I just came across a post on “A Soldier’s Perspective” discussing a rather disgusting and disturbing trend that has guys posing as soldiers on Internet dating sites. Here’s the quote from CJ’s:
The latest trend involves trolling internet dating sites and convincing women that they are honorable Soldiers who have fallen in love and would do anything to communicate with the object of their affection. But, because they are deployed to Afghanistan or Iraq, they need you to sign up for an expensive telecommunications service like “Military TELEX” in order to make that happen. They profess unending love as their motivator and, unfortunately, many women have fallen for it.
The BIG red flag here is that the guy is asking for money. NEVER fall for that con.
If you come across anyone on a dating site who is asking you for money, regardless of the reason; block them immediately from further contact and then report them to the internet dating service.
You can also check out who is really behind their email address…
AND / or their telephone number…
To read specific details about about one incident, read CJ’s post “The New Military Dating Scam”.
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Wow! I did not know that something like this would happen to me. It has only been two weeks. All though there were many signs, I ignored them because I got caught up in it all. I would have paid the money to be able to call the imposter if the lady at the Money Gram office would not have told me to check it out first. I can now understand how women get caught up in such scams. I am happy that it was figured out before I sent the money. I must say, that it was not all bad. It made me more aware of the sacrifices our troops are going through. Lots of Americans sit back,complain about everyday problems, and do not even think of our soldiers who are bravely giving their lives for what they believe. We take too many things for granted. In fact, while talking to the imposter I kept tabs on the many soldiers who were being killed in Afghanistan and it was heartbreaking. I have a new awareness not only of myself and the confidence it gave me, but an awareness of the destruction of war. I would love to know how I can send letters to our brave soldiers to lend encouragement in their times of frustration. If anyone can help me with this, I would deeply appreciate it.
Our family almost lost my one brother becasue of these scams. He started to talk to Tobi Johnson and Eva Willem in Nigeria.. Tobi fell in love with him and was stuck in Nigeria… Eva promised him a visum and a lot of money to go to UK.. he paid about in total what we could found R160 000 over to them when he didnt have any more money they got some one in South Africa to start to drug him. We was gone for 5 days and when we found him he was confused, disorientated and had no idea that he was gone. He still had a tablet with him and he said “they said i must take this for my headaches” the therapist said if he took that tablet we would have died.
I met Rufus Gibosn on the site – engineer from Uk, i recieved the most wonderful e-mails with poems and how much he loved me and want to meet me. he went on a contract to Nigeria. then he asked for money only $500 but for me it si almost R8000 – i knew he was a scam and i refused. i never heard frm him again but i keep on finding woman on messanger that he is chatting to and warn them
Please be careful: i have read through a few sites now and the message is the same: 1) check the grammar 2) no one can love you after 2-3 mails 3) find out for what company he is working for and search the web for validation(even if he is working for himself and if he is getting contracts from overseas) 3) dont always the faces when he is phoning you from a webcam but cant speak to you 4) the most important – never ever send money.
I have declared war against these scams. lets stand together!! I am Afrikaans speaking and my grammer is 99% of the time much better than the “loved men from UK and US” the change is good that thy are from Nigeria or i even see now Ghana
Hi Carol
Glad you weren’t taken in by the scammers using Gordon Hannetts photos (his real name). I was too trusting and got caught, they were using the Oasis dating site then as well.
Regards
Pauline
Hi Deniz
Yes James Rellinger is a scammer, or at least the people that are using his photos are. Do not have anything to do with them and definitely do no send them any money.
Regards
Pauline
Richard Hannett has been emailing me and IM every day. He has sent photo’s of himself in uniform and that of his son. Sounds like I have been conned but he has not asked for anything, yet!! Says he is a military lawyer stationed in Iraq and he is 4 months off his second mission. I have photo’s so anyone else coming across him might like to swap photo’s. My suspsions were aroused by the very bad spelling and as I am a writer editor in a senior position in the government I found this a little odd.My address is cazzie2011@rocketmail.com. He cropped up on Oasis dating site.
Hi everyone, Back in May a so called SSgt David Will Atkins try to scam me for a leave, he wanted my personnal information put I was wise enough not to have send him enything. They have so many faces and different stories, that this time I thought I met the man of my dreams…he broke my heart and really got sick over it. I wasted over a month with this one claiming that he was coming back home in Canada from the UK where he was working on a project as a Veterian Dr in big farms and because he was isolated he ask me to send money to his sick for medication…when I question them they get very angry and abusive.
