by firefly » Thu Nov 03, 2016 7:24 pm
Posted on the behalf of the victim.
The scam situation from the victim's friend perspective - the friend was the one trying to get the victim out of the tap, after two payments where already done to the scammer network:
The person that contacted the victim called himself Garrett Mckenzie.
The other two players in this were called Bar, Christian Williams, and Anthony Farja.
The Williams guy was the Lawyer and Farja, the man from the bank.
These guys are part of a Nigerian 419 network.
They setup a fake bank site, bi-id.org. The bank was called bank of Indonesia.
Mckenzie won the victim's confidence and love, then he played on her sense of responsibility and got her to open a bank account on this fake bank site.
They made the victim pay over two amounts that come close to R$2500. She paid those money into two South African bank accounts. They send to the victim a so called certificates of an investment that was put over in her name by the Mckenzie guy and to get that money cashed she had to pay an amount of tax over into the bank account.
Off course that was a scam but she didn't believed it.
These guys caught her with a romance scam, a fake bank scam, an advance fee scam, plus they stole her identity.
They have her passport, they have her physical address, they know that
she is disabled, they know that she have a house in her own name, they know basically everything that she could give them about her own life, bank account details, email plus passwords, everything.
The bank account she had to open so called, was in Jakarta Indonesia.
They must have a runner there to collect money through Western Union.
They have at least two South African bank accounts through which they launder the money, they have numbers in India, USA and Indonesia.
The victim perspective:
It all started when I accidentally accepted a friend request from a Garrett McKenzie on my old face book account. I never accept friend requests from especially men I do not have any mutual friends with but for some reason my phone accepted instead of opening the profile when I wanted to see if I knew this person somehow.
He immediately wrote a message back on messenger, thanking me for accepting his request. Then he started writing every day from about 16:30 in the afternoons. This went on for about 2 weeks before he asked if he could send me an e-mail sending photos of himself and one of him and his son Kelly.
The e-mail address was from a Garrett Salansky and at the bottom it was ended with "regards Louis". When I asked him about it he ignored the Louis question but told me that his full names were Garrett Salansky McKenzie. I asked family to check his profile out and was told that it looks suspicious but if I just wanted to chat, it was okay but the moment the person ask for money, I must block them immediately. Well, I fell in love, believed the following story and ignored all the well-meant warnings of people that knew exactly what the m.o. of these scammers are.
About a month into the relationship, he told me that he had a bad day and asked if he could confide in me. I immediately felt uneasy but told him to go ahead. He was apparently involved in a court case with his late, X wife's family regarding property and investments he had in her name. She claimed 80% of their mutual assets. He told me that he registered property in her name in good faith and because he loved and trusted her. Apparently she married his lawyer and because of their knowledge, he was sued for the maximum. After her death it seems the
family went to court and is suing him for the 80% she claimed. During this time of his divorce, he took money and opened an offshore investment at the Central bank of Indonesia in Jakarta of $2.5 million. The court case were going to be on the 17th of September therefore his lawyer Bar Christian Williams from Gidado Chambers advised him to transfer the investment to someone he could trust fully before the start of the court case as it could be traced and the family lays a claim on it.
At first I refused and said he should ask his family, which he said he couldn't trust, then I said he should ask a friend, this he also explained could be traced. It was best if it was a person they didn't know of at all. Well, because of his excellent convincing skills and my infatuation with him, I fell for the emotional charged plea to do this for him. Bar Williams wrote me an e-mail and phoned as well, explaining what was required from me and said he would collaborate with the bank on my behalf for Garrett. An account was opened at BI, I received an e-mail from a Mr. Anthony Farja stating this but I had to pay an amount of $1 850 to open this offshore account but I could
only pay $1 067 which they accepted. A link with my password and pin was sent to me and the amount of the investment as well as the deposit to open the account showed on the statement.
Then I received an e-mail from the bank, stating that the account was placed on hold because of the tax owed to the revenue services of Indonesia and the amounts stated in the e-mail from them had to be paid before I could do the transfer to my SA bank account. I again took money from a savings account and paid it into the account of
the Barrister who were going to do the payments to the Revenue Services once Garrett and I could get the amount together. Garrett raised $3 800 by selling a gold wrist watch and borrowing from a lady friend.
This was before he left for India on a contract. He needed this tax to be paid as he was going to need some of the investment money to hire or buy machinery for the work he was doing in New Delhi. The last money request I received was from the house registration, I also paid in but together it wasn't enough for they required 60% of the tax amount. I was put under a lot of emotional stress to help and even though I told Garret many times that it wasn't right that I should be responsible for all this money, he apologized and said that he was sorry about it but, that I should still try my best as everyone will get their money back as soon as all the tax money is paid in.
That was the end of my payments for I tried to get the money from my friend; he refused and this caused the relationship to take on another course. Because of my friend investigations, it was discovered that this was just another scam in which I was caught without much effort.
I trust that this explanation draws a picture of how these scammers lured me into a well-planned emotional scheme for there were so many obvious signs but because of the emotional involvement, one is totally blinded and stupid.
Thank you for taking the time in reading my story. Most of all thank you for the effort and time that you are willing to invest in trying to prevent these scammers to swindle other innocent victims out of their hearts and money. Money is something you can get again, but the emotional investment you make, is something that no one can ever give
you back.
Help yourself by helping others - report your scammer here.Google can be your best friend;use it if you have doubts about someone met online. If someone met online only asks for money, no matter what reason, it´s 100% scam.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=26504
