I need some help please

Hello all, I was referred to your site by 419eaters. I have a family member who is currently being scammed. She refused to believe that she is being scammed and I need help to stop this guy. He has already gotten her to send money though I don't believe she is telling us the truth about how much. Just recently he needed money so he could get here, she seems to think he will solve all her problems, but off course the amount she sent turned out to be not enough. She is not a wealthy woman, the exact opposite in fact. Any info and a starting point would be greatly appreciated.

Thank You
Silken Spectre

Welcome here silken spectre.

Is it possible to publish one of the emails the scammer wrote? If possible with full headers so we can try to trace the scammer. If you don't know how to do it just ask. It could be hard to convince the family member and you have to be carefull or she will shut you out. First you can point her to this forum where she can get lots of information on scam emails and how they work. Is she a victim of a romance scammer? Did she get in contact with the scammer on a dating site? If that is the case it could be difficult to convince your family member she's being scammed. Again the best thing for her is to visit our forums and see for herself she's being scammed.
Please try to publish one of the emails the scammer wrote so we can be of more help.

Welcome to Scamwarners silken spectre.

Could you please help us to help you and your family member by posting or PMing some information on this scammer.

These guides may help;

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3561

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=5

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=25

http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3607

I am currently trying to get ahold of one of the emails. I don't know how she met him but it is definately a love scam. She is absolutely sure he is for real. I sent out an email to other family members to see if she has forwarded any emails to them. She is unfortunately stubborn and won't investigate on her own at all. He calls himself Sylvester and his story is that he is an American engineer or architect from Florida. He went to South Africa to build a soccer stadium and ended up sinking all his money into it and is stuck in SA. As soon as I get more info I will post.

Just did a bit of searching and found a scammer who is using the name Sylvester Smith http://www.romancescam.com/album/displayimage.php?album=8805&pos=0 Is that the one your family member is writing to?
Be subtle and use tact when trying to help your family member. If she is really in love with this scammer then she could see your warning as a threat to her relationship and she could get even more stubborn. I do hope you can get hold of one of his emails so you can post it here, if possible with full headers.

Hi Silken

I think I have posted on the Eater thread in regards to this and given you link to part of our site that will help.

Everything you have suggested leaves no doubt that it is a scammer that she is dealing with and he will never stop.

One thing that may work is to be able to predict his next moves which is something we can be fairly accurate with.

He will never actually make it to the airport, that is one thing I can guarantee, some of the excuses he is likely to use are;
Mugged at the airport
Detained at the airport
Accident on the way to the airport

He has already used the excuse of not having enough money for the ticket, that is normally a fairly early excuse.

He may also suggest that he has been payed into his bank account that he can not use and the only way he can receive money is through Western Union.

This is important to point out, Western Union transfers are completely untracable, there is no way of knowing who is actually picking up the money, bank accounts on the other hand do leave a trail, scammers will use bank accounts too but they are much less common.

You could ask your mother to get some more photos of him, she could even ask for a specific photo and watch him make excuses as to why he cant do it.

Do you know if he has told your mum about his children, male romance scammers will more often than not have young children after the mother died or ran off with another man, the children will often have accidents as well or he may not have enough money to feed them, of course these are all common lies.

If you have not done so already, read the relevant parts of this thread to her, I am sure much of it will be familiar viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3607

If that fails to get her attention, you can give us details so we can contact her ourselves.

It will also be a huge help if you can get the email address of the scammer to us, we have some people here who specialise in romance scams and we can gather more information directly from the scammer that can show the scammer is also playing us.

The more information we can gather, the better chance there is that she will believe us

Accident on the way to the airport

In that case, the scammer may use a different email address and pose as a doctor treating the "accident victim".
He will ask for money via Western Union to pay for the medical treatment.

Lawyers or family members may also contact her, these new identities are in reality all the same person or group of scammers

As Ralph said, the visit will never materialize. It can't--even if he really wanted to visit, he is not the person in the photos he is using, and he has no access to the real person.

To add to what the others said, scammers love to use guilt as a tool to get the victims to pay. He will try to make your mother feel like she is personally responsible for what happened or will happen.

For example, if he was detained at the airport, It is usually going to be because of something he is carrying.
-If he likes to use guilt directly, the item that caused him to be detained will be a valuable gift he was bringing to the victim--this way he can make her believe she is absolutely responsible for his detention.
-If he prefers to use guilt indirectly, he will be detained because of an item or undeclared cash for his business. The money or item will be confiscated, and he will be jailed if he doesn't come up with a fine. The victim is the only one who can stop his whole life and business from falling apart.

If he is in an accident, robbed, beaten up, etc. as stated above, she will often be contacted by the "doctor."
-The "doctor" may claim he is in a coma and the doctor found her information through his cell phone, his child, etc. He will treat her as the "wife" and may even refer to the scammer as her "husband." He will require emergency treatment to save his life, but it can't be performed without cash up front. (BTW this whole scenario would be totally illegal--doctors anywhere cannot go through people's personal cells, find numbers, and contact non-family members without patient permission). If it is the "child" who is injured, the scammer may not immediately introduce the doctor character, but the scenario will be the same--life threatening situation, no money = no treatment. In some cases, if the victim doesn't pay, the scammer will actually claim the "child" died because she failed to provide the money--but conveniently in the end her money will still be needed to give the child a proper funeral.

He finally messed up. He has been hacking into the family members computer and messing with her bank account and stole her addresses. He sent an email to another family member and I have it now. Please send info on where to send it and be warned that it probably contains a virus. I have not opened it and neither did the person who sent it to me. Looking forward to a reply. Thank you!

Can you forward it to me please. My email address is in my sig, but you will need to remove the two spaces.
What you describe isn't typical behaviour for a scammer, so I'm a bit puzzled.

Does anyone have a update on this thread? I hope it worked out for the best..

As you can appreciate, we deal with a lot of different people, remembering every detail of every case that comes through here would be virtually impossible, I do remember some of the details here and as far as I know things turned out OK in this case, if not there would have been more posts here saying the vic still needs help.