I have rarely written about my personal life on my Blog in the past eight years, but as a public service warning to women from the age of 50 upwards, and my widowed and divorced Facebook friends in this age group in particular, I want to share my internet dating experiences over the last three months.

Internet dating fraud is rife, and happens internationally, although the way one is trapped may differ. Please tell your friends and family members, and react when you see any of the telltale signs I describe below. I apologize in advance for the length of this Blogpost, but there are many signs that one should look out for. I have marked all telltale signs in red below. Not all may apply in each case.

The Sunday Times today carries a story ‘Blinded by Love‘ about a man Olayinka Sunmola, who has operated a Nigerian internet fraud syndicate from Pretoria, including a ‘romance scam‘.  The Hawks closed down the scam with the help of USA authorities and Scotland Yard, and the perpetrator faces up to 127 years in a USA prison!  Now it appears that a ‘romance scam‘ is operating from Cape Town!

Anyone who knows me and knows me as tough will be shocked to hear that I (almost) succumbed to the 8-week internet dating ‘program’ that had been planned for me! I am exceptionally lucky to have the dearest friend, who cares about my well-being, and she was suspicious from the very beginning. The few other friends I told were equally suspicious, and became more so as the story progressed. Ignorantly I did not want to listen to them!

The minute one gets into Internet dating one must expect the worst. Tinder has some warnings in its fine print, mainly advising one to meet for coffee in a public place, to not part with any money, and to not open any links sent by a ‘beau’. At all times one must allow one’s instinct to be on high alert, no matter what one’s heart is telling one and how long the soft-soaking ‘program’ may take.

Let me justify this Blogpost on my Blog by saying that I joined the international internet dating site Tinder on the day of the Eat Out Top 10 Restaurant Awards in mid-November. I had been allocated a seat at a table with persons whom I had never met, and sat next to the Brazilian Gabi, who has since become a friend. She was the date for the lunch of a German man based in Cape Town, whom she had recently met via Tinder. He seemed extremely nice and decent. Gabi is a spontaneous person, and could not understand why I had attended the lunch on my own, and felt that I needed to get onto Tinder to ‘fire’ up my social life.  She quickly took my phone, set up the App, put in my distance requirement at a 50 km range from me, and a gender requirement of male, that is how easy it is.  I had never heard of Tinder before, and was petrified to even touch my phone, so Gabi Tindered for me, choosing who she was accepting and rejecting on my behalf for the rest of the afternoon. It was the most fun Eat Out Awards function I have ever attended, and we laughed and laughed!

At home I started practicing on my own, and I soon got the hang of it, either accepting or rejecting the men presented, all one seeing being one or more photographs, the age, the name of the college/university of the highest qualification received, and the distance of the man from my location. The very first danger signs to look out for at the time of accepting a man are the following:

#. They were all younger, in their fifties. I did not see a Tinder man older than I, and I was flattered that I could still be attractive to younger men!

#   They are 14 – 19 km away from Fresnaye, but predominantly 19 km, a new pattern I have picked up!

#.  They all appear to have studied at a foreign university, mainly American.

#   I can now warn that the better dressed and good-looking the Tinder man is, the less likely he is to be real. More about this later.

#.  Particularly suspicious are the men that have as part of their profile a really soppy description of themselves, mainly describing how they want to walk into the sunset holding one’s hand forever! (It gets worse!).  One does not pay to join Tinder, and it is really easy to join. There is an advanced service against payment, which allows one to post the profile description, and also to change one’s distance requirement, say if one is traveling in another city or country.

Women accept or reject photographs and (minimal) descriptions of men, while men do the same for women. When both like each other, Tinder gets excited, and sends each person a Match message, allowing one to communicate with each other inside the App, much like sms messages. At any given time I had about 10 matches, and initially I was intrigued about each one of them.

#.  Beware of revealing too much, tell-tale information required for the Internet dating scam being one’s marital status (especially if widowed), if one lives alone (highly revealing), and purchase/sale of big ticket items.

#. They quickly ask what career one has, and they ALL are engineers, most having studied in America. I noted this as a definite pattern.

#   I asked at the beginning of each new match introduction where they live in Cape Town, and received weird suburb names such as ‘Constancia‘, ‘Sommerset East‘ which was changed to ‘Sommerset West‘ quickly, ‘Seapoint’, and even Langebaan! Compare the suburb distance from your own, and compare it to the Tinder distance shown, and you may already pick up irregularities.

