I was first approached by
John Amalger on
Facebook in the last week of May, 2015 and asked if we could talk. I said sure, what's the harm. Little did I know. During one of our IMs I asked him why there was a picture of cake instead of a profile picture. The answer was because he liked cake. He attached a picture of himself, which I now know is a picture of
Dr. Mark S.. Since I was so new to Facebook I was accepting anyone as a friend and let at least 4 guys, including John, in and now believe they are scammers too. John was the only one I continued to talk to. The others gave themselves away by either asking for money or giving off bad vibes, because facts didn't add up. At the time I didn't know about scamming. Anyway, John said he was born in Paris, France and still has a house there being taken care of by caretakers, even though he has spent the last 8 years in West Africa. He is 61 years old and his birthday is Oct. 14th. He made it known right away he was looking for a woman and his 12 year old daughter, Belinda needed a mommy. His wife was supposedly killed in a car accident when Belinda was 5 years old and he has been raising her alone since he had no other family members. At another time he told me he had 2 sisters, both married. One lives in France and the other lives in Spain. He said he was working on an oil rig in Stockton, CA. When I asked if they had oil rigs in Stockton, I never got an answer. Next mention of the oil rig it was in the ocean off the coast of California. Once when I asked how far off the coast he was, I had to phrase it several ways for him to understand and then he said it was it was in the middle, water all around. After a couple of days his profile disappeared from Facebook and there was a note on the IM saying the message was taken off because of obscene material. Then 2 days later he was back. When I asked what happened he said Facebook made a mistake. We talked some more and then he asked for my phone number. He wanted to hear my voice. I had been teasing him about I was too old for him but I would talk to him until he found his woman. Anyway, I gave him my number. Next day his profile was gone again, but he called me. His voice was a surprise. It was so deep and I was expecting a French accent, but it sounded more like the runners from Kenya. I asked how long he'd been speaking English and he said 10 years. I figured the reason he sounded so African was because that is where he learned his English. At least that is what it reminded me of. I once asked him to say something to me in French because it is such a beautiful language and he laughed and said Bon Jour and then laughed again and then the connection dropped. He never officially gave me his phone number but I have caller ID and used it. The first time he called it read Huston, Texas. He didn't have a reason why, all the times after that he had a California number: 909-389-6438. We exchanged email addresses, but because of his thick accent and deep voice I got it wrong. Next time he called I had him text it to me, it is
brownwest787@yahoo.com. Since he had sent me several pictures on Facebook and they were lost when the account was closed, I asked him to send me some again, and he did. Most of them are showing on the pages here. One of the first phone calls, which became his favorite form of contact, and always him calling me, he told me a story about a blind girl and an ugly guy who helped her but when she had a operation and could see she left him. I told him I didn't understand the moral unless he wasn't the man in the pictures, because he sure wasn't ugly. I never got a response. Guess I hit the nail on the head, he wasn't the man in the pictures. Belinda called me on 6/6 the day before her birthday. She did all the talking even though it was hard to understand much except she loved me and called me mommy. She said, Daddy had told her he loved me and I was going to be her new mom and she wanted to leave W. Africa and all daddy did was work, work, work. Then someone told her she had to go. Her phone number was 2348104186270. John and I talked about birthdays once because Belinda's was coming up on June 7, 2015 and he was worried because he didn't have anything for her and he had never failed her before. That is when he emailed me for money. Here is header:
From brown west Mon Jun 8 06:39:32 2015
X-Apparently-To: xxxx; Mon, 08 Jun 2015 06:39:34 +0000
Return-Path: <
brownwest787@yahoo.com>
Received: from [66.171.228.84]
From: brown west <
brownwest787@yahoo.com>
Subject: pls don't be angry
To: xxxx
pls don't be angry
brown west
To xxx
Jun 7
i know what the problem is, i know why she is not picking my calls before coming to california i promise to buy her an ipad i though i will come back before her birthday. i was wrong. it was all my fault. i have never fail her before i don't know what to do now can you help me can you lend me $500 or send it to her head teacher i can pay back ten times if you want when i comes to you please do this for me. i love you carri
I didn't have that kind of money and reminded him that I had already told him that if he was looking for a woman with money he better look somewhere else. He then sent an apology.
brown west
To xxx
Jun 8
I'm writing this message cause I feel really bad, thinking about the way I hurt you makes me really sad.
