Romance Scam – A Reader’s Report

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Hi, guys, here’s my story about an Oil Rig Scam:

I love your blogs, and thanks to you for bringing awareness of how easy it is to be scammed in an online setting, I recently got into a Love Scam myself with a wealthy engineer.

And it’s getting bigger and better. This is one REAL smooth.

So it all started on April 29th when the guy said Hi on LinkedIn. He asked me to connect through WhatsApp, so I said okay. His number is based in the United States, and he’s based in Ukraine now. By this time I’ve already sensed some ‘too good to be true’ sense. And I was really into this, this is a lot of fun to unravel.

I told him he was too good to be true and by smoothie waves he said ‘well, that’s a bit unfair, sorry then if boring guys can’t get through you’. Fascinating.

The scammer claims to be in the Ukraine. A current stay in a foreign country is a situation which is frequently used by scammers to “borrow” money.

A serious relationship after three days

So we kept on chatting, and by the third day he was in love with me. I already said ‘it’s only been 3 days, babe’, and he said ‘you made me realise I don’t need long to fall in love with you’. LOL from a guy who’s been divorced because he’s hurt by a cheating wife while he was away for work.

By the first week, he gave me access to his bank account. 3 MILLION DOLLARS. He asked me to help him transfer funds from his account to an ‘equipment company’ for 80k. Okay, cool. By the second day, his account got suspended since he can’t pay for shipment for the tools he wants to send from the US to Ukraine. Shipment cost: USD7300.

For some more fun, I was the one to offer him to source the money. And this is what raised my bells even further – he’s not even sorry for making me source the money. Come on, if you’re in love with me, you’d be sorry for making me ask for money, don’t you?

From this point on, I texted him less while going for extensive research (while putting up the front ‘I’m sorry, baby, I really care about you). At this point he mentioned a couple of businesses:

His LinkedIn featured various oil companies: BritOil, Qatar Petroleum, NOG, GASCO, and many more. Undergrad and master from UCLA.

He also gave me invoices from the shipment from California to Ukraine. Still, it doesn’t make sense – why don’t you source equipment from Ukraine than the US?

Scammers always use stolen pictures which are sometimes used very often. A picture search might reveal this.

Research reveals the scam

From my research I found:

When his bank account got suspended, he can’t reactivate from just a phone call since he has to go there physically and reactivate through passport activation (which is bullshit since I know my friends in the U.S. can reactivate suspended accounts through a call).
His bank account password is too simple, I mean, come on … michael7777 Seriously?
Tek Equipment doesn’t have a valid address, only a road.
Globalshipy is unreachable.
He has another LinkedIn account under a different name: Bryan Park (he contacted me under Michael Kim).
He never gave me his apartment address in Los Angeles.
He has very good and clear text ability than most scammers.
He was willing to call me for 10 seconds (murky voice too – he said it was because of the waves, lol).
His pictures seem legit: while I was doing reverse image search, his pictures are his alone and all correspond to either Bryan Park and Michael Kim and one pic from Loveplanet.ru for a ‘Capricorn guy at 49 looking for love’, OMG HILARIOUS.
One thing: when I contacted the bank, they said ‘I need to book an appointment to create an account with them’. Interesting, right?
Reserve Credit Union Bank has the same front with these banks: Habib Trust Reserve, Oak Premier Bank, City of London Bank, Turkiye Kupasi Reserve, and so. Many. More. (I went on extensive research on the pictures assets they used on the website and all these banks started coming up).
He has been pushing me to ask how much I got, so I can transfer him, and there’s no way for him to open an account from his place for credit cards.

So my advice to all the ladies out there in the world: don’t pay money to strangers – they could be Romance Scammers.

Have you experienced a similar story? Then write it down and send it to us. If it is well-written, we will be happy to publish your reader’s report anonymously on this website as a warning to everyone else.

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