#.  The speed of communicating and the number of interactions and depth of questions are telltale, and the charm offensive takes off quickly. I loved the ‘Good morning beautiful’ and lovely good night messages!

#.  Very quickly they write that they want to go off Tinder, and continue the conversation by email, as they do not go there (Tinder) very often, just what one would want to hear!  Interestingly (and part of the clever plan) is that they provide their gmail details, probably with a fake name and surname, and request that you write to them. I gushed forth in detail in the first such email, and held back more and more as I communicated with more and more Tinderers.

#.  It is a good time to take stock of who one is getting into bed with, pardon the pun, so early on in the ‘relationship’, at this stage. Tinder is owned by Facebook, and needs one to be on Facebook so that they can use one’s Facebook profile photograph, age, and tertiary education institution information for Tinder. I did see how this information was manipulated, with false details and profiles being posted on Facebook, starting with the name, age, and tertiary education institution.

#.  If the name is unusual, one should be able to search for it and find it on Facebook. However, a common name such as Richard or a Robert will take forever to find (it must of course have the same photograph). Even with a surname don’t hold your breath in finding the person, as the name and surname probably are fake. I was matched with a ‘Gotz’, which was unusual and easy to find, and it turned out to be a German surname with the same photograph of a man aged 71, looking at least 20 years younger, living in a village in Germany, a widower, and with only two photographs, of what looked like funeral wreaths! He wrote to me that he is Swedish, lives in Montana in Pretoria, and is an engineer on an oil rig near Mossel Bay. This is the time to get VERY suspicious and go onto high alert! He told me that Tinder had made a mistake with his age, which is impossible, as Tinder can only reflect the age from the date of birth on Facebook.

#.  I was intrigued by the distance indicator, which moves when one drives and when the man is moving. I became neurotic about this and think I have finally understood what this is all about. More about this later!

Watch the reply to the first e-mail.

#.  It will pick up on many things that one has written to the man, and I found a lot of ‘mirroring’, making it easy for them to write.

#.  I remember thinking that the first email of one Tinderer felt like a copy-and-paste letter, with unusually large spaces between the paragraphs, and a different typeface to the one which I had used to write to him. At all times trust your instinct.

#   One first email reply said as part of a Tinderer’s interests ‘… and yes dear, I do like to dance…’ even though I had not written about dancing at all!

#   Unless one is very devious and creates a gmail account with a false surname, they have your name and surname immediately you send your email. I realized that this was a major weakness, as they can then Google everything about you, even though I do not think that anyone did this about me, or at least did not refer to it.

Some Tinder men prefer to ask for the phone number, which gives one something tangible about both parties, for what it is worth. One man switched to What’s App, and sent me a saying of the day every day, and then an unexpected porn video. I blocked him immediately. Another (Rik Vincent Dordi – see Postscript below) called me regularly, swore undying love within ten days, and I enjoyed chatting to him, and even his expressed ‘jealousy’ felt nice. He wrote long emails expressing his request for a relationship. I had to stop communicating for a week, to cool him down, as he wasn’t the one I wanted anyway! I suspect that he may be part of the scam syndicate, hearing noises of what could be a call centre in the background more recently.

#   All the men have a daughter or a son, and this can be part of the soft-soaking. Don’t get emotionally involved.

Make a coffee date as soon as possible after chatting, so that you can check if the man is real, and if the photograph on his Tinder profile matches him in real life. It is a OK to ask a man out for coffee in this day and age!.

#   I have not yet met a Tinder man for coffee in the past three months since going onto Tinder, and this is an important warning sign too! They all are going on a business trip the minute one mentions the coffee date.  It is the last thing they want!  This is the quickest way to catch out any scam artists. Unmatch the man if you pick up excuses to not meet for coffee.

What happens thereafter to extract money from one remains to be seen, and can vary from instance to instance. Below is my story about ‘Noble Robert Williams‘ (photographs in this Blogpost):

‘Noble’ (a special nickname which his parents had given him, being an only child, he explained) told me he is Russian, grew up in Spain, had moved to Boston with his parents where he studied aeronautical engineering at Boston University from 1971 – 1974, having to have entered university at the age of 15! He had also lived in Liverpool, in Cape Town, and then in Durban. Despite his aeronautical engineering qualification, he was a ‘building and construction engineer’ when I met him! When I asked him this week why his surname is so English and he is Russian, he denied that he had told me he is Russian. I have a screen shot of him telling me that he is Russian. I did more and more screenshots over time whilst communicating within Tinder.

