JENNY 'S STORY

A Perth woman who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in a Nigerian online romance scam has recovered part of the money after a police investigation. The ABC understands she has recovered about $100,000, or 40 per cent of the money she transferred overseas. The woman, who only wants to be known as Jenny, is the first known WA romance fraud victim to receive any money back.  Jenny, 51, told ABC 720 local radio that she developed a relationship with a man called Gary in 2013 on the online dating website RSVP.

Photo of Gary used to scam Jenny

The Nigerian scammers had stolen a photo off a website and had created a fictitious profile for Gary, who claimed to be in love with her and needed money for a business-related crisis. "We developed a relationship online fairly rapidly, and fairly rapidly he started requesting money and I sent those sums of money after about six weeks," she said.  "I was simply looking for companionship after my divorce and never thought there would be such cruel con artists waiting to capitalise on my loneliness. ”When he intended to send his money back via me, I realised there was something really wrong here and asked some questions and ended up with [Police] Project Sunbird, who confirmed it was a scam." How could I have fallen for that? Jenny, online scam victim lamented.

Detective Sergeant Dom Blackshaw has confirmed that the major fraud squad has been working with Nigerian Police, who have arrested a suspect and charged him with obtaining money under false pretences. "It is our fourth arrest working with the Nigerians – there has been a lot of cooperation between us," he said. "The advice we have been given from the Nigerians is that he is part of a wider group and they invariably always work in syndicates." Detective Sergeant Blackshaw said the arrest stemmed from Police lifting fingerprints off a document the scammer sent to Jenny, which matched a person known to the Nigerian Police. Jenny said she had resigned herself to the fact that she would never see the money again and felt like she had won the lottery after her bank agreed to recall several payments of money she sent to the conman. "I have got it; it is safely tucked away in my bank," she said. "When I learnt I had been defrauded, I put a recall on the funds and I have maintained contact with the overseas banks since that time in different channels, just assuring them that it was fraud.  ”I sent three payments and I got two repayments back in the same amounts, so I got two phone calls back saying the money is here. "I feel very lucky; a bit like winning the lottery." Jenny said the scammers prey on people who are vulnerable. "I guess that was my question, how could I have fallen for that?" she said. "And I think it is not what or who, it is when. It is when a person has a little chink in their armour that someone can get in, and it festers and they make the most of it."

Detective Sergeant Blackshaw said efforts to stop overseas scams targeting Australians need to be made on a national scale. "The scammer in West Africa is going to look at an Australian as an Australian," he said. "They are not going to look at them as a West Australian or a South Australian. They are targeting the whole country, and the whole country needs to get on board. "People are getting targeted daily and what we are trying to get the message out is that it is the skill of those doing the targeting that needs to be the target, rather than the victim that is fallen for it. "These people are very clever at what they do and they will not stop."

Australian Detective Dom Blackshaw, Nigeria Detective Paul Okoli and online-romance scam victim "Jenny" pose for a photo in Perth (Supplied: WA Consumer Protection).

Acting commissioner for consumer protection Gary Newcombe described it as a unique case. "For years, many self-reporting romance and fraud victims have been contacting WA ScamNet and we have never known any to get their money back," he said. "Indeed, of the 152 Project Sunbird victims who contacted WA ScamNet between March 2013 and February 2014, with a total combined loss of $9,357,979, not a single cent has been recovered."

REPORT FROM ONTARIO, CANADA ON ROMANCE SCAM

Ontario Provincial Police were investigating a claim that a Huron County woman was conned out of $32,000 by a man she met through an online-dating site, the Huron Bullet News reported last March. The woman and her new friend communicated online for several months, with the fraudster sending her fake photos. Once she was hooked, he asked for money, telling her he was having customs problems while travelling in Russia and China. She wired a total of $32,000 in multiple transactions, the News said.

In a related development, Constable Michael Russell said victims are offered a share of profits or other benefits if they send money overseas to help their online friend with shipping and storing a large quantity of gold, CP said. One victim paid as much as $50,000 before the fraud was discovered, Russell said. Police and the anti-fraud centre say there are ways to protect yourself against online-dating scams, especially the ones sourced outside your community. "If you cannot get that person to meet face to face, if you start to get excuses as to why that cannot happen, I think that should be a bit of a red flag,” Staff Sgt. Stephanie Burns of the Ottawa police anti-fraud section told CBC News. “If the person starts talking about money issues inappropriately early in the relationship, I think that should be an indicator perhaps this person’s motives are not what yours are.”

Williams said organized fraud groups often use templates for their messages, which sometimes can be found via Internet searches. An example can be seen on RomanceScam.com, CBC News noted. Ontario's Ministry of Consumer Services, among other places, offers hints on how spot potential online dating scams.

