This scammer seems to be running some version of the romance scam, pulling on people’s heartstrings by claiming she is in the U.S. Military and stationed abroad, but has a sick daughter back home that she needs to get back to and needs several thousand dollars for the flight. Claims she will return the money when she’s back in the States, which of course never happens. Each time the victim gives more money, something goes wrong with the flight booking and she needs additional cash. She threatens the victims saying that the money cannot be returned unless she gets to the US. It seems to have a several month lead in where she befriends the victim on Facebook and Line and sends many many photos of herself and her daughter. Gift card is of course the preferred method to receive the money, specifically Apple gift cards.
There are dozens of accounts with the same name, Akira Linda, and the same pictures or pictures of the same person, so someone’s identity has probably been stolen to provide the photographs.
I can’t guarantee every account in this list is fake, but the vast majority of them use the same photographs and have information that matches the scam I witnessed. Of most interest though is the account linked below on which the person I suspect to be the scammer seems to have accidentally uploaded images of himself:
The following two are examples with the occupation information that matches the scam I witnessed.
Interestingly, the scam seems to be targeting Japanese people. My coworker, and older Japanese gentleman, ended up paying thousands of dollars. I asked him if the Japanese sounded natural, and he said it sounded like it came out of Google Translate. I think it is intended as a romance scam due to the language the scammer used, encouraging the victim to shit talk his wife and so on, but to my friend’s credit, it seems he did not engage in that part. The scammer pulled him in anyway purely with the promise of international friendship and the claims about her sick daughter. He ran out of money ultimately and told the scammer he wanted to help, but was completely out of savings, and the scammer continued to pressure him until he borrowed money from his mother to continue paying. I got the cards from him and called Apple with the numbers, and they disabled 7 accounts that had been used to redeem 10 gift cards. There was an 8th account that had already been disabled and flagged as scam.
If anyone wants to waste this asshole’s time, I’m sure he won’t be able to tell the difference between native Japanese and a Google Translated conversation. Just friend any of these accounts on Facebook with a fake Japanese profile and I’d wager it will start.