Romance SCAM Uncovered

so the other day someone sends me a Facebook message and says I've been scammed by someone using this man's picture and I thought okay what do you want me to do about it but then he goes off and says I'm so depressed and suicidal I have a gun ready on my head just waiting to pull the trigger and I'm like whoa don't shoot now before I continue I just want to say that suicide is never okay and if anyone's having suicidal thoughts you need to talk to a professional because nothing is worth taking your life but this guy who I'm gonna refer to as Shawn was just a real mess he went on to tell me that he met a guy on a for a which I guess is short for Adam for Adam a gay dating site and the guy he met was supposedly named Henry Peebles and he claimed it was a US soldier serving in Syria and I guess I hit it off right away and had a little online romance swapping pics and such and Sean ended up sending him money from time to time he said he gave him about three hundred dollars in cash and iTunes gift cards and now was feeling like he was being scammed and I'm like dude it's not worth ending your life over three hundred bucks and he said no wrong amount three thousand ouch but I said still you're worth more than three thousand dollars so I tried to figure out what went wrong and I said why did you send him money he said because I believed him I might lose her I said it's okay he's tricked a lot of people you're not a loser and he said what makes it worse is I fell in love with the man in this picture all right this dude is just a mess and I just got to take a second to point out the real effects of internet scams I have a lot of scammers who watch these videos and you guys need to know the toll it takes on people I mean this was a very vulnerable guy who was just so desperate for love that he clearly missed some warning signs like the fact that Henry would never speak to him on the phone and that his photos looked a little well photoshopped I mean look at this this guy's hands are smaller than Donald Trump's look at those hands are they small so at first Shaun just thought he was helping out his boyfriend of cash and that one day he'd returned back to America and paying back and they'd married but this all starts to go sour when Henry tells Shawn that he was crossing the border with a gun and he didn't have his military ID so he got arrested and he needed Shawn to bail him out and Shawn starts to get suspicious because soldiers they always travel in pairs and the US Army would never abandon their soldiers so Shawn doesn't send him the money which makes Henry sad and these two lovebirds get into a little bit of a fight but then another dude enters the picture and he hits Shawn up on a foray and he says his name is Johnson Rosario and he's also a soldier overseas the guy refuses to do a Skype call with Shawn saying that he prefers text and this sends Shawn into a spiral of depression because he realizes that he may have spent thousands of dollars on a scammer and that he was never in love at all and that's when he contacted me and apparently Shawn's not the only one there are thousands of people falling for these military romance scams the scammers steal pictures of US soldiers and then they make their victims think that they're talking to them I even stumbled across a site with a ton of other people complaining about these very two guys there are victims everywhere and the problems only getting worse this news report that I found reads the US has already established numerous Task Force organizations to deal with these kinds of scams and other issues unfortunately law enforcement sibility to identify these perpetrators is limited so apparently nothing's getting done because these guys are still on the loose so Shawn ends up hiring a private investigator to see if he could find out who and where this scammer was he pays the dude a thousand dollars and over the course of a month here's what he finds after careful inspection of the file investigator researched the destination where the funds which were sent to Togo West Africa after extensive research that area shows to be higher in online scandals it was also the birthplace of the well known Nigerian print scandal most respectfully Wow $1,000 for that any twelve-year-old with a laptop could have told us that what is the matter with you people are you guys lazy or do you just suck at your job now the guy on YouTube is gonna have to figure it out for you so while you guys were off screwing around on Google and calling MoneyGram yes somehow forgot that you had a golden lead their phone numbers like did you ever consider I don't know calling them or texting them well I did you just got to figure out how to get them to talk to you and the way you do that is to make them think that you have money so Sean gave me Henry's number and I sent him a text I said to whom it may concern' my name is pastor Benjamin Dover with pleasant green ministries yep brother Shawn is a member of my congregation he's informed me that his friend Henry Peebles has been arrested and is in need of financial assistance our church looks out for each other and I will be willing to make payment on his behalf please let me know who I can work with to resolve the situation hours later I get a response and why do you want to help me in behalf of my husband sir Shawn is my husband but were not yet married well then he's not your husband he would be your fiancee but I said he mentioned that Henry needed cash he is unable to make payment at this time he asked me for help he said we plan to meet in person but I was arrested by custom with guns when coming to meet him just recently and I said