#.  Take screen shots and make notes as you go along! Some men close down their Tinder page once they have ‘hooked’ you into emails, and then you miss out on important verification information.

‘Noble’ was a very slow mover, taking a week before starting to talk to me after we had matched on Tinder. I did not feel chased, and he had an old-fashioned way about him, thanking me for everything, basic things like my messages, for complimenting him on being well-dressed (compared to the sloppy dressing of the other men I saw on Tinder), and I was really chuffed when he wrote that he would like to take our ‘acquaintance’ further. Three times he requested that I write an email to him, and I just (stubbornly) ignored him. In my first email I wrote about my relationship history (definitely over-shared), and so our communication grew, he writing every three days or so, and I waited for at least 24 hours before I replied to his emails, not wanting to appear too eager!

Soon he asked me for my phone number, and asked if I would like him to call me. Of course I said yes, and the call took at least a week to come, a local 061 cell number, and my heart nearly stopped in excitement. However, I found it very hard to understand him on the phone:

#   The voice sounded like a scrambled one, as they do in some ‘Carte Blanche’ interviews, and was very deep. In the calls he called me ‘honey’, something he had never done in the emails or on Tinder. It was very hard to understand him, and the line sounded very poor too. He called every night for a week, and I got to understand his voice better. A friend called the number, and also picked up the scrambler, and felt it was an African voice, but not from our country. ‘Noble’ started sending text messages, and used a child-like ‘u’ in his texts.

#   As a writer ‘Noble’s poor grammar, poor sentence structure, and some spelling errors in the emails attracted attention, making him feel more foreign, and I was forgiving of them!

I was heading for Plettenberg Bay for a week, and suggested a coffee date with ‘Noble’ for the following day, not yet used to ‘driving’ the relationship, being an old-fashioned ‘dater’. Surprisingly he told me that he was now in Durban for a ‘United Nations Engineering Board‘ project, and would come to see me as soon as the project was done. I Googled the Engineering Board name, and could not find it, nor his name. In one of his calls he asked me if I love him, and he told me that he did too!

The emails continued, becoming more and more romantic, and started hinting at a long-term future together, music to my ears! I loved writing to him, found a young cheeky 16-year old in me, laughed and teased a lot, and even dedicated a special YouTube song to him in each e-mail (yes, I am blushing writing this)!

Surprisingly his distance from me stayed at 14 km on Tinder, even when he was supposedly in Durban. I did not think anything of it initially, but checked on this more and more regularly. I saw movement on the distance, even as close as 5 km from me during this period.

A total of 24 hours before coming to Cape Town to see me, he dropped the bombshell. The United Nations had appointed 7 engineers to do reparation work in Syria (no city/town mentioned), and he was one of them. He sent an appointment letter from the United Nations, to show me that it was real. Of course this was suspicious in itself. There was no goodbye from him from Durban, and he ‘disappeared’ for four days, of which I understood two days would be for traveling. I was relieved  when he contacted me, telling me how dreadful things were in Syria in terms of what had been done to humans and animals. He still showed as 14 km away from me! The engineers would be there for 18 days, before he finally would come to be with me in Cape Town.

I had spoken to another friend, an ex-Tinderer, about the distance problem, and he closed down my Tinder account and set it up again. I lost my previous Tinder matches and received eight new ones on my first day, recognizing two of my previous ones, Gotz being one for a short while. Richard had unmatched himself in the past, and he matched with me a second time round. When I welcomed him back, he said he had returned specifically for me (corny, yes I know!). Very suspicious Tinder matches were ‘Troylee’ (supposedly Turkish), ‘Matteo’, ‘Michael’, ‘Richard’ (who called with an Indian accent but did not look it), and ‘Lucas’.  Two days later ‘Noble’ came up on Tinder, and I super liked him. On Valentine’s Day he matched with me, and his first message was ‘happy Valentine’s‘ and he was the sweetest man the whole day, sending love messages, all with emojicons, which he had not used before. Could one be loved more!?

