by steelahlive
Fri Aug 08, 2014 6:39 am
So I don't know where to post this as I am a completely new to this site, and wow i've been up all night as I was recently "almost" scammed by someone. But it made me think back on another scammer that I busted outright and I did a quick search and didn't find his name on here but felt I should warn anyone if it comes up. Admin's please move this to the correct location if necessary, as this is the reverse of a "charity" scam. I am a disabled vet - retired and had a youcaring.com donations site up for a while when my spinal injury and subsequent living costs began to rise. Before my VA decision was fully completed, I set up a donations site for myself to assist with monthly living expenses. NOW - Flash forward two years, and I received an email from a man who identified himself as Gerald ...Something, I cannot recall, but his email address was NOT the same last name. Again, a quick search here yielded no results on the name. His email address was [email protected]. We began corresponding, and I initially thought it was odd that he had even found my donations site, since i had not updated it in over 1 and a half or so years. But still i didn't detect much in the way of suspicious behavior, only because i had been contacted like this before, and the people were genuine in their efforts to help.
He began by befriending me with his story of he and his wife were retired now, and living in hawaii, he was retired military too, and had made large sum of money through business dealings and now spent their time helping others. Long story short he got to the point of requesting a video call to verify himself to me and what not before just loaning out money, but insisted on using yahoo messenger...(suspicion grew) he then asked if i could provide him with some details to my condition and how much i would need to get back on my feet. Now I wasn't financially secure at this point in my life and wasn't running any pc tech services at the time, so i could use the money and told him I'd seen better days. He offered to send me 3k into my bank account as a fellow vet to help out.
I obliged the yahoo idea against my better judgment, but did it anyways, and he was on video for all of 3 minutes, a burly gray headed man that didn't look quite like his yahoo ID picture, but again, time could change someone, still red flag numero 2 - so we get done with the call and he didn't even ask me anything while on video, infact he didn't talk at all, and just simply sat there, waived once, and then went to typing. Said he and his wife were having a second "honeymoon" and wanted to show me something, sent me a screen grab of which I'm looking for to see if i still have it, of his wells fargo account having multiple millions of dollars in it, and that to, please keep that private ya know, i dont just go sending this out to anyone. (please bare with me here as this is all from memory) - He then said I've got to go but if you can send me your bank info I should be able to wire you the money this evening.....hrm....ok....I can give you the account info and you can wire it there, but why not just send it to the youcaring site? Oh i'd rather you get it direct.... but I have to go now so email it to me, as the wife is in a hurry to get out and i can't keep her waiting....now i'm done at this point and decided to see how far this guy would go. I felt it was long overdue i call him out on the few areas of security and phising scams I had done while in the air force, and he didn't respond back for a few hours.
He finally comes back to me a few hours later and says, Hey you want this money or not and got angry with me, so i chose to call him out on the spot. I told him here's what doesn't add up, you're asking for x,y,z - everything you would need to start or gain access to my account and i've given you nearly all of it EXCEPT that one final piece you would need, and you can't tell me why you can't just send it to me thru the initial way you "found" me. He blew up at this point stating look at my bank account, why would i need to steal money from you, I'm not that kinda person, I just want to help. He got angrier and more violent in his remarks, till i finally said look man - you contacted me to help and now getting mad cause I don't want to give you my personal information, the exact same information you just "sent me" and asked me to MAKE SURE I didn't share with anyone, the exact information you would need if you wanted access to my account, sorry I am not comfortable with giving you that info and feel you are doing nothing to really help your own case here. Why not contact me when your "wife" isn't pressuring you to leave, why are you always in a hurry to get this info and off the messenger...
SO i finally said sir, I appreciate your willingness to help but i am going to decline the offer. HE again blew up on me for calling him a liar, and how dare I question his integrity, he just wanted to help me. I said again, i don't believe your willingness is in good faith but if you truly want to help then just send me money using that site, however long it's "going to take" since he was pressed for time, i've been disabled for 2 years and will still be when you "can" help, otherwise do not contact me again.
