New kid on the block with a bit of info.....

[Cat'sMeow]

Hello, all. I joined this forum because I have been accosted by not just one but at least four scammers. I didn't bite any of their stories, mainly because I'm a pennypincher who isn't about to give up money to anyone unless I know them so well we are almost in each other's hip pocket, so to speak.
Well, I was a member on Match.com and also on Lovehappens. My story started first with the Lovehappens website. Young man by the name of Ayo Thompson began speaking to me, proposed marriage, etc. but had to go out of the country on business. He was in Cyprus. Fine. What was not fine was when he asked me to help him get back home cause he was out of funds and needed me to reroute some money that a friend of his would put into my bank account. I asked him why the friend could not just do this himself or why he does not go to the American Embassy. He had a glib answer but it still stank. Never did hear from him again.
From Match.com came the second, the third and the fourth! I have a sneaking suspicion that all three are the same person! :o
Started with "sultan_bee" aka Dan Willson. He said he loved me but he was in Nigeria on business. He was always flipflopping. He would tell me he loved me but that I must not love him cause I was always pulling away from him. Okay......Just recently I found a post under "Yahoo Answers" in which a woman who logs in as 'a mother' was asking if anyone had been speaking to "sultan_bee" aka Dan Wilson from England! I wrote her and told her everything I knew even though her post was three months old.
Sneakthief number two is a guy who bills himself as "Laplisal" or Larry John. I was talking to him when he actually asked me to loan him $500 to get back from his job in the UK. Told me he would have a check for $98,000 when he got back so I knew he was good for the money. Puh-lease! If he gets paid my salary x3 why doesn't he have $500 handy?? No money there either. He's stopped emailing. He made a fatal slip in telling me that I didn't love him if I didn't give him the money. Love has nothing to do with your finances. It's like Marilyn Monroe said. "Don't you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? It doesn't really matter but goodness, doesn't it help?" IOW, money isn't everything. What also tipped me off is how he was always telling me to not bother to go back to the website. I didn't but his picture changed anyway. I was looking in an old email for the phone number he gave me and noticed how the image had changed! I asked him and he got all outraged, said he'd complain to Match, but a week later it was still there. I reported him to Match and have since cancelled my membership.
Now I am talking to a guy named Eric Imoyera (ericyera60@yahoo)who is an art dealer in Minnesota. This would not bother me except that he just told me he got back from a business trip to Cyprus. (gonna wait around till he slips up, though, and I'll have the goods on him!)
But, God, help me! Here we go again! :no: Cat

[outbackmark]

You can work out from where the email has originated. If you would like, foreward one of his emails to me (delete the conents if you wish I only need the header information) and I can work out where it came from 99% of the time, particularly if it was a yahoo address scammers often claim to be somewhere they are most definatly not.
You can send me email via this forum.:thumbup1:

[Unregistered]

Are you still talking to Eric the art dealer from minnesota??
Sounds like the same guy I am talking to from London. Just curious

[debbieg722]

I, too, am talking to this jerk. thought he was too good to true. He told me he was in Pittsburg.CA (close to me) selling artwork.. Supposedly, he is flying here from London on Friday to meet me! Will see how long it takes to ask for money!

[Aeval]

I, too, am talking to this jerk. thought he was too good to true. He told me he was in Pittsburg.CA (close to me) selling artwork.. Supposedly, he is flying here from London on Friday to meet me! how lee how long it takes to ask for money!

Hey there!

I strongly suspect that he will experience some unforseen calamity before he manages to get on the plane. I am going out on a limb here, but he will either get really sick and need money for treatment or he will get stopped at customs and will need money to get out of there.

They have many a storyline that they employ, but they're all pretty unbelieveable upon closer inspection.

[debbieg722]

I know. One of the first things I do is go to Google and type in the persons name to see if it shows up on any website like this.

I was talking to some dude and told him I was on to his scam and after he called me every name in the book, then he tried to get me to go into business with him. I played along until he wanted my address, then I deleted him.

Malaria seems to be the 'infectious disease' of a lot of these scammers.