He wrote by email from Syria about roaming with his cell phone, and explained he would have to pay for received calls, so he would set up a Facebook page so that we could talk on Messenger. He was not sure about the Internet reception in their ‘engineering camp’. He created a new Facebook page as ‘Robert Williams‘, but already had a ‘Noble Robert‘ one which he had set up when he got onto Tinder.  He increased the frequency of his emails, and Messengered me almost every night, for at least two hours, late at night. I joked that I could understand him much better than on the phone, and we asked many questions of each other. The conversation became increasingly steamy, something that had not happened in the six weeks prior.

All of a sudden I received a late night message from ‘Noble’, telling me that a camp close to theirs had been bombed, and that he was petrified of losing his precious personal belongings, including some clothing, United Nations and personal documents, and revealed only the next day that there was cash too, payment for his services from the United Nations. He requested that I receive the parcel with his belongings which he would send to me via a person-to-person courier. He sent me an ‘international air way bill’, but not made out by a courier company! The bar code was ‘123456789′, which a vigilant friend picked up, and I noticed with fear that ‘Customs and Taxes’ would be payable by the ‘consignee‘, being me when I Googled this. I was listed as the recipient, and my home address and cell number were on the ‘Way Bill’! When I told my son, he was horrified, and asked the logical question about ‘what if there are drugs inside?‘, and even questioned the legality of the cash. I had to email ‘agent Wayne Jones‘, the courier delivering the parcel to me from Syria, giving him the go-ahead that I would receive the parcel, an absolute no-no in hindsight!

The parcel was due to arrive within three days, and ‘agent Wayne‘ contacted me from Dubai. He sent me a copy of his British passport page, and requested a copy of mine too, to prove who I was.  In retrospect I am relieved that I ignored the instruction, given the danger of identity fraud. He would head for Johannesburg the following day, and deliver the parcel at 10h20  (a bizarre precise time) at my home. On the Monday I was in a total state, and felt I could not get out of it, exactly what they want. In an email on this day I requested of ‘Noble’ that we remain financially independent of each other, and alternate paying for eating out when he joined me in Cape Town. He exploded in anger at this paragraph in my e-mail, because of what was to come!

I told ‘Noble’ how petrified I was, and decided immediately that I would bring the parcel to a storage facility at Wembley Square until ‘Noble’ arrived. A friend and I went to the Sea Point police station for advice, but none of the detectives were on duty when we went there in the late afternoon. I returned early the following morning, and spoke to the very nice Detective Maas, whose face said it all when I told him about my ‘Internet dating’ experience, and I could see him thinking ‘ag foei tog Tannie’. He said that no law had been broken yet, as ‘Noble’ was not in the country, but he took my details so that I could prove that I had been to see him.

#  ‘Noble’ had begged me to not tell anyone about the parcel, given its sensitive content, but of course I did tell my closest friends.

The delivery time of 10h20 came and went, and I had emailed ‘agent Wayne‘ to let me know when I could expect him. I contacted ‘Noble’ by email (we usually only spoke at night), and I told him that I had heard no word from the agent. As we spoke, an email from ‘agent Wayne’ arrived, requesting R3250 to release ‘Mr Noble’s luggage’, to be paid to Customs at Johannesburg International. I was asked to pay it. My heart sank! I contacted two friends and my son, and raced to one friend, seeing ‘Noble’ get increasingly adamant that I assist him, ‘if you love me and we want to spend the rest of our lives together’. I questioned everything: why was there a Customs charge if the parcel was marked as ‘family belongings’? I asked for the name and number of the Customs official, so that I could contact him directly. I asked why ‘agent Wayne‘ could not lend him the equivalent of the $200? None of my solutions or questions were accepted, and the onus was on me to pay, the blackmail growing, in that if I loved him, I would do this for him.

On the day of the money request, I sent him a dreadful email, and pointed out all the aspects that did not make sense or add up:

#   His photograph above came up on another dating site (an Indian ‘matrimonial’ one), on which his name was ‘Tom’, and his birthdate was completely different to the one he had given me in answer to a question!

#   He had asked for photographs of me, and I apologize to my Facebook friends for enduring my postings. He sent me two photographs as well, but when these were put through Google Images, one came up with numerous ‘names’ from LinkedIn, such as ‘Eddy’, ‘Edward’, ‘d yesmeloveu’, and ‘Rafael’. I should have stopped then and there! This was when I learnt about ‘Identity Theft‘, it being easy to copy any photograph from Google Images, and use it for scam purposes. The profile photograph of ‘Noble’ may well have been one of these too, and the second (on the right) was for sure.

