scammers abusing stolen photos of John Costella

[firefly]

abusing stolen photos of the australian actor John Costella (starnow.com.au)

On DMF:

I'm Anderson,i saw your profile and was so interested in you,you are a pretty lady i must say...you are an epitome of beauty,please can i get to know you?so we both can be friends....I would to read from you please...Do have nice day ahead....

Cheers Anderson

Profile elements:

andersonjermaine213
- 43 y/o male
- califonia, USA
- English, English, English
- Engineer
- Have 1 children

Description:
I need a loving,caring and God fearing lady who is attractive, intelligent and above all ready to be with me till the end of time..

Ideal match description:
I'm here searching for real love,and not here for games so please if you are the real lady for me please do feel free and hint me up.... I'm not really attracted to any one type of woman. However, she would be attractive, an intelligent woman who is successful...you decide what success means to you in your life. HONEST, Romantic, caring giving, fun, spirited, crazy, yet responsible, spontaneous, with a sense of style. Refined. One with an open mind who is not too heavy about life and who loves to laugh, is honest and DOES WHAT SHE SAYS SHE IS GOING TO DO

[firefly]

Other messages on site:

Hi pretty,
Thanks so much for you early response towards my mail i really appreciate it i must say....and thanks also for you compliment i felt cool when i read that.....how are you doing great i guess...i would really loved to get to know you so more please so we could be best of friends....i'm here in search of a serious affair and not games,so please hit me if you really want something great....Hope to hear from you soon..Have a nice day ahead.

Cheers Anderson

Hello, So sorry for not writing you on time i have been busy lately...how are you doing hope great?please am here for a serious search and i will be interested in getting to know more about you....i\'m very sure this will surely go a long way and a fulfilling one....looking forward in hearing from you soon.... Cheers Anderson

Thanks again for your message i must say you are a very nice and loving lady......despite your tight schedule you still find time to drop a line....it shows how nice you must be...
I'll appreciate it more when i read from you again..Thanks a lot.

Thanks

Good morning pretty,nice to hear from you,i think it will be better to talk more on emails since we both are busy..if you have a yahoo i.d i think it will be better of..here is my yahoo i.d...anderson213@yahoo.com.
Have a nice day ahead..Bye.

Dont read emails, done write... and in the meantime he is already with "scammer" mark on his datemefree profile...

[firefly]

But with the same email adress he has registered other profiles online, pretends to be in different location or with different age...

On Facebook,
Anderson Jermaine
Drilling Engineer at Chevron - oil drilling contractor and also do oil clearing in case there is spillage and erecting of fallen rig platform
Studied at The Ohio State University
Lives in Aberdeen
From Whittier, California
Member since 22 April



On MySpace,
jeff - private profile
Man, 27

[jpc]

Thank you for detecting this scammer using my photo! I am impressed by the diligence of the members here investigating identity theft. Great work!

I confirm that I know nothing of this clown. He may have lifted that photo from my acting page (starnow.com.au, although that's only a hobby), but I also used to use it as my avatar a couple of years ago (it's from one of our wedding photos!) and it still might be my avatar somewhere.

Please don't hesitate to contact me by email if you have any other questions.

Cheers,
John Costella

[Wayne]

Thank you, and welcome to our site. We try to identify the real people in the photos as often as we can, so that it can be shown they're in no way a part of the scam. If we can help you in any other way, please don't hesitate to ask.

[firefly]

Thank you for the comment here, Mr. Costella, and sorry because you have found in this way that your pictures are used without your consent. We try every time to find the innocent person whose pictures are stolen and used for scam, because they are also victims, like the ones whose good faith is abused by scammers abusing stolen pictures.
So long the pictures are online and not protected something like this can happen to anyone.
To avoid any potential problems in the future, i can suggest you to put one link with our topic from here on your webpage - with the mention that your pictures was abused online. Sometime, scam victims can not understand that the scammer hidden behind stolen pictures is someone else. Or, even if they understand the fact that the person from the pictures has nothing to do with the scam, some scam victims develop feelings for the person in the picture and can try to contact the real person, hoping for a miracle. We tell them not to do it, but sometime it´s happend...
For some public figures with alot of pictures online the mention about their pictures being used has wroked.

[SlapHappy]

Thanks for joining us here. Most real people whose pictures have been abused do not take the time to help victims by posting on antiscam websites like you have done. Thanks for your concern in coming here.
By posting warning messages on all your websites that scammers have stolen your pictures, and you are not looking for love on the internet, you are not the person they are emailing, you can help save some victims from falling for or breaking out of the scam and also prevent any victim harassment to you in your real life.
A link back here to this topic posted also helps slow down the scammers using your identity.
We will continue to post any more scammers should we find them that use any of your details.
Education and prevention is the best weapons that we have against these remorseless criminals.

You are an innocent victim and member here too, and we will do anything more to help you if asked.

[jpc]

Thanks all. I have tweeted about this, with a link back to this page.

I'll think about something for my home page, but I'm not sure if I want to give any unstable personalities bad ideas! (And perhaps make myself the target for more borrowed images ...) I try to keep bandwidth to a minimum on the main page.

You're absolutely right that education is vital. There are so many images out there on the net now that it would be futile to try to delete them or lock them down. (I cringe ever-so-slightly when I think back to some of the images I posted on my home page when I first set it up in '94, although even then I realised that once they're out there, they're out there. Today, people seem to be a lot more blase.)

Cheers
John

[jpc]

An interesting follow-up for you guys. I just took a phone call through the switch at work (my employer is listed on my LinkedIn) from an Australian woman who was on Zoosk. Apparently a scammer had used a photo of me there, calling himself "Kelly O'Connor". After getting her onto MSN (using yet another photo of me!), he deleted his Zoosk account.

Luckily, at the first Zoosk contact, she had dropped the photo into Google Image Search, found me, and knew something was fishy. She played along for two weeks.

Ultimately, today (or maybe yesterday), the scammer told a sob story about being stuck at a police station in Malaysia and asked her to wire money by Western Union. (I.e. the standard "I've been mugged overseas" scam.)

She has reported all the details to the ACCC ScamWatch hotline (http://www.scamwatch.gov.au), who I see actually have guidelines for dating websites.

Bizarre! But what makes me happy is that anyone who is silly enough to use a photo of me will soon get caught, because all my photos are crawlable by Google ...

[firefly]

Thank you for the update, jpc.