Let's just start this out with a little background so you don't think I'm just ranting about somebody that made me mad. I am a professional in the Information Technology industry. Have been for about 10 years now. I work for one of the biggest National Defense companies around. Needless to say, I've got quite a bit of experience, I know what I'm talking about, and I'm good at what I do. That being said (enough tooting my own horn), the point of this blog is to give fair warning to unsuspecting victims and to provide an example of how it works in hopes that these people will stop being so successful at ripping innocent people off.
There is a fairly new trend on the internet called Catfish Scams. This is where somebody (male or female) creates a social network profile impersonating someone else. In the most recent case I've seen, which I'll provide details to in a little bit, the person is from Nigeria (as I suspected) and they created a profile on Facebook using a fake name and somebody else's photos. In this case, the somebody else happens to be the husband of a dear friend of mine. He is a war hero that earned the Purple Heart award for his dedicated service to our country and is now a Wounded Warrior.
So this scumbag creates a profile using his pictures and then gets on a dating website or randomly finds friends (women) on Facebook and he starts talking to them. This time, one of those women happened to contact my friend to inform her of the situation. Oh but it's not just one woman he contacts. These people usually contact multiple suckers and befriend them. Then they start sending love notes. By love notes, I mean, passages from published love stories and random poems they find on the Internet. But they send them as if they wrote them to make these people feel special and loved. Then they start talking marriage and I want to meet you. They'll keep the relationship going for as long as the victims will allow. But, in the meantime, they are scamming them.
They'll set up a date to fly to the great United States and meet you and as you get excited when the date gets close, something of course goes horribly wrong...every single time. Usually the excuses are: "I found out I have cancer (usually Leukemia) and I need chemo" oh and they need you to send them money for the treatment, "I got in a bad car accident and broke my (insert any possible limb you can think of here) oh and they need you to send money for treatment, "My (insert close relative here) died" oh and they need you to send money for the funeral, "I got stopped by customs, there's a problem with my passport" oh and they need you to send money to pay the fine or fee, "I got arrested because (insert really hard to believe story about that super secret government job that they have here)" oh and they need you to send money for court fees bail or whatever, etc. etc. etc. I forgot to mention that these people work for the United States government, they are usually military or CIA on a super secret mission to save the world. And they are apparently extremely broke and unlucky. I know it sounds like I'm being funny or sarcastic, I'm really not... this is truly how it works. The really sad part is that these people get tens of thousands of dollars wired to them by US citizens believing their lies. That's why it's so popular now. As long as there are unsuspecting victims that so desperately crave love that they will maintain an emotional relationship with somebody they've never once met... this scam will be successful.
Okay, so that's the jest of how it works. My goal for writing this post is to put this person's profile out there so that hopefully some of the victims will simply do a Google search and not let this pond scum scam them. Also, I'm trying to put enough keywords in here that this will become an easy to find blog to help people be aware of this problem so they don't fall victim. It needs to be widely known that this is a problem and people need to seriously investigate the people they want to have relationships... especially long distance relationships that ask for money. A big key to this is simply NEVER send money to a person that you have never met. For any reason. You don't know if their sister really died just months after they "came down" with Leukemia and got out of jail for their "honorable" work for the U.S. Really...
Now... the only personal affiliation I have with this problem is that it just happened to a close friend of mine, as I explained above. The perpetrator calls himself Tobias Garry Songer. This is a link to his fake profile: https://www.facebook.com/tobias.songer. The person in his profile pictures is actually Chris B A Songer and is a U.S. Military Veteran. His profile is: https://www.facebook.com/chris.b.songer. You'll notice that the pictures are the same... but the real, true, profile has a whole lot more than a few pics and a couple of likes. You'll notice that the real profile allows you to comment publicly and has a wide circle of friends and just looks real. While the fake profile is more of a fan page where you can't publicly comment (because those of us that are onto him would definitely call him out) and he doesn't show enough information on the profile about where he's from, what he does, and who is family is. That is another good sign that you're being scammed. I, and many others, have reported the fake profile to Facebook in hopes that they will shut it down as impersonating a war hero is a FEDERAL crime. Unfortunately, the perpetrators are almost always in countries like Nigeria or India so getting them prosecuted is pretty much impossible. Chris and his wife ask that you click on the fake profile and report it to Facebook. To see how: https://www.facebook.com/help/167722253287296/. Many, including Chris and his wife, have sent messages to this guy calling him out. His responses have been very vulgar and "they'll never find me."
While I don't have the power to shut this guy down, I do have the power to spread the word. And so do you, please share this with everybody you know so that you don't, and they don't, become a victim of this scam. The truly sad thing about this is while these people get rich emptying their victims' bank accounts... they break their hearts in the process. These people fall madly in love with these jerks before finding out they're scam artists. It's depressing. So let's spread the word and help prevent this from happening to those we love.
That's it for now. Good luck!
~Ki