‘Agent Wayne‘ called from Johannesburg airport, and my first reaction was that he sounded just like ‘Noble’, even though it was a call from a different (062) number, and I was excited about hearing from my ‘love’!

I looked at the bank details provided for the scam payment, and went to see Standard Bank in Sea Point, as there was no branch name or code provided. The very kind receptionist Elisha looked up the bank account number, and if I had not yet believed that I had been close to a scam, the branch being Vangate Mall in Gatesville in Athlone was the final proof! I spent a week keeping ‘Noble’ and ‘agent Wayne’ (supposedly still at OR Thambo) dangling, requesting the branch details, extending this to request an invoice, and to fix the incorrect bank account name ‘Sunshine Way’. Every night ‘Noble’ became increasingly agitated towards me on Messenger, saying that I don’t care and do not love him any more! I enjoyed our argumentation, feeling good that I had no fear of standing my ground or of losing him! Our Messenger chats reduced to an hour. Then he wrote one evening that their camp had been broken into, and that all his last belongings in the camp had been stolen, only having his belongings in the parcel he was waiting for me to release via the payment. He was due to arrive and live with me happily ever after this week, but this was ‘delayed’ to the following week.  After a week it was clear that I would not pay, and the 9-week ‘relationship’ ended!

During one of our Messenger chats, when we were talking about something else, ‘Noble’ asked me who ‘VV’ is. I said I wasn’t sure, but that she was a recent Facebook friend. He said that she had sent him a Friend request, but that he had rejected it. I checked his Facebook  page regularly, and all of a sudden I saw her as his only other Facebook friend, fearing for her when I saw her relationship status as ‘Widow‘. She did not respond to my messages to her, but her son did, and she then contacted me. She told me that ‘Noble’ had requested to be a Facebook friend, told her that he was a widower, and that he was a friend of mine! She has now blocked him. I reckon that he will look to find all my single, widowed, and divorced Facebook friends, in addition to finding new ladies on Tinder. On Messenger I could not help but think that he was running parallel conversations with others while he and I were chatting at night.

It is now clear that the Internet dating scam is running out of Cape Town, and that Tinder’s distance measure was spot on all along. I can only assume that this is a syndicate that operates from a call centre locally for the calls and text messages, as do the Messenger conversations come from here too!  ‘Noble’ had never left Cape Town, operating from our city as part of a ‘romance scam‘!

My friend Gabi, who introduced me to Tinder and is twenty years younger, has had a very different experience, and went on about ten dates in a six month period in Cape Town, and did not encounter any false persons in her matches. Tinder describes its service as ‘the McDonalds for sex’, and maybe this applies to younger matches!

I had an amazing time on Tinder, learning about a whole new world, enjoyed being wooed, and got to know about some nice and not so nice men. I joined two other dating sites (Zoosk and Elite Singles) too, as a comparison (purely for research purposes, of course), but these are paid-for sites, and I have already cancelled them, as they are very local men, none of whom were of interest, most sounding very damaged after a divorce or being widowed! The attraction of Tinder is the international ‘flair’, attitude, and looks of their members.

In a next life I will become a digital Mills & Boon writer, I have written it all and received it as well! The script writing I was subjected to was worthy of an Oscar!  I always knew that if all else failed, I would write a story about my experience!

Thank you for reading this warning. Please share this with anyone who is thinking of or is already doing Internet dating. You are welcome to call me at any time. I would welcome feedback from anyone to whom the name ‘Robert Williams’, ‘Noble Robert‘, ‘Noble Robert Williams‘, or the modus operandi sounds familiar.

POSTSCRIPT 14/3:  We reported the false Facebook account ‘Robert Williams‘ to Facebook, and it has been removed.  However, the ‘Noble Robert‘ Facebook account is still open.

POSTSCRIPT 18/3:  A second Facebook friend has received a Friend Request from one of my male Facebook Friends (Robin Floyd), who appears suspect, another Tinder match. She has unfriended him.