okay well the church can help on his behalf he said please are you honest with me I said yes of course he said please the money can be sent through MoneyGram receiver named Henry Peebles I want to surprise him because he thought I only needs his money sir are you there hello sir hi okay this guy thinks that he's about to make some easy money so I said so MoneyGram country Togo and named Henry Peebles he said yes the officers will take me to the bank to cash out myself I said please confirm the amount he said I'm going through hell as I'm talking to you now $700 all right so he wants $700 it's time to have some fun with this idiot so I said okay Henry the church requires me to have an official bill stating the amount do we need to keep these for auditing purposes can you provide that and he said I will let you know as soon as they handle the document to me they said I should hold on to provide me those details you need as assurance I'm very sorry to delay you sir I will send you the fun peppers as soon as they call me for us sir are you still there I said I am here just let me know when it's ready and he said I'm sure soon I send the information to you the fun will be sent for my release I don't want to remain here I'm going through hell so this poor guys having a pity party trying to make me think that he's in prison so I tried to cheer him up I said I'm sure it's difficult are you a Christian he said yes very difficult yes I'm Christian and you well I am a pastor I said the Apostle Paul was often held in prison he says in Romans 5:3 that suffering produces perseverance and Henry said yes you're right and I feel like I don't have any helper because I thought God is not alive to serve me through the pains I'm going through every day and night God sent you to me that's my believe I lost all the hope in me because I thought no one was out there to serve me you know what I think I have a little bit of a knack for this ministry thing so I kept his spirits up while I waited for him to deliver the form from the prison [Music] hmm he spent six hours on Photoshop and this is the best he could do I said great I just need you to fill out the form for the church's records then we are good to go and Henry said okay so I quickly built a little Google Doc where he would be required to enter Shawn's name and the amount of money if he wanted to get paid I said this is how we keep track of finances in the church then I did my favorite trick by creating a redirect URL with Grandpa Phi dot link so I could track his IP address then I sent it to him and within a couple of minutes Henry said he had completed the form he said I just finished with the form I'm done with it sir so I went to grab a Phi to see if he was stupid enough to click on my link he was and his IP address is placing him in so now I got to do a little bit of detective work it's pretty clear to me that Henry and Johnson are either the same guy or their buddies in there tag-teaming poor Shawn so I do a Facebook search for Henry and Johnson and I find a facebook profile for Johnson Rosario using his exact same picture now this is clearly a fake account because he hasn't posted anything ever and he's only got one friend a guy living in I think we found our scammer so I say to Henry okay just a few questions he said what what question do you want to ask I said I saw your document says Henry cureless I thought it was Henry Peebles and he says Henry Peebles I said okay so why does it say peerless he doesn't answer but he repeats Henry Peebles six hours on Photoshop and he can't even spell the stupid fake name right so I say okay one more question who's this he says that's you right I said no it's you you're not in Togo you're in Ghana and he said Wow lol funny lol I need to sleep man I said I tracked your IP address he said what if going on here you're here to play games with my emotions right yes I am here to play with his emotions so I sent him another picture and another one I said prove I'm wrong take a selfie right now he said with a simple text phone sir I said you're using a Mozilla techno CX err you sent me a graphic you filled out a Google Form you're not using a text phone and then Henry goes quiet meaning that I think he knows he's been caught red-handed but that's when Johnson starts chatting up Shawn again but Shawn is pissed and he ain't falling for this crap so he starts cussing Johnson out and he responds with a picture of our suspects Johnson says how did you get his picture and Shawn just lets him have it cussing up a storm and finally Johnson breaks character and starts unloading on Shawn saying his grandfather stole wealth in Ghana and Shawn is getting what he deserves he then starts sending in pictures with shrines with gun naming phrases is he casting a spell on him or what so Shawn's house repeatedly video calling him until he finally answers probably on accident but Shawn is able to get a screenshot and there's our scammer so FBI I'll have my phone on in case you need someone to actually help you finally crack some of these cases thank you for watching everybody and thanks to Sean for letting me tell his story I told him that if I make any ad revenue off this video this month that I'm going to give it to him so he can pick up his pieces and move on with his life if you want to help him out too I'll put some info down in the description but thank you for watching watch out for scammers and we will see you next time bad boys bad boys [Music]

Channel: Pleasant Green

Views: 1,170,909

Rating: 4.9307008 out of 5

Keywords: romance scam, 419, scam baiting, online dating

Id: UQCPY2QjV34

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 06 2019