionally a scammer will "confess" and tell new and different lies aimed at getting money from you a different way) as there is nothing to gain. We also ask that you don't point out his mistakes, as you will teach him what not to do next time. Posting some of his early emails, which are scripts he will reuse, will help others to avoid being scammed.

As far as location goes, when you see NNFMP in the headers, a special protocol is being used that hides the person's true location, so in this case we can't pull a location from the headers. NNFMP is often associated with with scammers and spammers.

Welcome to ScamWarners dragonlady. You have done some good research and it is very helpful to post the headers as you did.

Scammers are from all over the world including the USA and the UK. Several things you have said the scammers said confirm to me that he is a scammer. He uses poems from others that are available on the internet as his own words. He posts in different fonts, which indicates that he is copying and pasting the materials.

There is not that much difference between the way people in the UK speak and the way the people in the USA speak. I am often mistaken for a citizen of the UK, which I am not, because of my post style. I am a life long citizen of the USA.

Pictures mean nothing. It is possible to lift plenty of pictures off of the internet and claim to be the person in the picture. The fact that he agreed not to ask you for money, then asks you for money is another proof that he is a scammer. That is what scammers do, they take money from their victim for things that cannot be verified (like repair of a computer or some other device). Once you "crack" and send money, they know they have you.

Scammers always deny being acammers. Always! Don't confront him any further. Don't tell him of this site, those actions will just help him with his scamming and he will be better equipped to take money from another victim. Just drop him. Block his email and IM so you are not tempted to re-engage with him. Nothing good will come out of staying in contact with this kind of a liar, thief and criminal.

You have done well to spot this scammer. Thank you for posting this information up so someone else might be helped by it.

Dotti has beat me to this and posted some GREAT information.

Hi there Dragonlady, and welcome to Scam Warners.

First of all, let me tell you that any of us can fall prey to a skilled scammer catching us at the right moment, you however had the lucidity to contact us after things started not to add up, congratulations

I'm really happy to hear that your correspondence has only been going on for a short time. Hopefully, you did not have enough time to be too emotionally attached to this character.

I am 100% convinced that this is a scam.

To be honest with you, I am not the most seasoned expert here, but a few things give it up.

First, your poem story is a very strong signal, but then again, it could happen to a particularly lazy and shady individual.

Second, however, the user does not have a facebook page. (being an US soldier, he should like to show all the pics of the places he visited,his muscles, his guns, the puppies he threw off a cliff, but most of all, stay in touch with his family and friends)

And lastly, and this is a dead giveaway: when googling the scammer's email address: [email protected]

Only these results show up:
The New Military Dating Scam
A Call to Arms Against Nigerian Scammers
Internet Dating Scam: Fake Soldiers

So luckily for you, not only has this lowlife been scamming other people, he still uses the same email.

On the page below, you can see someone complaining about having been approached by him and him trying to scam.
http://www.soldiersperspective.us/2009/ ... ting-scam/

Believe me when I say this though: He is now on our radar and we do not forgive.

Don't hesitate to post here if you are feeling a bit down about this whole thing.

Kind regards,

Wow, three replies while I was crafting mine

Go Scam Warners!!!

Thank you for participating in this thread spamcanbecute. You have given some good advice. I would take exception to this statement:

Second, however, the user does not have a facebook page.

Scammers often have Facebook and other social networking site profiles. This is when they often find their victims. Sadly, there is no way to confirm that a profile is for a real, legitimate, legal person. I will say that often the wording on such sites by scammers gives away their identity. That is a good thing!

Noted Bubbles, thank you for the advice, and once again, my regards to Dragonlady, and may the internets treat her right

I would like to thank you for your kind words and advice, I am feeling so stupid, luckily having only been in contact with him a short while I am not that attached to him and my heart goes out to those ladies who have not found out so early that they are being scammed.

This site is a godsend and I will be passing its details on to my other friends who are using dating sites.

xx