Friend being scammed?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2010 Posts: 2

I posted this on scamwarners as well but wanted your thoughts.

Okay, so I was talking to an ex of my friend and he mentioned this site and another site that involves eating (he said not to mention it here.) Anyway, way back (over a year ago) the person she was in love with was proven to be a scammer. Information was posted here proving it but my friend threatened her ex with posting information about him and pics of him so he requested the information be removed. Well here we are half way through 2010 now and she flew to Gambia to marry him late last year and now has plans to bring him here. Anyway, she acknowledges that he "might" have scammed people. Well, she calls it begging because she says it's hard to live there. Anyway, there are no signs of him doing it now to anyone else from any of the screen names we know about. She sends him 100 dollars each month (she is on disability and doesn't have much so that's a lot for her to send.) He acts very suspicious in my opinion. He is often "sick" and can't contact her for days at a time. By odd coincidence someone he attempted to scam had a friend who visited Gambia. She met him in a bar and he asked her to "sponsor" him, but strangely used a different name than I knew him by. He has since changed his Facebook to be this other name. I suppose that could mean he's moved his scamming to in person? She does seem to be a little suspicious of him lately and said she wished she could go there and "surprise" him and see what was really going on. I guess I have a list of questions so I'll just list them:
1. Could he really be "reformed" and not scamming people?
2. Does he really want to come to the U.S. or is he just trying to come up with ways to extract money from my friend?
3. She says that she just needs 5000 dollars in a bank account and then he can come here, is that accurate?
4. Is there any way to track if he has other profiles on the Internet?
5. If he's scamming people in person, would it be possible to get in touch with people who could check in on him if I found out the bar(s) he frequents?
6. Are there trustworthy people in general who would be willing to watch him, even if for a nominal fee? Even like an investigator or something? I assume the police are not useful in these situations as there are so many scams going on there.
7. Is there a reason he started using another name? Is the first name I knew him by even his real name?

I'm sorry if these questions are dumb I just really worry about her and am not sure what to do.

Posted: Sun Jun 06, 2010 8:57 pm

Hi wisdomofowls,

The folk at ScamWarners will be the best ones to help you and answer your questions. Here at Eater, we occupy scammers' time by writing to them with fake personas - which is a different perspective than providing the answers that you are needing.

It's great that you are willing to search out the truth for your friend - but ScamWarners is the best place to do that .... and I do wish you well in receiving help there.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 06 Jun 2010 Posts: 2

Branwen wrote:

Hi wisdomofowls,

The folk at ScamWarners will be the best ones to help you and answer your questions. Here at Eater, we occupy scammers' time by writing to them with fake personas - which is a different perspective than providing the answers that you are needing.

It's great that you are willing to search out the truth for your friend - but ScamWarners is the best place to do that .... and I do wish you well in receiving help there.

That is sort of what I thought, thank you! Smile

Posted: Tue Jun 08, 2010 2:50 am

Just from my scam baiting I learned a couple facts...

they DO need money in an account that is enough for the US to consider it reasonable they are able to provide for themselves & their health (and to come back rather than just disappear). $5,000 seems relatively low to that goal, but my son traveled from the US to Sweden with less than that...

It takes several years of being able to PROVE you know someone from Africa before they let you bring your spouse over...it's not enough just to go there and marry them...this includes more than one visit...

Tell her to research the requirements -

There are so many fun things to do with them when they're at the point they really think there is a possibility of coming to America - it's a shame your friend has "fallen" for this lad.