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How a friend request on Facebook cost local woman thousands of dollars

Posted at 10:54 PM, Jun 28, 2016
and last updated 2016-06-28 23:55:50-04

At one point in time, we’ve all probably accepted a Facebook friend request from someone we don’t know.

Unfortunately, accepting a request from a stranger ended up costing a local woman tens of thousands of dollars.

A woman who we’ll call Sara is ashamed and embarrassed after losing $40,000 to a man she met on the Internet.

“Overall, he seemed like a very nice person,” she said.

Her troubles began after receiving a friend request on Facebook from a guy named Kevin.

“We never talked on Skype because he didn’t want to be seen,” Sara said.

Despite that red flag, Sara continued talking to the man who passed himself off as an army veteran and businessman.

Sara says at first, the conversations were casual.

“It was more like a friendship in the beginning and then it led to a romantic friendship,” Sara said.

The two exchanged photographs and talked on the phone, but never met in person.

“It was like a couple months afterwards that he started asking for money,” Sara said.

Sara says Kevin asked her to invest in an electronics company he was trying to open up in Nigeria.

“He kept telling me it was a business and we’ll make it big one day,” she said.

Over the next four years, Sara sent tens of thousands of dollars to Kevin.

We asked Sara, “How is this guy so convincing to the point that he manipulated you into handing over so much money?”

“He’s good,” Sara said. “He gets into your head and makes you believe things.”

There was no business model and Sara never got a return on her investments.

She ultimately got the courage to do something most victims involved in these types of rip-offs avoid and decided to called police.

“The victims feel silly that they fell for this and they don’t want to tell people or police,” Milwaukee County Assistant District Attorney Erin Karshen said.

Karshen says cases like Sara’s involve what the law defines as “theft by fraud”.

“Theft by fraud generally is lying to someone and then getting money from them,” Karshen said.

In federal court documents obtained by the I-TEAM, we were able to confirm the Wisconsin U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating three separate incidents involving romance scams using online dating sites.
In all, court documents show crooks stole more than $550,000.

“There are a lot of difficulties with finding the identity of the people on the other end of the computer,” Karshen said. “We can do search warrants to find IP addresses but it’s very hard to place a face to who is behind the computer.”

Most online dating scams never end with someone being prosecuted.

As for Sara, she’ll likely never see a dime of her money back.

“I lost a lot of money,” she said. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my house.”

Sara hopes by sharing her story, she’ll help others avoid the headache she’s going through.

The Better Business Bureau offers the following tips to help you avoid falling victim to romance-related rip-offs:

1.  Beware of people who do not wish to meet in public or video chat online.

2.  Most dating scams involve individuals who claim to be from the United States, but either live overseas or are temporarily stationed in another country.

3. Asking for money is always a red flag, especially if the person requests you send money through a wire transfer.

How to spot “fake” profiles and pictures:

There are many sites that offer what’s referred to as “reverse image searches”. These search engines allow a computer user to upload a picture of a person and then find out if there are any social media profiles or web sites where that picture is posted.

Some of these sites provide services for free, while others charge a one-time or monthly service fee for background check services.