US soldier wants to send me money – What should I do?

You have met a US soldier on the internet? You are not alone in this. Many alleged US Army soldiers nowadays make contact with countless women through platforms like

• Facebook
• Instagram
• dating sites
• and other ways.

The problem with this story is that most of these US soldiers are in fact

• neither Americans
• nor soldiers.

:In the vast majority of cases it are Africans pretending to be US soldiers with stolen pictures they have from the internet.

These Africans have made it a lucrative business to rob women around the world of their belongings. In doing so, they are playing with the emotional triggers:

• Great love
• Trust
• Common future
• Happiness and family.

Alleged US soldiers usually proceed similarly

The beginning is similar in many cases: a nice looking American soldier sends a friend request on Facebook, Instagram, other social networks or contacts a woman via a dating platform.

The woman reacts curiously and wonders who is writing to her.

If she answers him, he quickly manages to make her curiosity even greater.

In an increasingly intensive chat contact he manages to become more and more familiar with her. They quickly give an email address or a contact via Google Hangouts (read more on the topic: Google Hangouts Scams) and ask her to continue writing about it.

The man is often a widower, has a daughter or a son who lives in a US military boarding school or with a nanny. He is now looking for the love of his life and a good mother for his child.

At some point, the man talks about falling in love with the woman and wants to marry her as soon as possible. As soon as he’s out of the US Army, he’ll come to her. She is thrilled because no one has ever written such beautiful things about love to her before.

After getting closer and closer to each other virtually, the soldier who is supposedly on a secret mission confides a secret to his new girlfriend at some point. In this context he suddenly writes to her: “I want to send you money.”

The soldier wants to send money

Here are now different scenarios how the scam can work.
We would like to show you the most common methods used by the fraudsters at this point.

# The box

The man explains to his supposed future wife, as he has been calling her for some time, that he wants to send her a box.

Phrases like “Treasure Box” and the like come up. He says this box is very valuable. It contains his documents, personal papers, his will and his entire fortune.

He said he’d been paid out in cash in the country where he’d been deployed. Most of the time he is supposed to be in countries like

• Iraq
• Syria
• Afghanistan
• Yemen
• Sudan

or similar states where violence prevails.

• The man states that his pension was paid out in cash
• or he got a lot of cash and gold from a tribal leader because he saved the life of the tribe
• he got his last years’ pay in cash.

The reasons why he has so much cash are endless.

He must get the box out of the country

He now has to get this fortune out of the country somehow. And he sees only one way to do that: He wants to send it to his future wife.

To do so, he uses an alleged diplomatic service or a security company that specializes in transporting such valuable things.

If the supposed fiancée agrees, she usually has to give her address and some personal data. In many cases she even has to send a copy of her ID card, as she is the only recipient to whom this valuable shipment is likely to be handed over.

The criminals who are sent the ID card will later use it for other scams.

We would like to emphasize here that the box does not exist at all.

• Neither does the soldier or the security company.

All these things exist only on paper and in the stories of the con artist. If he sent you photos of the box, they are not real, even if your name is written on them.

The box is on its way by courier

However, in order to make the matter credible, the fraudsters have put websites online that look as if they were allegedly from an international transport company.

Very similar to UPS, DHL, Fedex or other serious parcel services, you can also enter a so-called tracking number on the fake website.

This tracking number is given by the alleged soldier to the love of his life so that she is always informed about where the valuable package is at the moment.

Once the parcel is on its way, at some point the time comes when the first fees are due. These can be fees such as:

• Shipping charges
• Customs
• Anti Terror Certificates
• Import licence

and similar charges.

Once she has paid fees, the next demands for further fees come shortly afterwards. The list gets longer and longer. If at some point she no longer wants to pay, the fraudsters put her under massive pressure.

They explain that the parcel has been opened and it has been discovered that there is a lot of cash in it. This had not been declared and recorded. The recipient and sole owner is the woman.

If she did not immediately pay the corresponding fees, the matter would be passed on to the police. Then it would only be a matter of time before she was arrested. The FBI would also be involved.

Not only would she go to jail, she would have to pay a very heavy fine.

The only way to get out of this situation would be to pay the required fees.

If she pays this time as well, that does not mean that the pressure will ease. More and more new fees are appearing that have to be paid. Only one thing is certain: the box will never arrive.

# The soldier wants to transfer money to your account

If the woman has declared in advance that she will not pay money at all or that she has no financial means at all, this does not mean anything. If she is not able to pay anything at all, the fraudsters use a different scam.

