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I've heard of scams while using the dating site Plenty of Fish, and am typically cautious when giving my phone number out, but this happened to me after letting my guard down once: So, a little backstory, I am a soldier in the US Army and spend a little time on a couple of dating sites just to hopefully easily meet people since I haven't a lot. It's not even a dating site anymore! Stay away from Plenty of Fish! Calling all scam baiters!
Are you talking to someone online? Do you trust them? Could they be a catfisher, a scammer, a scallywag or a con-artist?
How Monica Draper, a 55-year-old, Ontario based graphic designer, lost $100,000 is not unheard of. How could she fall in love with a notorious online Lothario, who had an outstanding warrant out for his arrest? She accepts that her money is gone. But, she is still amazed that the fellow she met on the dating website, Plenty of Fish, was able to abscond with her money as well as the life savings of at least a half-dozen other women, so easily. The truth is she was “catfished”.
A catfisher is the new name coined to describe a bottom dwelling human, who spends a great deal of time on the net in various locations like online dating sites, and social media sites, luring people into romances and then stealing their money. A catfisher uses fake pictures, bogus profiles and cunning manipulation, drawing their victims into a state of trust through infatuation. Often the victim has low self-esteem and insecurity with their self-image and when a person appears online to be interested in them, bingo, a match is made! The victim falls hard for this Romeo, that they deem way out of their league. In truth, the seducer is faking it. And is running this con on other people as well. In short, a catfisher is a scammer and con. The prevalence of online dating predators grows more copious every day.
According to research 4,288,595 people per month use Match.com, and visit the site a total of 26,200,000 times a month. The total Match.com membership is 15 million people. The total eHarmony membership is 20 million lonely hearts.
Compare that to the total number of single people in the United States, which is 54 million, it is not possible that half the single US population is a member of an online dating site! Especially when the trade journal, Online Dating Magazine estimates that there are more than 2,500 online dating services in the U.S. alone, with 1,000 new online dating services opening every year. Some estimates say there are 8,000 competitors worldwide. That means many people that join three or more dating sites.
On the free dating sites, at least 10% of new accounts are from scammers, says Marketdata Enterprise, Inc. Interested in catfishing, anyone?
Dinner for Six, a matchmaking service in Denver, Colorado says that 51% percent of online dating members are putting themselves out there as being single, when they are in some kind of relationship. According to MSNBC, research shows that 11% of people using online dating services are married.
More than 53% of Americans fabricate parts or all of their dating profile details, according to Huffington Post. Some lies are so blatant, like weight or height, that their dates can spot the untruths in the first few seconds of meeting them. In fact, a third of those surveyed said falsified information is so prevalent, that it prevents them from going on a second date.
More than 40% of men try to swoon women by lying about their jobs, trying to make their career sound more prestigious. It makes sense every woman wants a guy with a great job, for example a guy in the entertainment industry is a lot more interesting than someone selling tickets at the local movie theater. eHarmony mentions that a study found men who reported incomes higher than $250,000 received 156% more email than those declaring an income of $50,000. That’s 156% more gold-diggers! So guys, think twice about whether you want to post your personal income.
In 2011, the FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center lodged 5,600 complaints from victims of “romance scams” or “catfishers”. The reporting victims lost over fifty million dollars. But, it’s suspected that these numbers are much less than actual, as many people are too embarrassed to come forward.
In 2005 alone, 25% percent of rapists used online dating sites to find their victims. Let me repeat that: twenty-five percent of rapists used online dating sites to find their victims. Each year internet predators commit more than 16,000 abductions, 100 murders and thousands of rapes, according to InternetPredatorStat.homestead.com
Tyler Cohen Wood is an expert in social media and cyber issues. She is a Cyber Branch Chief for an Intelligence Agency within the Department of Defense (DoD). She is the author of the book - Catching the Catfishers: Disarm the Online Pretenders, Predators and Perpetrators Who Are Out to Ruin Your Life. It outlines some typical characteristics and warning signs of an online scammer and offer suggestions on how to protect yourself from catfishers. The good news is that you can protect yourself by learning how to spot a phony while dating online. . .
1. What if this person won’t video chat?
Using SYPE, Facetime, Google Hangouts or even Snapchat with a person that you meet online is normal practice in online dating. If a person makes excuses every time you want to SKYPE, it is a red flag. Be concerned if the area code of their cell number is a not listed in the domestic list of area codes. Areas codes that start with 473, 809, 284, 649, 654 and 876 are international, and are known to have been used for scams. Also be aware if there is a very bad connection every time you speak to them (such as a poor international connection) or no voice mail is attached to the number.