POSTSCRIPT 20/3: The other Tinder man I wrote about above, Rik Vincent Dordi (but called ‘Coping’ on his Tinder profile, and not found on Google), became Plan B, less good-looking, but very attentive and seemed real, in that he sounded American, that he did not have a voice scrambler, that I was not ‘allocated’ a communication time slot, and that he answered most of my calls at random times of the day!  He too was an engineer, with a contract in Cape Town, then one in Durban all of a sudden, and then a 3-week one in the USA, to which he would be departing today. He would be returning to me in Cape Town thereafter.  Knowing his voice well from the calls, I could hear that he sounded depressed three days ago.  I finally got out of him that he had a Tax problem, asking if I could run some errands for him about it in Cape Town on Friday, and try to sort it out with his (previously unmentioned) secretary.  I exploded, saying that I had other things planned, and that I have accountants who handle my tax matters,  and that I cannot help him.  On Friday he assured me by e-mail that he did not need money from me, but talking on the phone that evening he did confirm that he needed R120000 for his ‘little’ tax problem, which he would repay with interest. After my ‘Noble’ saga above, I exploded a second time and put down the phone, and ended all communication with him!  Rik was confused about his age (51 or 56) and his birthday (4 January or 24 April).

POSTSCRIPT 22/3:  A new Tinder match Derrick did a same-day move from Tinder to What’s App, and communicated at high speed, all on the same day. I blocked him when he started writing about his Likes, Dislikes, and Interests, as a word-for-word copy of an e-mail sent to me by Rik Vincent Dordi mentioned above!

POSTSCRIPT 23/3:  By chance I came across the American fraud/scam warning websites www.tineye./com and www.scamwarners.com.   The former confirms that the photographs in our Blogpost above are in fact those of the real-life Bruce C. Belliveau. The latter website found our Blogpost above, and has included it on its site as a scam warning, and marked the two photographs above as Scam, with links to the other sites they have been used on. Another (unrelated) scam is also linked to South Africa, a man being a victim.  This scam category is called ‘Romance Scams’.

POSTSCRIPT 23/3:  From the two websites above I learnt about the blackmail danger of internet dating, in that ladies are asked to send ‘naughty and sexy photographs‘ (as was I, but I wasn’t sure as to what was required, so I did not!), and they are then threatened with exposure of the photographs on Facebook, prevented against payment!

POSTSCRIPT 17/4:  A friend told me today that a friend of hers, who had read this Blogpost, decided to go onto Tinder, being in her late ‘Fifties. She met someone she liked, and started chatting to him. He had the tell-tale signs of being an engineer and more, recognised from this Blogpost. To speed up the communication dating process, she suggested meeting for coffee. He became furious, saying that the invitation for coffee should come from him. In addition, he said, women are evil! That was the end of that Tinder match!

POSTSCRIPT 17/4:  Earlier this week Robin Floyd disappeared off Facebook and Messenger, having spent a month trying to woe me, to beg R155000 from me for a missing 5% payment for a new oil drilling machine, to be paid into the American bank account of the company secretary supplying the machine (BANK NAME -: Chase BanK BANK NAME-: JONAS MOUBER ADDRESS-: 1100 Old Country Rd. CITY-: Plainview, STATE-: NEW YORK ZIP CODE-: 11803 ROUTING NO-: 021000021 ACCOUNT NO-: 669386760).  He promised me an interest rate of 30%!  He was from Cleveland Ohio, but did the drilling in Scotland. I tortured him by not paying, and went through the bureaucracy of our foreign exchange control regulations, and asked him for an invoice or a copy of the quote, or oil drilling contract with Exxon, none of which he could supply. I was getting tired of his begging, interspersed with huge declarations of love, but had not yet reported him to Tinder or to Facebook for fraud when he disappeared. It appears that he was ‘double-dating’ me with more than one other woman, and she must have reported him. He is the first Romance scammer that has been active on Facebook, having collected 21 Friends, some of them being my Facebook friends, who thought it OK to become his friend as I was his friend, despite my warnings to the contrary on Facebook! I had sent him a photograph of me holding a cigar (his profile pic on Tinder was with a cigar), and he merged the two photographs, and posted this on his wall. He did a Timeline tag request, but I clicked ‘Hide’. He also declared his undying love for me on his wall, which received the same treatment from me! He sent me photographs of him and his 7-year old ‘daughter’, and asked me to call her, giving me an American number (+1 601 342 0149) for the house of ‘grandma’. She sounded full-on American, and was too sweet. I have warned about the emotional pull of children above, and it hit me in my heart when ‘Debbie’ asked me if she could call me ‘mom’, given that her supposedly widowed ‘father’ and she would move to Cape Town as soon as the machine was bought and the oil drilling completed! I contacted Linda Stein, one of his former Facebook friends, via Messenger, and she told me that he had also begged money ($400) from her for ‘sick’ Debbie. Odd was that his gender was marked as Female on Facebook, and I forced him to correct it. He used the word ‘cuz‘ a lot on Messenger, and I made him stop using it, which he was very obedient about!