One advice always ask questions at the beginning, if the person is sincere they will easily answer everything you want to know about them and never, never send any money to those scammers for any reasons.
they reported over 100,000 scammers in the world on the net, so ladies be very careful with your money and your heart
please say me is james rellinger scammer ? greet from vienna
I recently met a young man thought a site called Speed Date This person by the name of josh johnson wrote to me & calimed that he was in Iraq and went on to tell me how he was an only child and that he has inherited some age pieces of property one in Florida and another in Wisconsin. He wrote to me a total of 2 times and then started to make demands that I delete my acct through speed date and sine he wanted to make sure that I did as he had asked he wanted me to give him my email acct and password. to me this was a big Red Flag and when i told him that I was able to take care of this myself he became very abusive and used profanity stating that I had no trust in him. I explained that we had just met and that I don’t just give out my personal info to anyone especially someone that I had just met. He became irate and said that I needed to trust him if I felt there was going to be any future with us. He even when so far as to ask me to apply for a leave for him to come home and take care of the inheritance. i refused and told him that trust is built on knowing that person not just a few on line messages. So ladies if you come across a soldier by the name of Josh / Joshua Johnson check him out he is not who he says he is. there are other stories that don’t match up such as with his kids and his divorce (made me wonder if he really is divorced or not his answers were rather sketch).So be caeful he is a sweet talker and chammer!!!!
Most internet dating sites as of now have some profiles that just don’t add up. Be watchful. Never send money to anyone. Simple.
I once had a girl tell me that she was born in USA. All I did was ask where she was born. She couldn’t name a town. She said her mom was from USA. Again she couldn’t tell me where in America her mom was from.
She said she was in Ghana and needed some money to make sure I love her. By the way all her photos were of some really good model. Seemed like it was a guy who was answering all my emails.
hi gina please be careful with justin kime he is no longer in the military he was discharged 2 years ago and there is a warrant out for his arrest he keeps emailing me sending his undying love and when i told him all i new he threatened me and my kids so i reported him to the US embassy who later emailed and sent a letter confirming all this they said not to accept any emails or calls to do with him as he is very clever in what he is doing if you go on facebook his wife is on there i told her all about him her name is Landi Kime please don’t accept no contact stay safe.
Hi all, the scammers are now using “face book” and “Are you intereseted” and Zoosk, the most recent one is using the name Capt Cory Robinson from AZ USA. Who professes to be serving in Kandara in Afgan. He says he is a widower and he has a 12 year old son. He tries to extort money $2500 to pay for forms to open a vault which contains money left to him by his late father Gen James Robinson.
They use yahoo and gmail and there is a man by the name of Mr Lowther from the treasury.sec@consultant.com who mails the request for the money to be sent by Money gram or Western Union to Rose G de Leon @ 314 Nabraska Street Texes 7830 USA. They also use Fidelity Investment Company SA-US Financila Aid Office.
Hope this brings some more awareness about these scams.
I met a 48 year old soldier on spark.com and he claims that he is in Iraq. I am a military brat and the ex-wife of a soldier. I also teach on a military installation. I started asking basic information that I know is easily answered. The guy didn’t even know that the unit he stated he was stationed with was a national guard unit out of wisconsin. He claims that he his from New York. His name is sgt. Michael Tom. I went back to the website today and guess what? all of his pictures were deleted and his profile was redundant. Thank goodness my dad and ex husband taught me enough about the army and its acronyms in order to determine a fake when I saw it. Please be careful out there!!
Hi Everyone
Just to add on, the fbi contact was lieutenant Jeffrey C. Johnson
FBI Investigation Team, now I have been checking his email to me as well,
investigatorfbi@consultants.com, he was very convincing too I must add, ladies
if anyone suggests that you assist to catch the criminal and asks for
all information, I think they are gathering what you know, so they can avoid detection. They even make you feel they want to get you money back and oh heres another carrot they dangle, hte nigerian govt. will compensate you, likely story. All as scam ladies, the Ip addresses are tracking back to Virginia. This is some very complex and clever network of crooks, BEWARE!!!!!
I am glad that I had doubts about this too and stopped dead in my tracks. From now on the best place for email checking is from yahoo, full header, and I suggest everyone should check this if they are hell bent on internet dating, its just so dicy playing with peoples emotions and not to mention money. Did’t realise finding love was so hard !!!
Ladies another tip, for those of you who have doubts, check ip addresses from each eamil you receive from the said person, I have just checked into mine from sgt Kime, I had plenty of them promising unying love blabla!! Now this is where I found it interesting, he came online each day and every email I received is from diffecrent ip locations all within one or two days apart, he certainly moves around a lot, one in canada ontario, san jose, sunnyvale, and nigeria to name a few , so it may be more than one person who is pretending to be him and you are actually dealing with several people pretending to be the same person. I know for me its too latem it may help someone else, so if you have had emails please check the very end received from ip address.