LIZ CHARYNA AND LISA DWYER SCAMMED BY THE SAME MAN

The dating world is a minefield at the best of times but the Internet has added fresh risks, and not just of a broken heart, but also loss of both cash and valuable things to organised con artists. As a higher percentage of people use the web to find relationships, online-dating scams have become one of the major sources of fraud against Canadians, CBC News reports. According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, online-dating fraud cost Canadians $17 million last year. And even though the total number of victims is small compared with other scams, in the last three years they lost more money looking for love online than to any other type of fraud. It is also become big business. Your old-school gigolo or gold-digger usually could only drain a couple of people at a time. But the centre's Daniel Williams said organized crime has latched onto online dating as a lucrative source of cash. "It is a big gang," he told CBC News. "They are doing the same thing to many people at the same time."

The advantage of the web, of course, is that the fraudster never has to meet his or her mark, though Williams said they will if the payoff is rich enough. Otherwise, they can tailor their online personas to meet the expectations of the victim and may wait months before introducing the subject of money, he told CBC News. "They can afford to have the money come in many months later because there is a stream of money coming in all the time," said Williams. Even if the fraud is discovered, there's little likelihood of getting your money back and prosecution is difficult if the scam is based abroad.

Besides gang-based operations, small-time scammers still lurk in the online dating world. CTV News reported earlier this month that two Vancouver women lost thousands of dollars to a man who connected with them via Plenty of Fish. After several dates, the women say he charmed them into cashing personal cheques for him, which later bounced. Liz Charyna lost $400 and Lisa Dwyer $2,700. The two women knew each other and were unaware they were seeing the same guy. “He really came across as somebody who has a good job; he mentioned that he was a site supervisor for construction, plus he had a renovation business on the side,” Charyna told CTV News. “He seemed legitimate.” The two women did not realize they had been scammed by the same man until they discussed online dating at the gym. “I need to warn you of this man that I just met,” Charyna told Dwyer. “Oh, I just met him,” Dwyer replied. She started a blog to alert other women and told CTV News she's received emails from several other victims, many too embarrassed to report the fraud. “When something like this happens to you, you just feel sick,” Charyna said. “If you just stay silent, that is where he has his power.” Both women have made official complaints to police. A man with the same name as the one they dated has a long criminal record, including fraud, CTV News said.

ROMANCE SCAM VICTIM TELLS HER STORY TO PREVENT FURTHER CRIMES

A romance scam victim has waived her anonymity to raise awareness of this latest fraud wave in conjunction with Action Fraud, the UK’s national fraud reporting centre. Ms Brenda Parke, a 60 year old retiree, was scammed out of £60,000 during February and March this year after joining an online dating site and befriending a man calling himself Bradford Cole. Over the following weeks they developed a close relationship via e-mails and phone calls. Bradford portrayed himself to be a successful Dutch businessman who earned his living supplying and fitting computers. He told her his partner had died and said he was estranged from family and friends. He said he had moved to the UK a year ago bringing his young daughter, Mauoreen, with him.

Ms. Breda Parke, the victim of romance scam.

AN EMOTIONAL STORY

He claimed that while abroad on business, his daughter had been injured in a hit and run accident and required £9,600 for the operation in hospital. Bradford did not ask Brenda for the money directly but claimed to have borrowed so much from the bank and that he had no one else to turn to for help. He very subtly and cleverly manipulated Brenda into taking a position of responsibility for his daughter’s welfare. She wrestled with her conscience and whilst she did not want to give her hard-earned money to a stranger, she did not want to leave a child to fend for herself.  She wanted to pay the hospital directly but was told that they needed cash in advance. Having verified this online, she subsequently arranged money transfers. Brenda’s plight continued when Bradford needed a total £44,500 for his business and then further monies for his accommodation and transport home. Brenda repeatedly told him that she could not help and suggested other places to try, but with no success.

 Each time Brenda told him that she was unable to help him further he said that he understood totally and appreciated how difficult it must be to trust someone she did not know. He told her it was his responsibility to sort the money but claimed he had nowhere else to go. Brenda perceived him to be a very kind and gentle man, but naive about the practicalities of overseas business. Bradford talked much of the times they would soon be able to spend together getting to know one another away from such difficulties.

He asked Brenda to meet his return flight at Birmingham airport so they could go to the bank together to return her money. Having received almost £60,000 in cash, Bradford failed to arrive at the airport. Brenda immediately reported her story to the police.

Talking about the case Brenda said: "With great hindsight, I am fully aware of how utterly stupid I have been and I appreciate that there is little, if any, chance to get my money back. Having previously considered myself to be a bright and intelligent woman, who has successfully created a secure financial environment for my retirement, I believe that if I could be manipulated and reduced to ‘a puppet on a string’ because of this man’s subtlety and supposed sincerity, then there are millions of vulnerable people out there just waiting to be abused by a very professional and consummate actor. It is so cunning and amazingly well done that I am left reeling with shock at my own vulnerability. My embarrassment is overwhelming but I feel that I must take this step in reporting my experience in order to help promote awareness and to help other innocents to avoid such devastating situations. In my subsequent research, I have discovered that scamming is a multi-billion pound business worldwide and that there are even teams of scammers working together to create the ultimate scam.