POSTSCRIPT 17/4:  Last week I received a number of emails from an American lady who had a similar experience to my ‘Noble‘ one, meeting him on a dating site which I have not heard of before. He used the ‘Noble‘ photograph (the main pic at the top of the Blogpost), as well as others which I did not receive. The modus operandus was very similar, and I will write a separate Postscript about her experience once I receive her go-ahead. When she found a link to this Blogpost on www.scamwarners.com (see above), she saw the similarity of the scam, and wrote to him to end off the ‘relationship’, sending him a link to my Blogpost. I have noticed that the number of Tinder matches have reduced dramatically in the last two weeks, being amused by the idea that I must be public enemy number one in the Romance Scam Call Centre, not paying a cent and keeping the poor men dangling in the belief that I am considering payment! Similarly, almost all the recent Tinder matches did not continue their communication with me in the same period.  Weirdly the Tinder matches coming my way increasingly have a German connection, ‘Von’ (19 km away, suspicious) of course being the most unusual, but he has not written at all in almost a month since matching.  There is Arick, coming from a German-speaking part of Belgium, but has not replied to my German (12989 km from me); Bernard Bingenheimer, who grew up in Sweden, who cannot speak German but would like me to teach him! (suspicious at 19 km away);   Smith Lehmann from New York (Tinder is only supposed to match with others up to 100 km away), who writes that he is German but cannot speak it!  Funniest is ‘Anthony‘ (also a Williams surname as was that of ‘Noble’) on Tinder, who signed off his first immediate request for an email as ‘Dave‘. When I questioned his names, he replied that they are both his names and I can choose either of them!

POSTSCRIPT 18/4: This is a summary of the Romance Scam experience of the American victim (who wishes to remain anonymous) of ‘Rober Scott‘ and who was sent the same ‘Noble‘ photograph as our main pic above, plus others:  ‘I joined the “Our Time” dating website on March 13, 2016, bravely trying internet dating for the first time. On or about March 15^th Scott contacted me via that website. I responded stating I was not interested as we lived too far apart as he purportedly lived in Hermosa Beach (southern CA) and I lived in northern CA. But he persisted and I relented in the next couple days and received his first text message and call March 17, 2016. He stated that he was Norwegian and was a Mining Engineer. Our first telephone conversation occurred March 18^th (bad connection-a lot of clicking sounds) and enjoyed better connection the following day. He sent a daily good morning ‘honey’ text every day, called me every evening, and sent several chatty and sweet texts during the day. He was very sweet and charming and made me feel comfortable and relaxed chatting with him and yes I too shared way too much information. He told me he has a daughter ‘Stacy’ who lives in Paris and is getting married in July. I happened to be going to Paris in a few weeks, and he said he wanted me to meet ‘Stacy’ there when I visit. Yes, another ploy. He sent several photos of ‘Stacy’ and he in Rome and Paris (but was Berlin!).  We planned to see each other the weekend of April 2^nd (me going down to see him in So Cal) but then on 3/30 he told me his contract for work in China came through and he had to go there immediately on that Friday 4/1 (April Fool’s day—how appropriate). He sent me flowers, stuffed toy, ballons and chocolates (ostensibly to verify my address) and sent me his purported address : 1216 20^th Pl, Hermosa Beach, CA (verified to belong to another person) and continued his soppy texts (decorated with many emoticons) and phone calls well synced with the time difference. On Monday, April 4^th sent me the photos of him purported on site in Shandong China. But I discovered the original via a search on TinEye https://www.tineye.com/, his head shot merely composited into the original mining shot of the 2013 Daily Mail. Anyway Monday April 4^th, 2016 was the night he asked me to accept delivery of ‘a large and very valuable chunk of gold’ he was in the process of purchasing for more than one million dollars. It shocked me as that was the moment I knew he was scamming me, but I played dumb and did not tip him off.  The next day I told him I was ‘nervous about receiving and safeguarding something so valuable’, and offered other practical solutions re why doesn’t he contact his bank to accept receipt of the commodity or ask friend he knows much better than me. He agreed the bank could do it but it would require much documentation and too much time and that he did not have any friends, only business associates and they would demand a percentage. There were several back and forth texts trying to convince me it was safe for me to do and it would really help him out. He mentioned the package would arrive via private courier and would be in a locked case and that only I would have the combination. He also mentioned I would have to sign several documents to receive it. Raging alarm bells going off—I could only imagine the horrific financial implications I would suffer if I signed such documents!!! As I continued to resist he told me (not) to panic and that he would call me that night. Then I went on high alert to learn about internet dating scams, gold smuggling, etc and found this site https://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=118676 and then your Blog. I started putting together all the information I was finding into an email I planned to send him to confront him with his lies. That night I asked him to send me his driver’s license and of course received the response don’t you trust me? But he sent that fake one with the phony picture the following morning and again I played dumb, and wrote back “so handsome” so as not to tip him off to give me time to figure out how best to handle this scam. That night (yesterday April 6^th, 2016), he asked me to ‘loan’ him $6,000 so he could pay for security to transport the ‘material’ and I simply said “no”. I then told him I was not stupid and would never consider sending $6,000 to a person who has only told me lies and send me fake photos. Silence, a few gulps, I think he was really taken aback and shocked that I figured out the scam and then he tried to smooze me more and I simply replied I would be sending him a mail (which I will forward to you) which supports my contention. He said ok and we bade each other our good-byes.‘  Birthdays for ‘Scott Rober’ were 13 October as well as 28 July.  His ‘handle’ on the dating site is Scolf812, his email is roberscottrs@gmail.com, and his telephone number +1 647 200 1543. He loves doing ceramics!

