That can take many forms, such as pretending a medical crisis has occurred, or sending money for airline tickets so the scammer can pretend they will visit their victim. The objective is to develop an online relationship with these women (friendly or romantic), with the ultimate intent of getting money from them. The scammers will either pretend to be someone with a public profile (as the first one three years ago did), or use their public pictures in order to create a false persona (as the most recent one did). These schemes are generally run from overseas. So what exactly is going on here? These are basically variations of the “sweetheart scam.” I want to make it clear to anyone looking to investigate this guy’s story that I am the real Robert Rapier, and I am married.” How the Scam Works He has mined my photos, and claims to be a widower and is reaching out to women. “Note: Someone is impersonating me on Instagram and Facebook. I made sure to put up a picture of my wife and me (that’s us, below) as my profile picture on social media sites (after a “less romantic” picture of us led the scammer to claim this was his niece). Some are legitimate, but others are sleeper accounts just waiting to be activated and used in the future. I can’t get them taken down unless they use one of my profile pictures, which I frequently catch them doing. I discovered that there were a dozen Facebook profiles using my name and pictures, so I started getting them taken down.Įven today, there are nearly 20 accounts on Facebook with the name “Robert Rapier” but with no profile picture. I got the profile taken down, but for a while new profiles popped up as quickly as I could get them removed. He had accrued several hundred followers. The scammer had set up a profile in my name on Instagram. That should have alerted the woman that something was wrong. The woman sent my wife screenshots of these conversations, and my wife immediately responded “My husband doesn’t talk like that.” The English was very broken. They indicated they were on an assignment overseas, and they had already pressured the woman for money. They used my profiles at places like Investing Daily and Forbes to bolster credibility. In contrast to the message above, in this case a scammer was actually pretending to be me. I told my wife that I had no idea who this woman was, so she investigated. Let me tell you, that’s a dangerous thing to have your wife hear while you are in close proximity to her. She just wanted my wife to know that she and I were having an online affair. Three years ago my wife and I were sitting on the couch together, and a woman messaged her (again, on Facebook). I wanted you to know this because he has been using your photos deceiving me and probably others.”īelieve it or not, this didn’t come as a surprise to me. He is apparently a scammer but I don’t know who he really is or where he is from. I was very stupid and I believed he would repay me. He said his name is Bryan Shawn and he told me he lives in Livingston, Texas. I met a man on Instagram in Feb 2019 who scammed me over several months of over $80,000. “I have many pictures of you on my phone. Last week I received the following message on Facebook from a woman in Indiana: Simply put, don’t get scammed by someone pretending to be me! A Popular Scam I want to talk about a particular type of fraud that is primarily targets older widows, because it hits very close to home for me. When targeted at retirees, it can sap you of the money that is supposed to last through your golden years. Sometimes that involves covering how to avoid being defrauded, which is what I want to discuss today.įraud costs Americans billions of dollars every year. Each week I use this column to convey a bit of investing insight or to provide some personal finance tips.
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