"Anyone in a similar situation should stop and think before handing over a single penny. I would urge anyone who is a victim to come forward and report this horrendous crime to Action Fraud.  The perpetrators manipulate you to pay a huge price financially and emotionally for a fictitious relationship and their activities must be disrupted. I urge dating sites to take far more responsibility for who they allow to advertise on their websites and for the banking and money transfer companies to take responsibility for raising staff awareness, thus helping to protect their customers and fulfilling their duty of care towards them."

CAROL'S STORY - DATING SCAM

I am 53 years old and after the death of my fiancé, I decided it was time to move on so I decided to try a well-known Christian dating website.  I was new to internet dating sites and I hoped most people on this site were of God and that there was a chance I would meet my soul mate. Sadly this was not to be the case. I was first contacted by a man who said he was from south Florida, a wealthy and a very attractive man my age. He stated he worked in oil exploration and dealt with the most influential people in the world. He told me his wife of 25 years had died of cancer and that he was very lonely and immediately asked me to begin corresponding with him via personal e-mail which I did.

After several long and very beautiful emails were exchanged between us the correspondence immediately stopped after he asked to call him which l never did. He told me that my e-mails were beautiful and that I seemed to be exactly what he was looking for in a wife. I was so confused by this but decided not to call him even though I had his cell number. After a week or so I was on the dating site looking at pictures and decided to send a message to one of the men on line. As soon as I sent a message to him, I received a message from him. I thought this was an amazing coincidence at the time. His profile showed that he lived in the same city and attended the same church. I was elated and felt so comfortable speaking to someone who actually went to my church. He immediately asked me to correspond via personal e-mail so I agreed. He said he owned his own business and was currently building an oil platform near Cape Town, Africa and that the job would end in mid of April when he would return home. Our conversations started out slowly talking about what we were looking for in a partner, a little about our lives and much about our faith in God. His e-mails were articulate, and his knowledge of the bible was excellent. He stated he was very lonely; his number one priority was to be a good father and to live a God fearing life. His son just so happened to be the same age as my son. Over the course of 8 days our e-mails were frequent and long. I poured out all of my feelings and he also seemed to do the same.  He promised to “guard my heart with his life” and to have “faith bigger than my fears” when I was sceptical. He told me that he never dreamed he would find his soul mate on a dating site but knew that we were destined to be together.

He wrote wedding vows and we began talking on the phone 2-3 times per day. He sent flowers on the very day that he called me and told me a deal for equipment had gone bad and asked for money. I knew immediately this was a hoax. I confronted him about his address and asked him to tell me what street our church was on. He could not and became angry. I called the FBI and Police; filed a report to the internet fraud division. He called incessantly all night and all the next 2 days, I did not answer. I am okay though I feel really foolish. The worst part is that I sent him pictures of my son and his fiancée which I fear he will use. What he did not count on is that countless friends came to me in the days before warning me this might be a hoax and I remembered God’s word telling us to test everything. My faith has carried me through but I am determined to help prevent this from devastating someone who might be more vulnerable.

JENNIFER'S STORY - DATING AND MONEY LAUNDERING SCAM

I am stuck right now; I simply do not know what to do but reading the stories on your site gives me a sense of clarity that I need to voice this out.  It all started when I met a man on a dating site on July 9, 2013. His name is Anthony; an engineer by profession. He lives in New York, a widower and has a 9 year old daughter. He claimed that he was on a construction project on-going at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and he intends to see me once his project is done.  After a few days of exchanging emails through the dating site, he asked for my personal email address so it would be easier for us to communicate. He would send me emails every single day with words that would melt my heart and make me visualize a world that I could share with him. Eventually, we started chatting via Yahoo messenger and also talking on Skype almost every single day for more than an hour.      

          The first time I got suspicious was when he asked me to let him use my personal bank account for his business transactions. He said that his client would be sending him some funds for the purchase of materials in Singapore and all I needed to do was to give them the money. I was lured by his promises that the transaction was legitimate and he would never do anything to hurt or harm me. I gave in and sent him all the information that he requested.  Weeks had passed before an actual fund transfer took place. The money amounted to 61500 sgd. He instructed me to withdraw 50000 sgd and, on the same day, his partner came to my office and picked up the money. He told me to keep the rest of the money till when he comes over here to be with me.  I was reluctant and kept questioning him about the purpose of the transaction. This put him in a defensive manner. Then, the next day he asked me to transfer some funds using the remaining money to Cairo, Egypt to be used for legal paperwork for the properties that he had acquired from his deceased father. I told him that I was not able to do the transaction because I had been warned by Western Union staff about this kind of scam and I had had enough of it. I told him off and said I will donate the money to a charity if he does not find a way to get the remaining money from me. The following day, a different person came to get the cash.