2. What happens when you Google them?
Almost everyone in the United States has some sort of Internet presence. It is very rare that someone would have no Internet presence at all. If you do basic research, such as conducting a search using a portal such as www.WhitePages.com , www.Spokeo.com or by looking through social media sites, and can’t find anything about this person, that is a red flag. Most professionals will at least have a LinkedIn page. If you cannot find anything on the Internet about a person, they might not be telling you their real name, which is again, a red flag.
3. Check public records.
Do some reconnaissance by using search engines to find public records- www.intelius.com, or www.publicrecords.searchsystems.net. If a person says they own a house, you will be able to easily see where it is and how long they have lived there. You can also find legal documents like bankruptcy filings, divorce records and death records. It is well worth the ten dollars to spend on a Spokeo.com membership to learn the truth about a scammer.
4. Do they send real time photos of themselves?
When people are communicating online, ask to be sent a selfie, right then. If they refuse, or make some excuse, that is a red flag. If they have only sent you one or two photos, it is likely that they stole that photo from someone else’s Facebook page or from elsewhere on the Internet. Don’t be fooled by photos of kids or an elderly Mom. Do a reverse image Google search- right-click on their photos, copy the URL, and paste in the box at images.google.com. Google will then search for other sources of that image online.
5. How many “real” friends and work colleagues are on this person’s social media sites? How many people communicate with this catfisher?
You can get to know a lot about a person’s friends and family based on the banter they engage in on social media. How many posts are started by the potential catfisher? How many responses? Do they tag their photographs? On LinkedIn, do they have colleagues who have endorsed them? I even ask their LinkedIn colleagues if they know this person, yes, I really did that!
6. Do they deflect or never answer your questions when you ask detailed, specific questions?
Do they avoid answering your probing questions? Do you find that they deflect from your original question and the subject changes? Do you stop probing as a result? These are red flags. If you feel as if you are the only one sharing information and they are not giving away any details, consider this a red flag.
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7. Do their stories match up?
If someone is pretending to be someone they’re not, they may have a difficult time keeping up with their fake persona. Colleges are the easiest reference to check. Call the alumni office to verify whether this person is in the alumni directory. Ask about their hometown, their kids, their colleges, ask often, and listen for a slip-up.
8. By the way, how is their spelling or their command of the English language?
We all make silly spelling mistakes, but if the person you are communicating with uses strange grammar and makes odd spelling mistakes continuously, maybe these writings are all coming directly from Google Translation. Proceed with caution.
9. You will receive everything you would want to hear from a Prince Charming.
“You are so beautiful”, “I think you are someone special”, “I love you” or you receive a marriage proposal, sometimes all within the first twenty-four hours of meeting this person online. Need I say red flag to this one?
10. In the first few days, are the communications hot and heavy with frequent emails, texting and contact? What happens next?
It takes five to seven days of hot and heavy intrigue, seduction, in pursuit of the development of trust. Then it is time for the “ask”. Usually this period of time is accompanied by the building up of the “story”. This story could be a “colossal break”, a deal so big they can retire on it, or they are working on the business opportunity of a life time. Once they have your trust, then at the end of the week, there is a disaster. A partner pulls out of the deal, leaving the scammer high and dry. Or they need some cash to finalize the deal or in order to complete some business obligations. They need to bribe corrupt local officials, or they may have been “robbed” and lost all of their belongings. Just about any story will do, and it is usually a large amount of money that will satisfy them. What is totally amazing is that if you say no, that will not stop the con-artist from asking again, again and again.
There are a great variety of personality roles scammers use, as well. The first step scammers use is appearing on a dating or social media site with a fake profile and credentials. Some roles are saying they are an a widow, that have grieved the loss of their spouse for a decade, a lonely American soldier stationed overseas, or an entrepreneur working in oil, diamonds or gold.
Most important thing to remember is never give these people any money. Once the money is transferred, the scammer simply disappears, leaving you with a broken heart and an empty bank account. There is little chance of prosecution or recovery since these scammers are often located in other countries.
