I found this message board through a reverse image search. I am blown away by all of this. A good friend of mine has been talking to "Benjamin" since late March. She is infatuated with him. He has sent her roses, and recently sent a "trust fund" check to her house because he "didn't want to have the check sitting in his mailbox". He claims to be on a "deployment" in New York so he can fly drones over the city to help with the COVID-19 crisis. She claims to have video chatted with him, but says the video is always frozen. So it is obvious to me that the person behind all of this is using some old video and simply pausing it while speaking. I am concerned that he has her home address, which puts her and her family in danger, and I can only imagine what other info he has.
However, I have been able to obtain the following information about him:
- Benjamin Artem Newton. Changed his last name from Mykhailo in 2012.
- DOB: 3/28/74.
- Born in the Ukraine and lived there until he was 15.
- Joined the US Navy and is close to retirement.
- Phone number: 1-919-726-8481 (registered to bandwidth.com, which is generally what shows up whenever it is a Google Number)
Here are some photos he has sent to her that she then forwarded to me:
https://ibb.co/album/35389N
I am posting this in an attempt to prevent others from getting scammed by this same person/group. I reached out to the actual person in the pictures on Facebook and he, indeed, confirmed he had not been chatting with my friend. If anyone has any sort of advice on how to let her know she is being catfished/scammed, please let me know.
Thank you all!