In this case they try to turn the lady into a financial agent. The scam works in a similar way with one exception: the lady herself does not pay her own money, but someone else makes a transfer to her account.

The person who transfers money to the woman has become a victim of these African fraudsters and pays an amount X to the woman’s account without suspicion.

It is now the task of the recipient to withdraw the money from her account. She either transfers the money to another account in another country, or she sends it via Western Union or MoneyGram or another payment service to

• Turkey
• Malaysia
• Nigeria
• Ghana
• or another country.

The trick is very simple: the woman has no idea that she is an accomplice to fraud. The alleged soldier tells her that the money is from friends, relatives or whoever. These people could be making an online transfer right now, but would not have the opportunity to send the money via Western Union or similar services or abroad.

That is why he asked his alleged friends, relatives, business partners to transfer the money to the account of the woman he is going to marry in the future. She should then forward it to her future husband, for example by Western Union.

Since the victim has no costs in this case, she goes unsuspectingly and forwards the sum in cash, deducting the fees. However, she should not be surprised if some time later the police is at the door. In fact, she may have committed this act without knowing it.

The shared account

The alleged soldier explains that they want to buy something together. This could be an apartment or whatever. In this context it is important to have a collective account.

That is why he asks the woman to send a copy of her identity card so that he can set up an account together with her. He then wants to pay sufficient funds into this account.

Access data for the joint bank account will come

After only a short time, the woman receives access data to an online bank. At first glance, the website actually looks like a normal bank.

There is a field for entering the account number. Then she has to enter a password and log in that way. If she does that, she actually gets to a subpage that looks very similar to a normal online account.

On this subpage she recognizes that she and her future husband are the joint owners of the account.

If she now looks at the account balance, she sees that a very large sum has already been deposited into the account. Often there are hundreds of thousands, sometimes even more than a million.

Since she is also the owner of the account, she can now dispose of the entire balance.

Her future husband will then ask her to spend or make purchases from the money he has paid into the account for both of you. For example, they should transfer 50,000 as a deposit to an estate agent for the purchase of a shared flat.

Bank transfer does not work

If the alleged account holder now tries to make a transfer in her account, she receives a message that she first needs so-called release codes.

When she now asks her supposed future husband for them, he explains that this is probably common practice. She would have to acquire these unlock codes, which are comparable to PIN codes, in order to be able to make online transactions at all.

Unfortunately, he could not do this from where he was supposed to be. For example, it is unfortunately impossible to do this from Syria. That is why he is asking her to make this transfer.

To do this, the woman should pay a certain sum of several 1000 € or $ or £ to a certain account. She would then receive the release codes. The fees she has to transfer in advance could then be taken off the account.

If she does so, she has fallen into the trap and your money is gone. There are no codes and the account does not exist. It’s advance payment fraud.

The scheme is called Romance Scam

Have you also met someone on the Internet whom you have never seen in your life? Is this man suddenly demanding money from you? Then be very careful.

As a rule, nobody sends money to a stranger with whom he has never had personal contact before.

All these clever tricks serve only one purpose: the criminals want to press money out of the victim. This form of fraud is called Romance Scam. The criminals are called Love Scammers or Scammers for short.

If you have met someone whose identity is not clear to you, be especially careful. If in doubt, send us a message before you too become a victim of the scammer.

We convict the con man

We are specialized in screening people all over the world. So we can quickly determine for you whether the person you are writing with is real or a fake.

If you are dealing with a fake, it is very important to break off contact as soon as possible. You are then probably writing with an international fraud network such as the Nigeria Connection or a similar organisation. These people are not to be fooled with.

The African scammers make endless money with these scams every year. Mostly it is middle-aged women who fall for the tricks and are just willing to help.

Once the money has been transferred, it usually disappears forever and ever. The police can no longer help in this context because the money has landed somewhere in Africa through dark channels. No one there has access to it anymore.

We know the scammers – let us advise you

So that you do not fall for a marriage swindler, it is therefore all the more important to know exactly who you are dealing with.

Write to us to discuss a background check on this man. Our private detectives will check whether he is real or not and prevent you from becoming a victim.

Our investigators know the tricks of the romance scammers and how clever they are.

Better safe than sorry! Contact us today to get peace of mind.

More related articles:

• Fake names of U.S. Army soldiers in Syria and Yemen
• Are US soldiers allowed to use Skype?

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