Hi guys, brand new to the website, I’ve always been vaguely interested in fighting the pathetic and manipulative morons out there who prey on the unfortunate. Recently however, this interest has been rekindled by a rather nasty scam. A relative of mine’s Gmail was hacked by a Nigerian IP recently (according to Google, although this info came FAR too late), and their information leaked. Coincidentally soon after this, she received a message on Facebook claiming to be (as far as I know) from an American doctor trapped in Syria, who was surrounded by dead bodies, and he basically developed a manipulative romantic relationship with her over the next few days (although this relative speaks decent English, it isn’t her first language, and she failed to find the appalling grammar and spelling suspicious from an American doctor), largely through the sheer volume of messages, and managed to turn her against her husband, breaking any trust there. Long, boring story short, another American contact appears who needs a large Western Union transfer in order to ensure the doctor’s safety… She transfers this money via WU, and then sends the scammer a photo of the receipt, except, the relative, being rather inexperienced with technology, accidentally sends the picture to myself and my brother, at which point her husband becomes suspicious, and contacts me, asking for me to send him a copy of the photo. Somehow the scam has moved to Instagram at this point, and between us, we spend the next few days trying to bait the scammers into giving us info via a catfish account that would appeal to their opportunistic ways. I manage to get several accounts linked to the scam deleted for spam/harassment, but the kingpin seems to remain; “Crown8965.” I advise you to report this account, as it is either fake, or has been hacked at some point, and is 100% linked to these scammers. The husband managed to get in touch with this account, as well as several others seemingly involved, but each time he got into meaningful conversation, or mentioned the prospect of calling them, they either became extremely evasive and/or blocked him.
This relative lost £2600 of her own savings to this scam, and I implore you to report any accounts linked with this, and be wary. Spread awareness for this scam, because it might seem far fetched, but it's already claimed a victim.