Baby I feel so bad right now, cause I tore your world apart, and now all I can think about is how I broke your heart What I really want to say is that I'm sorry, I know that you didn't deserve to be hurt like that
i want you to understand that my daughter mean the world to me you have to put yourself in my shoe
His daughter had been upset and refused to talk to him, as it was told to him by the Head Teacher at the boarding school his daughter was attending in Nigeria. He didn't contact me for the next day and half. Even though I thought she sounded spoiled I bought a necklace for her and asked for her address. He said I should return the necklace because the mail service in Nigeria was very poor and she wouldn't ever get it. He said best way was to wire money through Walmart. I though well, could afford $20 but he wanted $50. I finally agree after surveying my finances, figured I could afford that, but I let him know it was a one time thing. I use to work at the Walmart here, so knew the lady at the Customer Service counter. She helped me send the money, but she said something strange. She said the name sounded familiar, like she had sent money to her before. It was suppose to be the Head Teacher from Belinda's school. It was Odion Jude and the Walmart was in Edo, Nigeria.
I emailed him the pick-up number and texted that the number was in an email. He called and asked me to text him the number and my name and city where I sent the money from. He had been sleeping when I texted. He had a strange sleeping pattern. Supposedly he would get off work at 6pm and then sleep and then call me about 10 or 11 and then go back to sleep, but be up at 3am or 4am. He said it was so he could talk to Belinda because of the 10 hr difference in time. Several times he checked with me to see if we were on the same time zone. Anyway, after I sent the money he was in a good mood. Strange though he would text a line or two and when I would text him he wouldn't answer. Then,if I sent an email I would have to text him to let him know or he wouldn't read it. On 6/14 he hadn't called like he said he would, then called late to say Belinda's school called and Belinda was sick with a high fever. She was in the infirmary and they were giving her meds. I kept asking if Belinda had gotten the money and what she bought. He never did answer me but then on 6/19 Belinda called again and this time talked slower so I could understand a little better, but someone was feeding her answers or repeating what I said. When I asked about the money, she didn't know what I was talking about and then someone said something and she got excited saying something I didn't understand. I had the feeling that it was all a way for her to get to America since I don't have money. She told me she loved me and called me mommy again. It was just too soon. Then I got my most recent AARP magazine with an article, Warning: The Dangers of Online Romance. It was about scammers, the first I had heard of them. It started out about online dating services, which didn't match since we met on Facebook. Then it said the women usually contact the men and that didn't match because he contacted me...but then it started to sound familiar. It said you could do a reverse image search on TinEye, so I did. That was when I got 3 hits on the picture I put in. So I tried several more of his pictures and got hits. About that time he called, so I asked what was going on, his pictures were on the internet. He said that his friend had called the day before and said someone claiming to be him asked for money. He said that someone hacked his Facebook profile and stole his pictures. He promised he would take care of it. He was going to contact the home office of his Oil Company, which happen to be in Mexico. He would straighten it all out. At that point I still believed him. After he hung up I got to investigating and came across your website and read the letters from others and found out the pictures were really Dr. Mark S. I read what you wrote about not confronting them so didn't until he called while I was asleep and automatically answered, so played along. I didn't hear from him again after that even though he said he'd call me at least 5 times that day. He had been telling me the last couple of days how dangerous his job was and that a friend of his died in an oil rig explosion in Kaula Lumpur and sent a picture of it burning. I think he may have been setting me up to pay for an accident to him or send money to Belinda because he was hurt. Anyway haven't heard from him again. The pictures I am attaching are some that I don't remember seeing here before.
Oil rig pictures stolen from : gettyimages.com/search/more-like-this/90577660?family=creative&assetType=image