Victor Cole

My aunt met Victor Cole or Victor A. Cole via a widow dating site. They emailed and Skyped for a month. Unfortunately she fell for his scam and sent him a lot of money before we found out what was going on. I was given his name and a list of details he told her and was shocked to find out he's been scamming women for YEARS!
He goes by many names but most often seems to use "Victor" and his base story never seems to change; claims he's from Germany, his wife died between 5-9 years ago, sometime he also says his only child also died in the same car accident. He often says he's an engineer of some sort (electrical, Civil etc...) is a contract worker for multiple companies and often the goverment of whatever country he claims to be in (Turkey, Canada, England, Nigeria, Germany) but also claims he left Germany after his wife died to start a new life and leave the memories behind. He's said he lives in TN, SC, NC, FL, TX but is always working out of the country. He uses many excuses to ask for money, with my aunt, he said he was flying to see her for 2 weeks, then had to reschedule for work(he did this to her 3 times). Once he was done working he claims that the company he's working for can ONLY pay him via a wire transfer which has a $2000.00 processing fee. He claimed he would have them wire his paycheck into HER bank account, she just needed to pay the processing fee which of course he promised to pay her back when he finally comes to meet her.
I googled "Victor Cole Scammer" and was overwhelmed with all the websites stories of victims sharing their stories. Hopefully my aunt will let the embarrassement go and give me the details to share here like his email address, physical address, phone number, user id's etc...But I'll give you what she provided me:

All I know is that his name is Victor Cole, age 55, born Feb. 14, born in Germany, don't know where, one son going to university of Liverpool, in Liverpool England he is 25 I believe, a daughter 23 lives in switzerland with her husband, his elderly mother lives in germany in rest home. His father died when he was 4. Mother remarried after he grew up, has 2 half sisters that take care of her from that marriage, but is not close to them. He was married 19 years, his wife died about 9 years ago in auto accident. Around a year later he moved to US to try to leave memories behind and get a fresh start.He currently lives in or around Nashville, Tenn.He is an electical engineer. Works as a consultant to many different companies. I don't understand exactly what he does but it has something to do with getting the electicity from the power source out to the grid. He is currently in Istanbul, Turkey.

Here is part of the email I sent her with just some of the links I gathered that covers his scam:
Victor age 57, "civil engineer" with pictures often uses user id vayitome he is a HUGE SCAMMER...I searched the user id and he's on every dating website known to man and claims to be from different countries, UK, Canada, Germany, Turkey. [email protected] and [email protected] are often used emails.
http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=8579&p=27812&hilit=victor#p27812

Here's another 55 year old Victor http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5632&p=19894&hilit=Victor#p19894

WOW yet another Victor from Germany, lost his wife, this one has copies of emails too. Although this one pretends to be younger using stolen model pictures LOL...how ironic that he's got the same story! http://www.scamwarners.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2414&p=9229&hilit=victor#p9229

Oh geeze...Same old Victor, same story, from Germany, wife died in car accident and if you go through all the pages of comments the guy apparently copies and pastes the same emails to new ladies, same story and has changed his name several times. http://www.delphifaq.com/faq/male_scammers/f3362.shtml#comments OH and OPRAH apparently did a show on these scammers and Victor was one of the worst that she talked about!

Here's a bigger list of Victor's names he's used and email addresses....same story, from germany, wife died, also saying only child died in same car accident http://www.romancescam.com/album/displayimage.php?album=864&pos=1

If she sends me his details I will add them as well. I just feel like people need to be warned. I was shocked she fell for this, hasn't everyone seen all those shows on scammers on Dateline, 20/20, 48 hrs, Nightline? He's especially horrible for targeting widows!

UPDATE 5/03/11 My aunt's email with more details:

His email was [email protected] and he gave me his phone number as 931-538-4555 although I only tried to call him on it once after he supposedly went to Turkey, and it said it was shut off. I didn't find this as odd. The only time I asked him to call me from there he said he would have to call from a phone booth in the afternoon. He didn't. The web site we met on was seniorpeoplemeet.com a popular web site for people over 50.

Welcome here JaneDow.

After reading your post your aunt is on her way to realize she has been scammed. But please make sure she fully realizes that she has been scammed, and never see her money back. Make sure she doesn't start sending emails to him telling him she knows he is a scammer and asks for her money back. Then the scammer will just continue to scam her out of even more money. She should also be aware of the "recovery" scams where someone claims they can compensate her loss from scammers.
I hope you can post more details from this scammer.

My aunt totally realizes she's been scammed, she's just embarrassed. We already had her freeze her bank account Sunday night via the 800# on her debit card and yesterday she was able to change her account numbers. She is no longer responding to his emails and I'm sure in a day or two he'll stop and move on to the next victim. I'm still trying to get more details out of her, like either copies of emails he sent her or at the very least the user name he was using but, I think she's too embarrassed to share the emails with me and she's not really computer savy which is why she isn't posting this herself. But she did give me two important details I added to my original post:

UPDATE 5/03/11 My aunt's emai with more details:

His email was [email protected] and he gave me his phone number as 931-538-4555 although I only tried to call him on it once after he supposedly went to Turkey, and it said it was shut off. I didn't find this as odd. The only time I asked him to call me from there he said he would have to call from a phone booth in the afternoon. He didn't. The web site we met on was seniorpeoplemeet.com a popular web site for people over 50.