Have to say Sgt Justin Kime is one persistent bugger, ladies seriously wathc out and I believe he is using other alias too. I even had fbiinvestigations contact me warning me about the scam and that they had noted I had sent money and want to catch the criminal. I too wanted that and siad I would help, but the more I spoke to them somehing did not ring true about the fbi either, now since when did fbu ask for civiliam assistance, and here is the catch ladies, in order to catch him they wanted me to send money, yes to Nigerian and guess what an amount of $4000 to a location where only one outlet would pay that amount. Did I oblige, like heck I did, told him FBI have resources can do it without me, I want my money back but am not fool again to send more, no way. So watch out they are getting clever at trying to get money out of you one way or another. They sussed I now knew they were con merchants and so tried other avenues, anyone contacted by fbiinvestigator run a mile. They even went as far as showing me money they had retrieved from criminals in an fbi account, not come on sincew when did the fbi become trasparent. Warning Bells are ringing!!!! and have blocked the lot of them.
Please share some ideas so that next time I will know what to do?
So if somebody see the name Paul Miller on the online dating website and his email is p.miller2010@yahoo.com and remember he is a scum bug….don’t fall for it.
Hello! I met a guy at the Book of matches website couple months ago and his name was Paul Miller and he is in the Army and been in Iraq for 1 year this month and in the early stage of our relationship he told me that he had a sister in Ghana that she have a Cirrhosis,that was married to a very rich husband and he and his sister is the only relative here in the States and so we chat every night at the YIM and so he told me he love me and I fall for it but 3 weeks ago he came online and told me that his sister passed away and of course I felt very bad. And also he sent me lots of pictures from him being in the Army base and his civilian clothes one of them is from the Whitehouse.So when he told me that his sister’s passed away I felt sad and sorry for him because he does’nt have any relatives to take care of his sister and he was in Iraq, of course I really felt so bad about him, after few days he told me that a lawyer from Ghana, quote he told me his sister’s lawyer will be contacting me because he told the lawyer that I am his wife and if he can transfer the estates and assetes to my name and I told him that whats gonna happen if they ask a marriage license and he told me he hope they won’t ask me that and I was kind of shock and I feel so honor to be his wife. So after few days I got an email from a Lawyer in Ghana, his name is Desmond Denyoh and ask me lots of information about me and i gave it to him, we exchanged emails and told me that Paul Miller’s sister left him a 15 million pounds, thats almost $23,000,000 and so inorder to transfer the money to my name the lawyer have to go to Ghana High Court for transfer of certification and it cost $3600 and of course I want to help Paul Miller I sent Mr.Denyoh the lawyer that amount and after that he email me a 2 documents and I thought it was real and so I was just waiting the transfer until I got a call from the lawyer that I need to send him $18,000 for transfer in my bank and I told him I don’t have that much money and after few days I never heard from both the lawyer and Paul Miller and I just realized I’ved been scam and I just lost $3600.
hello,
i am in contact with a US soldier. i check his IP and it’s in the USA. AOL.
is this valid for IP for soldiers, even stationed abroad like Iraq?
any info would be appreciated. thanks!
I was the target of 4 different scammers via a dating site and even managed to trace a fifth one on the same site by checking similar names and photos! Luckily I didn’t send any money but two of them were particularly persistent even when i told them they were lying cheats. Ladies, watch out for curt_starks01@live.com (has numerous other emails that are variations of this one) and also sgt_chrisambrose212@hotmail.com, sgt_chrisambrose212@yahoo.co.uk
The former claims to be stationed in Baghdad and the latter (originally believed to be an English soldier) now claims to be a US Apache pilot based at Fort Campbell. Personally, I think these scumbags should be shoved off a very high cliff!
Also if the soldier or marine never takes you on base. There’s a chance the person is not in the military. 99 % of the time they allow people on base and the person you date even takes you on there to check things out . When allowed.
Well if some of you don’t know this. Do background checks. Call military bases. And also it is a crime to pretend to be military when you are not & never were. There is only few real one’s on the website topix. People has been going around stating one phony one goes by the name aircav1. After reading some stories of his. They are a little crazy . If this is true. People like that can be jailed. So please be careful.
I for got to add they are mostly all in construction. on match .com I statred on a miltitary sight the other day, and I can pick these guys out….I wish dating was easier!!
The gold thing must be a big thing…William Mattaice was in to gold. I actually seeked some of these guys out just to see what they were all about. money of course, and they want your address. Some are vert forward, and others are vry kind..watch out. another websight pointed out they use lower case “i” in there profile, that is true of some, for others, not so much. Some speak very good English, others poorly…watch out ladies…
HI
gina g
your instincts where right bout sgt justin kime after i saw this i investigated more and found there are other women he is doing it too he used seperate email for us kimejustin200@yahoo.com he asked for a phone link which rang alarm as i have friends in uk armed forces there was a lady i spoke to in the US who was about to send money for phone ad money to give him early leave im glad with your help i stopped her he sent me bouquets and emails promising the earth