[outbackmark]

That's the way Debbieg don't get sucked in bt these guys, if you wise up to any scammers make sure you post the details, email name etc, so as it is searchable for his next target.
Thanks
OBM

[Frazzle]

Rather than searching for or posting email addresses or names, it's probably better to use some of the features of the scam. Scammers change email addresses very often, and quite regularly (every couple of months) change their scamming name. However, they do tend to use almost exactly the same "format" email every time.

And of course there's the red flag features (West Africa, bad English, advance fees, Western Union, urgency, secrecy, etc, etc) to watch out for.

[Cat'sMeow]

Re the post from Debbieg722,
I knew something was up with him!! Son of a *****! He was supossed to come out to California from Minnesota for Thanksgiving. He didn't then and didn't offer any explanation for it either. I asked later and he said he had to take a trip out of town. He supossedly went to Africa and now he's busy with holiday sales. Don't make me laugh!
They disconnected my messenger at work and I told him so. Think I've heard from him since? Not bloody likely! I even sent an email asking if I still mattered to him. Haven't heard anything and doubt that I will. Personally, I'd like to get my hands on him. I could probably take him and boy do I have a lot of displaced agression that I'd like to unload on him! :x

You can work out from where the email has originated. If you would like, foreward one of his emails to me (delete the conents if you wish I only need the header information) and I can work out where it came from 99% of the time, particularly if it was a yahoo address scammers often claim to be somewhere they are most definatly not.
You can send me email via this forum.:thumbup1:

But how would I do this? I don't see anything that could possibly work.

[Nyla]

If you Google "reading email headers", you can typically find some tutorials on how to read them and get the originating IP. From email clients and providers that actually provide them. Not all clients show full headers, and not all emails include the originating IP.

However, don't get your hopes up about finding someone's street address just from an IP. In general, you can easily find the country and probable city. However, even if a scammer is telling the truth about what country he is in, that doesn't necessarily mean he is telling the truth about anything else. Like his name or why he is where he is.

[Unregistered]

Anyone talking to him?

[Unregistered]

Registered on EHarmony and in the process of scamming me out of a laptop! Has anyone heard of him?

[ThatGrrl]

Hi there you two :) Edward Smith is a pretty common scammer name, as it sounds so "western" to them. I can't say I've heard of Eric Imoyera before, mabe other have though?

[Unregistered]

Anyone talking to him?

He's a class one FRAUD, avoid Eric Imoyera at all costs. He knows how to put on the charm, but he could write a book on excuses. STAY AWAY FROM HIM.

[equinesal]

This dude showed up and is to good to believe.

[Enough]

I just finished my chatting with this creap. 5 weeks and then the hit. He stated he was from NY and an Art Consultant and travels the world. I even got his international phone #'s - 2 of them.
Then last weekend he was robbed and would take him longer to get back due to he needed to get a new passport. OMG, he's a smooth talker, but not that smooth.
He asked me to wire him money because Nigeria doesn't accept credit cards and his bank had frozen his account. I told him no, I didn't have any money and when I wrote him back to state that if he makes 150K a year, he should have no problem getting money wired to him so he can get home.
I laid it all out on the line today to him and boy his attitude changed and I have not heard from him since. I might of been corresponding but I'm far from being dumb.
I also contacted both Match.com where he originally contacted me right after Christmas as well as Yahoo.
Creep, I hope he gets caught and I sure hope that noone falls for him once he asks the question for money.
This world is really out of control.

[Sarah]

Hello, Enough, and welcome to the board. It looks like you are doing what is called by many "scambaiting". I would check out this post first though.

http://www.fraudwatchers.org/forums/showthread.php?p=21436#post21436

[Unregistered]

Miss Enough don't waste your time on this dude. I had an encourter with him, only I don't think he expected me to be the detective that I am. When he said he could not come and the poor thing met with a calamity, I started checking with the British Embassy in my home area and then with the Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.(all done on line at no cost to me) The Nigerian British Embassy was kind enough to call the supposed hotel and speak to Eric who said all was taken care of and he did not need assistance. The lady at the embassy said that the person claiming to be Eric had a heavy Nigerian accent and then told me the stories of all the scams. Avoid this chap at all costs, he knows how to push all the right buttons. He's a doozie.