Of course, not everyone is out to scam you. There are plenty of legitimate individuals seeking a partner on these dating sites. The intention of this post is not to make you paranoid. Ultimately, if you’re doubting this online Lothario – you’re most likely right. If you encounter some of the scenarios and warning signs I have listed above, end the relationship immediately, never arrange a date and never, ever give this person any money. Be the fish that got away
Melissa Killeen is a recovery coach, author, blogger and public speaker on living a life in recovery. Her book Recovery Coaching-Coaching People in Recovery from Addictions is the first book on recovery coaching. She is well versed in coaching those with behavioral addictions which include sex and love addiction. Love addicts are particularly susceptible to catfishers and scammers. You can contact Melissa on her web site http://www.mkrecoverycoaching.com/
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GREENVILLE, S.C.—Just before noon on Sept. 11, 2018, a former Army private named Jared Johns lay down on his bed, turned on his iPhone’s camera and said goodbye to his family.
Toward the end of the two-minute video, Johns’s eyes widened as he read a text message on his screen: “She is going to the police, and you are going to jail,” it read.
Johns, who had served in Afghanistan, took a deep breath, placed a 9 mm handgun under his chin, and pulled the trigger.
The 24-year-old veteran was one of hundreds of former and current service members who have been targeted in a “sextortion” plot. The scheme that led to his suicide involves scam artists posing as underage girls on dating sites who then attempted to blackmail men who responded to their lures, prosecutors say.
But the most startling aspect of the plot in Johns’s case was that it was allegedly carried out by inmates at Lee Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in South Carolina about 150 miles east of Greenville. And the inmates did it using smartphones — banned devices that should have been blocked by the prison’s $1.7 million “managed access system.”
Now prison officials and some federal agencies have proposed purchasing an even more complex and potentially more expensive technology to stop illicit cellular and Wi-Fi messaging from contraband phones in prison: a jammer that will block all calls within its range.
“Inmates are incarcerated physically, but they’re still free, digitally,” said Bryan P. Stirling, the director of the South Carolina Department of Corrections, who has been on a mission to get signal jammers in prisons since 2009.
But some experts warn that jamming technology, which the federal Bureau of Prisons recently tested in a South Carolina prison, could put the public at risk by interfering with 911 calls and other cellphone service nearby; for rural prisons, the concern focuses on drivers on local roads and highways. Plus, they say, the technology probably won’t work.
“They’re taking an internal problem and impacting people who are not involved,” said Richard Mirgon, a former executive at the Association for Public-Safety Communications Officials. “It’s tantamount to saying, ‘Why not jam up the freeway to keep people from speeding in the side streets?’ It’s just so extreme.”
The best solution, according to telecommunications companies and advocates for prisoners’ rights, would be to stop the influx of cellphones into prisons. But that has proven to be difficult, especially at a prison like Lee, which has a long history of serious phone-related incidents. Inmates there have used contraband cellphones to, for example, order a hit on a corrections officer who was shot almost to death in 2010 and to publicize prison riotstwice in the last four years.
Prison officials at Lee say they have tried to stem the tide. In 2017, the corrections department felled large trees that loomed over the prison to stop drones from dropping off packages of cellphones. That same year, the department spent $8.3 million to install 50-foot netting at the perimeter of its prisons, including Lee, in hopes of stopping couriers from throwing backpacks of cellphones over fences.
Corrections officials say these solutions reduced the number of cellphones in state prisons. In fiscal 2017, prison guards confiscated 7,482 phones, batteries or chargers in the state’s facilities, which house more than 21,000 people. In the fiscal year that ended in June, officials collected 3,900. Chrysti Shain, a spokeswoman for the corrections department, said that inmates now must spend thousands of dollars to acquire a phone.
Phones and Accessories Seized in S.C. Prisons
In the year ending with June 2017, corrections officials in South Carolina confiscated 7,482 phones, batteries and chargers in the state’s prisons. Two years later, they took roughly half as many.
Yet, the department acknowledges phones still get inside. Experts point to low-paid guards and prison workers who can augment their low pay by selling inmates contraband.
But even if cellphones get in, there should be no calls getting out. That’s because of the nearly $2 million in technology that Lee officials purchased to block calls from unauthorized phones.
In 2017, after clearing the treeline and setting up the nets, the corrections department hired Tecore Networks, a communications company, to install the system that is supposed to detect and block all calls made from contraband phones. The technology is supposed to work like this: If someone makes a call, the system compares the cell number to a predetermined list of prison staff’s phone numbers—called a white list—and then either allows the call to go through, or blocks it.
The wireless telecommunications lobby group CTIA, which represents some of the country’s largest carriers and equipment manufacturers, has recommended that prisons use the managed access systems, as they are called. But it’s unclear how many facilities across the country actually do. Shawntech, another private company that sells managed access systems to correctional institutions, says it provides the multi-million dollar systems to close to 350 jails and prisons.
