possible victim of a scammer

Hi there,
don't know how to start but need your help to find out whether this person is a real US Army soldier.
I have been recently contacted by an American soldier via Facebook. In meantime I read so much about scammers and I started to be suspicious, especially after reading very similar experience of another women.
Soldier´s name is Milton Cahan, his Facebook account has been deleted and re-created several times (Milton Cahan or Cahan Milton).
He is supposed to come from Florida, serving second time in Afghanistan as lieutenant (with a short
mission in Malaysia or UK). His personal e-mail is: Lt Cahan <[email protected]>; other email addresses [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] or [email protected].
Would you be please so kind and have a look on my problem? I would really appreciate if you could give me an advice to avoid being a victim of a scammer.

Many thanks!

[AlanJones]

Hello vikky1808,

It's not really possible to say if someone is a scammer just from an email address.

Could you post some of the emails he has sent you (including the headers - minus your details), that way we can see where he is really writing from.

As Alan said, we can't make a definite determination based solely on an email address.

However, I will tell you that there are several really big red flags in the information you have already given.

-Deleting and re-creating facebook profiles is not typical behavior of an honest person. It is, however, very common for scammers, who do this when people they contact report them for scamming (and sometimes Facebook deletes the profile based on scam reports, so the scammer creates a new one).
-The same goes for all the email addresses. Normal people may have multiple email addresses that they use for different things (for example, separating personal emails from business), but constantly changing personal email addresses like that is very typical of a scammer.
-Also, all of the email addresses are free email addresses. A real soldier will have an official US military address, and he can both send and receive emails at that address.
-Another indicator of possible scam is this email address: [email protected] As stated above, this is a free email address and is not connected with the US military, but perhaps more significant is the address itself. While it is not unheard of, real soldiers do NOT typically put their rank or job title in email addresses they create for personal use. They will use official email addresses for business related to their jobs. Scammers , on the other hand, routinely put job titles, ranks, or even descriptions they want you to believe in their email addresses, in an attempt to reiterate the false information they want you to believe.
-The mentions of both Malaysia and UK are also very suggestive of scam. There is a very large cell of Nigerian scammers operating in Malaysia, and they often bring Malaysia up in the course of the scam to prepare for requests to send money to Malaysia or explain phone calls coming from Malaysia. UK is also frequently included, because it is easy to get a free redirect phone number that looks like a UK number--this is a favorite tactic of scammers.

Again, we would need to see the headers and/or a few of the actual messages from this person to say with absolute certainty, but even the red flags above cause me to lean very strongly toward scammer here.

i was found by a man on a music/chat site a few months ago. claims he is from australia, and is a single father stationed in kabul, afganistan. says the mother died giving birth, real sweet man. has real bad broken english, not like an aussie at all. any way .... never met him and he says he loves me and wants to marry me, but first i need to write a request to, the army to get a vlr for him. (LEAVE) any way he gave me a direct email [email protected]... i would like to know if i am being scammed or not. i asked him why he couldnt do it himself, but he just says for me to do it and see what they say. i've only seen 2 photos of him and none of his son, i asked him for a military id number and he want give that to me either,,,, am i being scammed or not.... does anybody know if that is a real email address or not????
please i need help>>>>>>>

Hi kymberly!

Welcome to Scamwarners!

Yes, this is a scam and a very common one, unfortunately. It is not possible for anyone other than the soldier himself to ask for leave. There are also never any fees to be paid regarding leave, which would be what was asked of you had you sent a message to the scammer's [email protected] address, which is a free email address, not something that any official army business would be conducted through.
Would you please post a message that he's sent you, with the headers intact. Instructions for finding them are below. We can probably see where the message was sent from, almost certainly Nigeria.


Please read this thread for more information: http://scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6528

The best thing to do now is to just stop communicating with him and block his messages from arriving in your inbox.