After a few days, I received a call from my bank asking me about the fund transfer in my account and was told that it had been recalled. I was told that I needed to return the money because there was an investigation being done. I called the bank the following day to confirm the call's legitimacy and I was informed that there is an ongoing case and the right personnel will be contacting me. I have not received another call from the local bank after the first encounter but I was surprised to receive an overseas call from Malaysia today from a man who introduced himself as an FBI agent. He mentioned that I am innocent and I was used only to hoard money from other people using my bank account. The person who sent the money is filing a case against Anthony and my name is included as an accomplice. I was told that in order for me to be off the case I need to pay $1500 to register my innocence or else I will be arrested if proven guilty. I am torn whether I should seek legal advice or should I just report this right away to the police.

Editor's note:
       Jennifer inadvertently became involved in a scam designed to trick her into laundering the proceeds of crime.  The criminals trick their victims into accepting fake or stolen cheques or allowing money from hijacked bank accounts to be transferred to them. Victims are then asked to send a portion of the funds via a transfer system such as Western Union. In this way, the criminals have effectively turned the proceeds of crime into untraceable cash while leaving their victim to face the legal and financial consequences. The criminals operating such money laundering schemes often use online dating as a means of finding new victims.  

In this case, the criminal and his fellow scammers have attempted to extract even more money from Jennifer by pretending to be an FBI agent and demanding a payment to secure her innocence.

VICTIM’S STORY FROM AUSTRALIA

Lonely and unfamiliar with the world of internet dating, Peter was just looking for a nice lady when an attractive woman introduced herself via an online dating site. She sounded genuine and the photos looked good. “I thought everything was alright the way she spoke, the things she used to say," says the 66-year-old pensioner and retired tyre-fitter from Dubbo. The pair exchanged phone numbers and spoke nearly every day. A few weeks later, the woman began asking for money.

"It started off, could I lend her $500? She had me believe there was going to be a relationship and she was going to move in here with me," he says. "It ended up to about $9500."

Peter is one of thousands of Australians whom fraudsters have left not just broken-hearted, but also broke. Nearly one-third of the $90 million swindled from Australians last year was swiped from people searching for love, a new report into targeting scams shows. Dating and romance-related fraud netted $25.2 million last year, up 8 per cent on the previous year, making it the top scam by total losses, according to the latest report by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Romance-related scams also yielded some of the highest returns per victim, accounting for nearly 30 per cent of money lost but only 3 per cent of reported scams. Those who fell for romance-related scams lost an average of $21,200 each more than three times the $7000 average loss across all reported scams.

ACCC deputy chairwoman Delia Rickard said relationship scams caused the most emotional and economic harm to victims, with fraudsters investing substantial effort into researching their victims. "They are very good at tapping into people's emotions. They will spend weeks, months, even years, really building a trust relationship," she said.

That an increasing number of people are meeting genuine partners online has made others more vulnerable to victimisation through internet dating sites. She said the ACCC was working with dating and romance sites to implement proper security.

"People want to find love and a lot of people are in a very vulnerable state when they do fall for [these scams]. We often see that people are recently divorced, recently widowed, and lonely."

She said that many fraudsters combined strategies such as romance and business opportunity scams or advance fee fraud and identity theft. "They will get personal information or bank account information that will enable them to commit further fraud down the line." Advanced fee/upfront payment schemes reaped the second biggest cash haul, with just under $25 million pinched last year. This was followed by computer prediction software and investment scams. Phishing and identity theft showed the largest increase in number, leaping 73 per cent from 2012 to become the second-most common type of scam. People were most likely to fall for health and medical scams, with more than one in two people reporting this kind of scam losing money. Online shopping and psychic or clairvoyant schemes were the next most convincing, according to the report.

One in three victims lost between $100 and $499, suggesting scammers continued to favour high-volume scams such as those asking victims for a small upfront payment to secure a larger sum of money "owed" to them by an organisation. One in 10 lost more than $10,000. Only two of losses more than $1 million were reported to the consumer watchdog last year, with losses of several million dollars linked to sports betting schemes. More than 91,000 complaints were made to the consumer watchdog last year, a four-fold increase from 2009. In a positive sign however, scammers raked in 5 per cent less money than the year before, although the ACCC said many scams go unreported.

The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics personal fraud survey estimates Australians lost $1.4 billion to fraud – more than 15 times the loss reported to the ACCC last year.

Source: SCAMWatch [scamwatch.gov.au]

HIDDEN SCAMS IN Be2 DATING SITE

I just stumbled on this piece and l thought that there is need for me to share it with my followers.