POSTSCRIPT 19/4:  What a surprise! Robin Floyd returned to Facebook yesterday, and did a Friend Request, telling me he had problems with his Facebook page.  He has used the cigar photograph again, but his birthdate has changed.  From declaring his undying love, he was right back to begging for the money.  I told him that I have since invested the money in a 5-year fixed term deposit, as he had just disappeared over the past five days.  The ‘love’ seems to have waned very quickly!  I have invited him to continue chatting to me, on condition he does not mention money, lol!  20/4: Robin Floyd lasted 24 hours on his second Facebook account before having been closed down again!

POSTSCRIPT 19/4:  I have hinted at Facebook above, but can see the vast increase in the number of male Friend Requests, with the following tell-tale scam warning signs: widowed; profile picture of the man with a child; cover picture usually is blank; zero, one or two Friends, of which some might be one’s own Facebook Friends; usually an engineer; the page opened on the same day as the Request; and there are no posts.  Once you accept the request, they start communicating romantically via Facebook Messenger.  I have not pursued any of these scamsters, having my hands full with the Tinderers! I have noted two Afrikaans Friend Request names in the past week, and a friend accepted one, and received his approach via Messenger too. She had forgotten to change her relationship status from Single to being in a relationship.  I have seen a handful of my Facebook Friends accepting scam Facebookers, and I am surprised at how hostile they sound when I Messenger them a warning about the person being a potential scammer. Some have been mature enough to contact me back, to thank me, once they have received the first lovey-dovey approach from their new ‘Friend’!  Recent Facebook Friend Requesters are David John, Barry Kendrick, Frank Lucio, Benneth Baffoe, Edward James Moran, David Mark, Cunningham Willard Royce, Jack Francisco, James Brooks, San’chaz Lyon Giovani, Kevin Miller, Alexander Coleman, Edwin Thompson, Janck Samuel, Rodriguez Harry Morgan, Stevenjohn Bill, Frank Mark Morris, Estes Robert Eugene, Alex Owen, Sams Tony Weston, David George, Justice Cole, Terry Anderson, Greg Ricardo, Jean Ramsay, Odiri Faith, Swainson Trevor Charles, Bob Walker, Michael Oscars, Mount Briton Baron, and Alex Alvino, all meeting the scam profile!

Chris von Ulmenstein, WhaleTales Blog: www.whalecottage.com/blog  Tel 082 55 11 323 Twitter:@WhaleCottage  Facebook:  click here Instagram: @chris_ulmenstein