Judy Vaughn is a woman from South Carolina who was in an online relationship with a guy named James Hackett. She met him on POF after her husband of 38 years passed away. He claimed to be a military man stationed in Afghanistan and talked to him for three years. However, something seemed off to her… he constantly asked her for money! He would ask for all of her disability and social security checks so that he could save up to come back home. The question kept ringing in her head: was he telling the truth, or is he really a scammer?
Their relationship started on POF after he had reached out to her, complimenting her and wanting to get to know her more. What attracted Judy to him at first was his good looks. He would also send her random love songs that would make her fall for him within a matter of only a few months.
They talked every day for about a year before he finally asked her for money. She sent him over $10,000 total so far, sending him over all of her disability and social security checks. She didn’t catch on to the fact that he might be a scammer until 2 years after he started asking her for money since he was interested in talking to her about anything.
She has now learned that if she continues to give up her entire paychecks, she won’t have enough to pay for her car. While she thinks he’s real since he seems too genuine and real when he talks to her, her suspicions that he is a scammer is still there. She asked our team over at Social Catfish to look into James and see if he’s a real person, or indeed a scammer.
Our search specialist, Linnie, ran an in-depth search on James and immediately noticed that his location showed that he was in Lagos, Nigeria, which is where a lot of scammers are from. She also thought it was strange how he wanted her to pay extra money for leave and send cards to his “so-called” child. She knows for a fact the military personnel are paid twice a month and have 100% access to their accounts just like everyone else. They don’t need money for travel, they don’t need money for food.
They don’t need third-party agents to help with fees for attorneys if a soldier needs to get out of jail or needs someone added to their life insurance. These third-party agents involved in romance scams act as money mules, which are people who help transfer money from the victim to the scammer. Sometimes they are aware that they are helping with the scam, and at other times they are also victims of the scam, not realizing that they are transferring money to a scammer.
Also, Linnie ran an image search on the photos Judy provided to Social Catfish. Once the search was done, she found that the same pictures were used to create thousands of fake profiles! We knew they were fake when they all used the same variations of photos being used. Also, they only had a few likes on their pictures, had only a few people following them, and on their pictures only had comments from females. This means that they were only interested in reaching out to females so that they can scam them.
We were able to trace the photos back to the original source and found out that his name is Donald Schaffer Jr. who is a trap shooter in Pennsylvania. This was able to confirm to us and to Judy that she was talking to a scammer, not the man who was in the photos. Judy’s suspicions were confirmed and she wishes she had listened to her granddaughter, who told Judy she knew she was talking to a scammer. After this incident, Judy is swearing off men for good and knows she has her family to keep her company.
If you would like to share your story with our audience, you can email Social Catfish at ShareMyStory@socialcatfish.com. This will give you the oppertunity to be featured on our upcoming YouTube videos and blog posts as you share your story with our many viewers. This will allow them to hear your experiences and know the signs of a romance scammer before it happens to them.
Social Catfish is also here to help you figure out if who your are talking to is who they say they are! We can reverse search any name, email address, phone number, social media username, address, and image to see if you are talking to the real person, or if they are just a scammer.
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Social Catfish is an online dating investigation service based in California, USA. We verify information to confirm if the person that you've met online is really who they say they are.
We do in depth checks using our own proprietary online tools to verify things like images, social profiles, phone numbers, emails, jobs and a lot more to make sure that you have the most information about the person that you've met online. We are the only company doing verification of public information such as jobs, phone numbers criminal checks as well as social profiles and images.
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