Be2 dating is a dating site to be avoided at all costs. The company is fake and fraudulent, and will steal money from your bank account because they do not give you clear information in their terms and conditions. Here is my story.

I know many people who have found their partners through online dating sites. Personally, it is not for me. Having said that, a single female colleague of mine had a discussion with me at work one day, and pondered over whether we could ever find our ideal guys, given the fact that we were always too tired after work to bother going out to meet someone. When one gets to a certain age, it just seems like too much trouble to go out in the hope of finding a suitable male companion. 'We do not mix in the right circles' we bemoaned. 'Maybe there is something to be said about internet dating. We should give it a go.'

I went home and thought about it. Did I want to spend the rest of my life alone? Would not it be lovely to share a sunset with someone special? I cannot say I am unhappy being single, I have got plenty going on in my life to keep me happy, and I am certainly not lonely, but I thought it would be nice to meet a like-minded guy, with whom I could share a friendship. I was on a certain social networking site one day when an advertisement caught my eye, reading along the lines of 'Find love in your 50s'. I decided to have a look, and to cut a long story short, I ended up signing up to Be2 dating. Initially it was free. I answered a few questions and they gave me a summary of the type of person I was likely to be compatible with, and I could do a search in my area for suitable matches, so I just thought, 'Oh well, go for it and see what happens.'

However, Be2 would not let me go any further without signing up for a 'Premium' membership, which would cost me £5.00. So I paid the money with my card and began my search for Mr. Right. It did not take me long to realise that this was not for me. I actually made myself laugh. What on Earth was I thinking of? This was no way for me to meet someone, and to be honest I really could not be bothered.

Every day when I opened my email inbox there would be mail from Be2, telling me there was 'new matches' for me. In the end I got fed up and went back to the site to cancel my membership. But the link on the site which said 'unsubscribe here' did not seem to be working. In the end I forgot all about it. The mail stopped coming and that was that. Then four weeks ago - to the day, as I write this - I went to the bank to make a withdrawal, where I was told I had insufficient funds. What? I only checked my account online twenty minutes ago and there was money in there then. The teller went on to tell me that I had used my card at 10.05 (it was now 10.20) and the transaction was for £149.95. I was actually standing in the queue when the money was taken out, I explained to her. How could I have done it? I asked her to tell me who the money had gone to and she could not tell me. Cutting the story short again, it turns out that the money had gone to a company in Luxemburg, who after a bit of digging around, I found to be this dating site Be2.

Luckily for me, my bank's fraud prevention department had picked up on it straight away and sent me a text (while I was still in the bank trying to sort it out) and they blocked the payment. I came straight home and e-mailed Be2 and told them that I had not authorised this payment, and if they tried to take it again I would report them to the authorities, that it was theft and I would take legal action against them. I received a reply telling me that they did not operate under the law of the UK, and that I was bound to the 'terms and conditions' which I should have read before I joined. After a lot of wrangling and exchanging e-mails with this company, they finally gave in. I had told them that I had tried to cancel my membership, but the link was seemingly 'broken' They told me that they had now cancelled my membership but quoted the terms which evidently say that 'after one month - if you do not cancel before that,- you will be billed for a six month's subscription.' However, they do not give you the opportunity to cancel, because the link does not work. They work on the assumption that if (like me) you do not manage to do it, you will forget about it.

I did a bit of digging around on the net and found many women - just like myself - who had been ripped off by Be2. I was one of the lucky ones, I got my money back, but many more did not and the company are still operating to this day. There will be a big outcry about this company before long and I want to warn everyone not to get involved with them because if you do, you stand to lose a lot of money. I know there are some good sites out there, like match.com and e-harmony, but do not get involved with be2. Check out Be2 scams on google; see for yourself and one more thing, before you sign up for anything online, ALWAYS thoroughly read the terms and conditions.

As a post script, I would like to add that two months on, this nasty company has once again taken £150 from my account, and this is AFTER my membership has been cancelled. The bank are doing everything they can to recover my money, but I am not holding out much hope. The only thing I can do is close my account. It is a lesson learned. I will ALWAYS read the terms and conditions in future before I buy anything online.

SCAM AND SAFETY INFORMATION

It is an illusion for anyone to believe that it is impossible to fall victim of fraud. Conventional wisdom recommends that we be on guard always as scammers everywhere are incredibly deceptive and can ensnare even the most intelligent amongst us. They operate with guile and strike when you least expects. The most educated and the high net worth as well as the most impoverish members of the society have been victim at one time or the other. The young as well as the aged have been targeted. Scammers do not care who their victims are. They strike wherever, and whenever they believe they have the chance to succeed. They are ever alert, setting traps to ensnare their victims.