3 weeks later, I still want to make this right, if you could just give me x info i can have you a check tonight, lol - i finally told him all the cardinal rules he'd broken and how my former job in the military was detecting email scams such as this one and i would be reporting him. He ended the convo and deleted me from his contacts, and has since not contacted me.
I am disgusted at my own shit now here of having been duped and out of practice, but thankfully neither of the two times i've been targeted have they gotten their desired result.
So if anyone knows or has had this similar happen - here's the place to comment.
He began by befriending me with his story of he and his wife were retired now, and living in hawaii, he was retired military too, and had made large sum of money through business dealings and now spent their time helping others. Long story short he got to the point of requesting a video call to verify himself to me and what not before just loaning out money, but insisted on using yahoo messenger...(suspicion grew) he then asked if i could provide him with some details to my condition and how much i would need to get back on my feet. Now I wasn't financially secure at this point in my life and wasn't running any pc tech services at the time, so i could use the money and told him I'd seen better days. He offered to send me 3k into my bank account as a fellow vet to help out.
I obliged the yahoo idea against my better judgment, but did it anyways, and he was on video for all of 3 minutes, a burly gray headed man that didn't look quite like his yahoo ID picture, but again, time could change someone, still red flag numero 2 - so we get done with the call and he didn't even ask me anything while on video, infact he didn't talk at all, and just simply sat there, waived once, and then went to typing. Said he and his wife were having a second "honeymoon" and wanted to show me something, sent me a screen grab of which I'm looking for to see if i still have it, of his wells fargo account having multiple millions of dollars in it, and that to, please keep that private ya know, i dont just go sending this out to anyone. (please bare with me here as this is all from memory) - He then said I've got to go but if you can send me your bank info I should be able to wire you the money this evening.....hrm....ok....I can give you the account info and you can wire it there, but why not just send it to the youcaring site? Oh i'd rather you get it direct.... but I have to go now so email it to me, as the wife is in a hurry to get out and i can't keep her waiting....now i'm done at this point and decided to see how far this guy would go. I felt it was long overdue i call him out on the few areas of security and phising scams I had done while in the air force, and he didn't respond back for a few hours.
He finally comes back to me a few hours later and says, Hey you want this money or not and got angry with me, so i chose to call him out on the spot. I told him here's what doesn't add up, you're asking for x,y,z - everything you would need to start or gain access to my account and i've given you nearly all of it EXCEPT that one final piece you would need, and you can't tell me why you can't just send it to me thru the initial way you "found" me. He blew up at this point stating look at my bank account, why would i need to steal money from you, I'm not that kinda person, I just want to help. He got angrier and more violent in his remarks, till i finally said look man - you contacted me to help and now getting mad cause I don't want to give you my personal information, the exact same information you just "sent me" and asked me to MAKE SURE I didn't share with anyone, the exact information you would need if you wanted access to my account, sorry I am not comfortable with giving you that info and feel you are doing nothing to really help your own case here. Why not contact me when your "wife" isn't pressuring you to leave, why are you always in a hurry to get this info and off the messenger...
SO i finally said sir, I appreciate your willingness to help but i am going to decline the offer. HE again blew up on me for calling him a liar, and how dare I question his integrity, he just wanted to help me. I said again, i don't believe your willingness is in good faith but if you truly want to help then just send me money using that site, however long it's "going to take" since he was pressed for time, i've been disabled for 2 years and will still be when you "can" help, otherwise do not contact me again.
3 weeks later, I still want to make this right, if you could just give me x info i can have you a check tonight, lol - i finally told him all the cardinal rules he'd broken and how my former job in the military was detecting email scams such as this one and i would be reporting him. He ended the convo and deleted me from his contacts, and has since not contacted me.
I am disgusted at my own shit now here of having been duped and out of practice, but thankfully neither of the two times i've been targeted have they gotten their desired result.
So if anyone knows or has had this similar happen - here's the place to comment.
