Information on romance scams and scammers.
#169574 by Jenn10 Sun Jun 23, 2013 5:28 pm
Hi,
it's my first time on here & wanted to know if anyone recognises the name tony Charles brown, he also uses the name micheal john venus... :cry: I met him on match.com he's 51yrs old allegedly from California, he is widowed with no family & he's Danish/ American... He has already had £3,500 from me & is now asking for more money!! I'm not site if he's scamming me or not,
I have emails from him only don't know how to check to see where they were sent from... He is still in contact with me & I'm afraid I'm bring scammed!! I have known him 9wks yet we still to meet.. Even though he says he's in London.
I have checked his email address & it's shows it from California.. He also gave me his home number in LA which I called but no answer... Obviously there wouldn't be any answer on the phone as he's in London!! I want to find more information out about him before I cut ties with him & would like to know if anyone had heard or been scammed by this guy?
He sent me photos of himself & a video of him chatting & they match his photos he's also spoke to me on webcam & it's defiantly him... I don't want to accuse him of scamming me until I got the right evidence.. Thanks Jenna.
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#169581 by Dotti Sun Jun 23, 2013 6:48 pm
What you describe is textbook African romance scam, from the widowed-with-no-family to the money requests from a woman he has never met face-to-face. The simple reality is that anyone who asks for a large amount of money from you, based on a short online relationship (and 9 weeks is very short) is scamming you. The name doesn't mean too much--while some scammers use the same fake names over a long period of time, others created new identities with each new scam.

If the scammer has video of the person whose photos he is using (for example, if he is using photos of an actor, public personality, or even if he just one of hundreds of thousands of people who put videos of themselves on sites such as youtube) all it takes is some inexpensive software (frequently sold scammer-to-scammer), and voila--fake webcam!! Faked webcam used to be much more common with scammers posing as females (they often use porn actresses' photos, and use segments of video from their websites) but it is rapidly becoming more common with scammers using male characters now. So unfortunately, having seen him on webcam doesn't actually mean anything.

The California IP address will be gmail or yahoo's servers (depending on which he is using), and have nothing to do with his actual location.

As I said, I have no doubt you are being scammed. Odds are very high that he is African. If he is, that will almost certainly be detectible through his scripts and his writing. If you are willing to post the first few emails he sent you, as well as the emails around the money requests, we can tell you that. If you are not willing to post them, you can email them to the address in my signature as well.

Please do post the email addresses and/or phone numbers he has given you as well.

Need to post photos? http://scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=3219
Are you a victim of a romance scam? Read here for advice and FAQ's.

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