On the internet, through the telephone and even physical interaction, they stalk us like the deadly predators that they are. But the way to avert becoming a prey is to be conscious of the modus operandi of scammers and the different shades of scam (even though scammers are ever ingenious as new schemes emerge almost on daily basis). Their objective is simple; to steal your money, not through violent means as in armed robbery but through the deployment of a bag of tricks they appeals to the human emotion. The quintessential scammer is a confidence artist who exploits the emotions of dishonesty, honesty, vanity, compassion, naivety greed, among others; to fleece their victim.

Working on these emotions, several genres of scams have emerged. There is the classical 419 where scammers obtain money from their victims by false pretence; there is love or marriage scam where fraudster uses the promise of wedlock as bail to fleece their victims; there is lottery scam where people are asked to pay fees to redeem prizes supposedly won in a sweep stake; there is inheritance scam, and more.
To a considerable extent, most scams are promoted by the greed of victims. For instance, a person who has not entered for a lottery ought not to expect to win yet people, out of greed, believe they can be winners in a game they have not played! So, the starting point is for people to check the appetite for unmerited windfalls. If you want to be immune from scam, the inoculation you need is adequate information. Arm yourself with relevant information on the different types of scams, and the tell-tale signs that could trigger alarm in your consciousness. Such information are available in EFCC publications as well as on our website, www.efccnigeria.org

 Below is a checklist of actions that could save you from the snare of scammers:
· It pays not be too emotional and to double check every information you are given in any business or social relationship.

· Do not give out information about yourself to anybody you don't know or trust.

· Never respond to any mail except you are sure of the source.

· Be very circumspect about stories you are told by strangers and supposed lovers in an internet affair.

· Above all, never send money or disclose your banking details to any one you do not know or trust.

· Never part with your money until you are 100 percent certain that the business is genuine.

· Don't be part of any transaction that seems dubious or which you might not be comfortable discussing with family, friends and associates.

· Any transaction cloaked in secrecy is an expressway to financial ruin.

Culled from EFCC website

A SYDNEY WOMEN FLEECED LOVELORN OLDER MEN OF THEIR LIFE-SAVINGS

A Sydney woman used online dating services to fleece lovelorn older men of their life-savings and then splurged the cash on a new house, luxury cars and plastic surgery, police alleged. The 39-year-old single mother of four; was arrested at home in Miller, Southwest Sydney, on Thursday and charged with several counts of fraud and money laundering.

 It is alleged she used website dating services to strike up relationships with four men aged in the 60s and 70s. She then allegedly used sob stories, including about sick or dying relatives, funeral expenses and bank fees to persuade the men to part with huge amounts of cash. One man transferred her $1.9 million. The other three alleged victims, including an interstate businessman who is said to have spent time with the woman at a north shore apartment, paid her $190,000, $58,000, and $12,000 respectively. The 39-year-old Sydney mother was arrested by police this morning. She blew the cash living the high life, police alleged. "I will describe it as an extravagant lifestyle," Detective Superintendent Arthur Katsogiannis told AAP. The woman acted alone and ran the alleged scam between 2008 and the day she was arrested.

Detective Superintendent Katsogiannis said the woman may have had more victims and urged anyone who felt they had been conned to come forward. He also expressed hope that the alleged victims would get some of their money back after sports cars and other items were seized from the woman's house. Police also froze more than $1 million in cash and assets linked to the woman. The woman was granted bail and is due to appear at Liverpool Local Court on June 25.

BIKE JOHN NIYE IMPRISONED

          

              Bike John Niye, 22 years old internet fraudster, has been sentenced to one and half years imprisonment by a Lagos State High Court sitting in Ikeja,  for defrauding one Laura Wallmam of Indiana, United States of America the sum of $53,500. Justice A Akinlade slammed the prison term on Niye having found him guilty of the four count charge bordering on obtaining money by false pretense and attempt to obtain money by false pretense, preferred against him by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC.

              Reports showed that Niye presented himself to Wallmam as businessman who operates a ‘moving’ company and needed money to get some of his goods out of storage. He met Wallmam in a dating site and has been in a relationship with her using a fictitious name, Toby Encore. 

               His journey to prison began on May 27th, 2010 when officials of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA and DHL Courier Services intercepted a suspicious parcel containing a Teddy Bear and a Blackberry handset sent from the USA to the convict by Wallmam.  The parcel was examined and it was discovered that it contained the sum of $40,000, a Blackberry handset, and a white lady's photograph concealed in the Teddy Bear. The parcel was to be delivered to an address in Alapere, a suburb of Lagos with the name Tobi Encore and a Nigerian phone number also belonging to the same recipient. With the phone number, the convicted fraudster was traced and upon finding him, he was handed over to the EFCC for further investigations.

