Beware of internet love rats

It all started with an innocuous Facebook request from a guy who purported to be a friend of an uncle. He seems nice enough, she thought and after all he was a mutual friend of her uncle too. The initial conversations were very general, he inquiring about her work, family and friends. 

“As the chats progressed, I felt that he appeared to be a decent guy. I was quite low at the time and I was flattered by the attention he was paying me. The chats were not of a sexual nature which made me feel that he was a genuine guy. He would just ask me general questions about my day and general well-being. Our chats then progressed from Facebook to WhatsApp and sometimes Viber,” confessed Shama.

“He came across as very honest, especially when he poured out his heart about the trials of bringing up his daughter since he lost he wife. He also sent me a picture of his daughter and himself. He would spend hours chatting to me about his father’s automobile business which he was helping run in Manchester in the North of England. Once, when we were chatting, he said he wanted to speak to my mother and proceeded to have a chat with her. My mother was bowled over by his charm, wit and the sincerity of his conversation with her. His messages to me slowly graduated to ones in which he professed his love for me. I was really touched by them. Some people may say that I was being naive, but I honestly felt he was telling the truth and I had no reason to doubt him during that that time,” added Shama. 

“The only time I had niggling doubt was when I would probe about his family and he would say we could talk about all that when we met in person. We were in constant communication for about four months and I think I was sucked into this vacuum he had created when I believed that he genuinely cared for me. Even when I asked him to FaceTime me or send me extra photos of himself, he would come up with an excuse. I put my doubts to one side as I genuinely wanted to believe that he was the real deal. These were warning signs I should have heeded but I was desperate to believe that he was a decent man with good intentions,” Shama explained with a heavy heart.

“Despite these little issues, our communication continued, when after four months he called me and said he was going to India to meet some business associates who had owed him money. I then said that he should come to Sri Lanka and visit, at which point he said he did not know that Sri Lanka was so close to India. A few days into his ‘visit’ to India, I got a frantic message from him saying that he had run out of money and wanted me to wire him Rs.48200 to pay for his hotel,” Shama explained.

“I was mortified as this request made me wonder if he was a fraudster. I was hoping against hope that this was not the case but when he was pressuring me to find the money, either from friends family or even a bank loan I, realised that this man was a con artist. I played along with him saying I was going to the bank but the moment I said I could not raise the funds, he got very abusive with me and started shouting down the phone. He then blocked me on Facebook and all other modes of communication. I now realise he would have been frustrated that the 4 months he had invested in our virtual relationship would not yield him one cent and it was his time in vain. I was devastated to think this man could stoop to such low levels. During this time, I had mentioned this man’s communication to my sister-in-law who is rather skeptical began delving into his background and much to our horror we discovered that he had set up a fake profile. 

I was in a state of shock. The man I had known as Danny for four months had been masquerading as a man called Neil. It was evident that Danny had stolen the identity of Neil. As I was blocked from Danny’s account, we used another identity to investigate his Facebook account. When I asked my uncle if he knew this man, my uncle confessed that he had no knowledge and had accepted a random Facebook request and now he too had been blocked by the imposter we know as Danny,” professed Shama.

“His Facebook friend list was private so we trawled through his photos and status updates and managed to identify several women from Sri Lanka. We then set about contacting them. It took us a few weeks to get through to them but when we realised what this man had done, we were in a state of shock. One Sri Lankan woman in the US had received the same proclamations of love and at the end of it a request for money which she had declined. To our horror we discovered that he had made a victim of one woman from Katunayake who had parted with 1.5 million rupees to an account in India. When I spoke to her, this woman revealed that she had not gone to the police as she was a single woman and she felt ashamed to confess to the police that she had been duped by an internet fraudster. Once the money was credited into his account, this callous man had blocked this woman from social media and she had no way of communicating with him at all,”  she added.

Danny's profile on Facebook

Feeling totally let down and violated to an extent, Shama is keen that her story is read by as many women as possible so that they don’t fall victim to lotharios, confidence tricksters and frauds who prey on vulnerable women on the internet. 

“Don’t trust people, especially those who you befriend on social media. If you are in doubt, stop communicating with that person and report them to social media immediately. Whatever happens, do not part with any money. Don’t be shy if you are duped; report it to the police immediately as the police may be able to stop him from deceiving other women. 

I want my story to be a warning to other women so that they don’t fall victim to heartless scammers like this fraudster Danny. If you are in doubt, please report the incident to the cyber-crime unit and don’t’ suffer in silence,” Shama said in a heartfelt plea.