Even engineers who back the system as a solution warn that it’s not a silver bullet to stop all illicit calls, which can circumvent the system because of a very basic rule of how a cell tower works: If you can’t see it, it can’t see you.
When someone inside makes a phone call, the closest cell tower will pick up that signal. In a prison with a managed access system in place, the tower is usually located within the perimeter. But, for example, if an inmate stood behind a wall with water pipes (radio waves can’t easily pass through water), the cell signal will find the closest tower it can see, which would be outside the prison.
Also, cell companies often change the strength of a signal if customers in an area have bad reception. It’s like listening to two conversations happening at once in the same room; it’s easier for you to hear the loudest speaker. Whenever cell companies boost a signal, cellphones inside the prison will be able to find it more readily. It’s a problem that Tecore flagged in a 2018 news release.
That’s what South Carolina’s corrections officials say happened at Lee, and how the inmates contacted Johns in the first place.
Current and former prisoners at Lee said they could use cellphones easily, even with the managed access system in place. This year, inmates at Lee were caught live streaming on Facebook.
“Walk into one room, and it’s fine; walk into another and you won’t be able to,” said a current inmate in the prison, who said he has used a prepaid Boost Mobile cellphone to make calls. His identity is not being revealed out of concern for his safety.
Tecore, which manages the prison’s system, did not respond to multiple emails or calls over several weeks seeking comment.
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These problems explain why corrections officials and federal agencies have proposed using technology long opposed by the communications industry: cellphone jammers to stop all calls, even from phones owned by staff or emergency workers.
Unlike managed access systems, which allow people to make calls if their numbers are on an approved list, a jammer is indiscriminate in its reach and power to block all frequencies, including data and Wi-Fi. That’s a problem for the nation’s 911 phone system, which operates on a frequency close to the one commercial carriers use.
Only federal authorities can legally use jammers, and only in limited circumstances involving national security. But with the blessing of the FCC’s Chairman Ajit Pai—appointed by President Trump in 2017—and the U.S. Department of Justice, prison jammers could become a possibility.
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In September, the department and state officials put out news releases saying that a test at South Carolina’s Broad River Correctional Institution showed that a micro-jammer could block calls inside a cellblock while allowing “legitimate calls” a foot outside its walls.
But a technical report on the same test by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration was squishier. It noted that the test involved only one of the 14 jammers required to block calls in half the cellblock. And it found that jamming was detected at least 65 feet away, though it said it was unclear how significant that interference would be to regular cellphone service.
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The telecommunications agency would not comment on the study.
Precise jamming—limited to a specific distance and also only to cellphone frequencies—is prohibitively expensive, especially for larger correctional facilities, said Ben Levitan, a technical engineer who has worked with the South Carolina corrections department in the past and read the NTIA’s report.
That kind of jamming is “cool in theory, but it’s impractical,” he said.
A 2018 T-Mobile report also concluded that jammers with the precision to overpower only phone frequencies up to a certain distance would generally be too expensive for prisons.
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In Johns’s case, inmates at Lee used smartphones to pose as girls on the dating app Plenty of Fish. After they got a response, the inmates would impersonate the girls’ parents, saying the women were underage, asking for money or threatening to go to the police.
The scammers demanded just over $1,100 from Johns. A single father who was already struggling with mental-health issues, Johns couldn’t afford that.
Three weeks after his suicide, Johns’s mother, Kathy Payne-Bowling got a Facebook message asking her to contact an inmate at Lee. She told her ex-husband, Kevin, who talked to the inmate and was told that other prisoners had made the calls to their son.
“I couldn’t believe it when I found out,” Payne-Bowling said. “These guys, they’re not supposed to have phones in the first place!”
The family contacted the police, and within a month the local district attorney’s office charged two inmates with blackmail in relation to Johns’ death. They have pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set.
The U.S. attorney in South Carolina also charged 15 people, including five Lee inmates, in a similar scam in 2018. Prosecutors say the alleged perpetrators extorted nearly $560,000 from 442 service members. Three inmates pleaded guilty earlier this year, as did seven people on the outside who helped orchestrate the scheme.
The Johns family plans to testify in favor of legalizing jammers at a Senate hearing later this year.
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But the family blames corrections officials for not doing more to prevent inmates from getting phones in the first place.
“If these guys in the prison just kept the phones out like they’re supposed to, this wouldn’t have happened,” said Johns’ twin brother, Jacob. “I would still have my brother. I would still have my family. I’d still have our life.”