               Upon investigation, Operatives of the Commission discovered that the name Tony Encore was used by the fraudster to deceive the American in order to defraud her. It was found out that his real name is Bike John Niye.  The operatives also discovered that it was Niye who instructed the victim to conceal all the items in a Teddy Bear. Investigations also revealed that Niye has been receiving various sums of money from the victim via Western Union totalling about US$25,000 before the parcel which finally landed him in jail. To enable him collect the sent funds via Western Union, findings revealed that Niye obtained a Driver's license with a forged identity bearing the name Nathan Omarkeh. He usually destroys the identity card after collecting money sent to him. 

In addition to the one and half year jail term, Niye is to refund the sum of $48,500 as restitution to the victim.

A 29-YEAR- OLD MAN, HENRY OGU ARRESTED FOR ONLINE SCAM IN NIGERIA

A 29-year-old man, Henry Ogu, has been arrested by Special Fraud Unit of the Nigeria Police Force, Ikoyi, Lagos, for allegedly defrauding an American citizen (name withheld) of $350000. His accomplice, 42-year-old Yunusa Okonkwo, was also arrested in connection with the fraud. A statement by the SFU Police Public Relations Officer DSP Ngozi Isintume-Agu, said the unit had received a petition via email from Henry Ogu’s victim. “The victim, a US citizen resident in New Jersey, alleged that sometime in April 2013, she met Henry Ogu on a dating site and both started a relationship which lasted for months until the suspect manipulated and made her to believe that he was in financial trouble in Nigeria. “She further stated that she sent $350,000.00 to the two account numbers that Henry Ogu provided.  The account numbers were Skye Bank Account Number 36204796 and Ecobank account No. 04087350 belonging to Faneece Business Services International.”

Police investigation reportedly revealed that the account belonged to Okonkwo of No. A1 Giwa Road, U/Muazu, Kaduna, where he was subsequently arrested. Upon his arrest, Okonkwo was said to have led police detectives to apprehend Henry Ogu, the principal suspect. Okonkwo, a patent medicine dealer and Bureau De Change operator confessed that he was the account holder of Faneece Business Services International and admitted that he had provided his two bank accounts for the illicit transactions. “He also said Henry Ogu had provided him with his account number, where he transferred the money after converting it to Nigeria currency. 

 

He gave Henry Ogu’s account details as Diamond Bank account No. 0021206871 with Ogu also corroborated the victim’s statement that they had met on a dating site in January 2013 and started communicating via e-mails. Ogu confessed that he deceived the victim into believing that he wanted to marry her, but was stranded in Nigeria and needed financial assistance.  He said that he had spent all the money; $60,000 was used to purchase a heavy duty generator which has been recovered by the police.  He had also purchased a plot of land for $5,500 along the Lagos/Ibadan Expressway, Nigeria.  A cash sum of $13,400 was also recovered from him. 

SAN JOSE WOMAN DUPED OUT OF $500,000 IN NIGERIAN ONLINE DATING SCAM

 

A San Jose woman bilked out of $500,000 by a Nigerian scam artist on a dating website luckily recovered $200,000 from a bank in Turkey, according to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office.

The case of the 66years old woman conned out of her money through a meeting on ChristianMingle.com should serve as a warning about fraud schemes on international dating sites, Deputy District Attorney Cherie Bourland said

“You get the love drug in you and you end up getting duped,” Bourland said.

The victim, a divorcee, joined ChristianMingle and befriended a Nigerian man who falsely claimed to be “David Holmes,” an Irish citizen working on a Scottish oil rig, Bourland said. He used a picture he said was of him but was actually an image of a male model he downloaded from the Internet, Bourland said.

“There had been phone calls,” Bourland said. “He did not seem to have a Nigerian accent. He sent her flowers. But they never met in person.”

The district attorney’s office later discovered through the man’s Skype account and email address that he was living in Nigeria, which is “a hot bed of online scams,” Bourland said.

The scammer convinced the woman to wire him $300,000 as a loan for his oil business, with much of the money coming from her retirement account and funds she received after refinancing her home, prosecutors said. That money was lost and but soon after she wired another $200,000 for him to a bank in Turkey, the woman contacted the district attorney’s office. Bourland emailed an adverse claim document to the Turkish bank in an attempt to freeze the funds, she said. The bank the next day reported that when a man named Wisdom Onokpite, a Nigerian national, came in to withdraw the money, bank officials contacted Turkish National Police, who arrested him on suspicion of committing fraud, Bourland said.

“When we heard someone had been arrested, our mouths dropped,” Bourland said. “It was exciting.” It turned out that Onokpite was an associate of the dating site conman who had sent him to Turkey to pick up the money for him. The Nigerian going as “David Holmes” remains free, Bourland said. The victim has only a “1 percent” chance of recovering the remaining $300,000 from overseas because “it is just impossible to track down” and federal authorities do not get involved in losses below $1 million, Bourland said.

“The victim was extremely lucky to get her $200,000 back,” she said.