[Enough]

Thank you for the advice. That is exactly what I have done. It's sad that this world is so out of control but you have to be very careful nowadays. Thanks.

[Unregistered]

I wish I had found these stories before.

He took me for quite a sum of money. My fault, I was an idiot. But like all the other posts, his story was the same. And he is very good at his stories. My only hope is that karma get's him and get's him bad.

[Unregistered]

Everyone look out for Larry P.(Peris)Jones - Executive Exporter!

[FW Admin]

Can you offer some more information as to why we should be wary of this particular person?

[Unregistered]

Dan Willson - sultan_bee has found his way to the land down under ladies - have had two emails and he loves me already... english not too bad, however you can tell it's not his first language. He came onto me via match.com.au

It's a shame because the picture he is using is cute - shame I'm talking to some scummy man from nigeria...hehe

Thanks for the heads up with this site - and yes google anyone you are talking to....

[Unregistered]

Hi again ladies.... looks like strike number 2....

this time it is alvin jon pixler... again on match.com
email is forcepixer@yahoo.com
english is bad, sentiments are worse.... heads up....!

[marika]

STAY AWAY FROM HIM. He is a con artist. He told me he lived in England and that he went to Lagos Nigeria to buy sculpters. He was in California when he got my picture on Match.com. Of course he was beaten up and robbed. He was waiting for a friend to send him money so he could go home. He talked about the heat and the riots in the streets, and the lights going out, with no A/C. He asked me to send him money so he could get back to England. Feard for his life. Supposedly his friend had gone to China on business. He got back to England, if he ever left, or was even there. Said his stolen Mastercard had been charged to the limit and he was dealing with the Bank. Said he would contact me as soon as his financial problems were sorted out. Havent heard from him since. He wrote to me from Dec to Feb.

[lksunshine1]

Hi, I just joined this forum and looks like I'm glad I did. I'd like to know if any of you have heard of a guy who says he's from Las Vegas, a widow, has a 17 yr old daughter, is an Artist. He goes by the name of Nicholas Vittore.

He started chatting with me on one of the dating sites, then sends me roses to my office (I didn't give my home address), says he has to go to an art exhibition in Cyprus, then into the trip, says he was robbed of $74,000 USD, was hit in the head with the butt of a gun and the hotel security guard was killed. Now, that seems to be all the money he had in the world and wants me to send him enough money to get him home on. The US Embassy is "working on" helping him and getting him a passport.

Before taking this trip, he was "already making plans to move to my state" and expand his business here.

Also about the "charities" called NGO? He "works with them helping under-prividged countries", then from "Cyprus" wanted me to accept some items of help and clothing from persons wanting to make contributions to the "charity".

Does any of this sound familiar? I'd really like to get a handle on this. I have the emails if anyone can track down where they came from that would be great too.

PS He changed his email ISP or at least the mail server while on this trip to Cyprus.

This is my first post, so I'm not sure whether to look for a reply on here or if one comes back to my email.

[FW Admin]

Hello and welcome, lksunshine1

If this is in any way "romance" related (i.e., this person has professed undying love and affection for you, or you met on a dating site etc.) then I would strongly suggest you look at our associate website, Internet Love Scams (they are at this URL: http://www.internet-love-scams.org).

They have an extensive database and information resource of love/romance related scams, and have an excellent team of supporters who are all too familiar with these despicable types of fraud.

Going on your description of the given scenario, it does sound very familiar as used by scammers, and I'm sure that they will be able to set your mind at rest (as well as giving you a comforting ear to listen and a shoulder to lean on) regarding your particular situation.

[teach]

Registered on EHarmony and in the process of scamming me out of a laptop! Has anyone heard of him?

I have heard of him. He tried to scam me out of a laptop too, but didn't succeed.