The office has been getting similar reports from dating website victims and “usually it’s too late, the money is already gone,” she said. Those using the sites are advised to never loan money to someone online, especially someone they have never met, Bourland said.

VICTIMS’ STORY

After years of dating frustration, Montana resident Debbie Best thought her luck had finally changed when she met a handsome antiques dealer from Florida through an online dating site. But then her new found boyfriend started asking for money. She was 1,500USD poorer before she believed that she has been scammed.

"I left my heart out there, and this guy took advantage of it," the 51-year old Best said.

For Best, it all started when she signed up for a free online dating site called www.mingle2.com. A man calling himself "John" messaged her and through daily phone calls and messages on Facebook, he gained her trust. He spoke with what she thought was a British accent and his picture on Facebook portrayed a nice-looking man with graying hair and a beard. In July, "John" told her that he was traveling to the United Kingdom to buy antiques for his store. Then one day he called saying he went to Nigeria to buy more, but he was stuck. He asked her for $5,000 cash to get his purchases back to the States. At first, Best who juggles two part-time jobs working with developmentally disabled adults and people with mental illness resisted, telling John she simply did not have the money. But he persisted. "He was trying to get me to use my credit cards, borrow from my friends and family," said Best, who earlier told her saga to The Huffington Post. When he told her days later he could not afford to eat, Best gave in, wiring him two $250 payments.

But as he continued to push for money, Best realized something was off. She searched Web forums, eventually finding another woman's story of a scammer with the same name. Then she received a nearly $1,000 phone bill from calling the phone number he had said wouldn't charge her.

CNNMoney's attempts to reach "John" on his international phone number provided by Best revealed that it was based out of Nigeria, a hotbed for online scams and has since been disconnected. Attempts to call the U.S. number Best reached him at revealed the number was no longer in service and was hosted by MagicJack, an Internet-based phone service that allows people anywhere in the world to make unlimited calls from a U.S. phone number.

Mingle2, the dating site, did not respond to requests for comment. Someone claiming to live in the U.S. but who says they are stuck outside of the country and in need of money is a popular ploy among scammers. 

THE ARREST OF ONLINE CON ARTISTS

Sanjay Virmani (L), director of Interpol's Digital Crime Centre, gestures as he speaks while Britain's Ambassador to the Philippines Asif ahmad (C) and Philippine police chief Alan Purisima (R) listen during a press conference at the police headquarters in Manila on May 2, 2014. (AFP Photo / Ted Aljibe)

Philippine police backed by Interpol have arrested almost 60 people in connection with an online extortion syndicate which involved tricking hundreds of victims worldwide into exposing themselves in front of webcams and then blackmailing them.

At least 58 people have been arrested in the Philippines for their role in the scam, which is one of the largest busts in recent years. The investigation also involved Interpol, the US Homeland Security Department, and police from three other countries who were able to trace the online conversations from the victims’ computers, Philippine National Police chief Allan Purisima said in a news conference on Friday.

During raids by 15 police teams, more than 260 computers, mobile phones, and various pieces of pornography were seized, he told a news conference in the Philippine capital of Manila.

The bust, although large, “is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Gilbert Sosa, director of the Philippine police Anti-Cybercrime Group. Many more are still at large and will be pursued, he said.

The syndicate preyed on mainly male victims by employing women with fake Facebook accounts who then struck up online conversations with them.

Sanjay Virmani (L), director of Interpol's Digital Crime Centre, gestures as he speaks while Britain's Ambassador to the Philippines Asif ahmad (C) and Philippine police chief Alan Purisima (R) listen during a press conference at the police headquarters in Manila on May 2, 2014. (AFP Photo / Ted Aljibe) They would then begin talking dirty and eventually the victim would expose themselves or perform a sexual act in front of a webcam. This would then be recorded and the victim would be blackmailed. The price usually began at US$500 but there have been demands for as much as $15,000, according to Interpol.

“The scale of these ‘sextortion’ networks is massive and run with one goal in mind, to make money regardless of the terrible emotional damage they inflict on their victims,” said Sanjay Virmani, director of Interpol’s Digital Crime Center, in a statement to reporters.

Louis Kwan Chung-yin, a Hong Kong police inspector, said that more than 470 people have been victimized in Hong Kong. A US Embassy official said that members of the US military have also been victimized.

Three of the suspects were believed to have been involved with the case of Daniel Perry, a 17-year-old mechanic from Scotland who jumped off a bridge and killed himself after being told that if he didn’t pay up, his family and friends would be sent his video conversations.

Gary Cunningham, a police officer from Scotland, said the three Filipinos would be arrested if there was enough evidence to connect them to the case.

The authorities emphasized that the Philippines was not the hub of the scams, and that the current investigation had merely focused on the South East Asian nation.

“These crimes are not limited to any one country and or are the victims. That’s why international cooperation in investigating these crimes is essential,” said Virmani.