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The original was posted on /r/scams by /u/Swnurse54_1970 on 2024-06-25 02:44:47+00:00.
This is a long one so buckle up but I’m at my wits end and I don’t know what I can do now!
For a little background context, my mom was widowed in 2017, her and my dad had been married since 1967 and he was her first and only true love. She has been very lonely since my dad’s death, all 4 of her children and their families live on the west coast of Canada and she lives on the east coast of Canada. Unbeknownst to me she ventured into the murky world of online dating via Christian mingle.com which she felt was the safest and most honest place to meet someone! Because everyone on there is honest! Whatever! She is obviously not very savvy when it comes to social media and she started conversing with someone who she thought was a 70 something year old man from California(he looks about 50), who happens to work on an offshore oil rig in Scotland. 🙄She was chatting with him for about 4 months before she told me and by then he had his hooks in her! As soon as my sister and I saw his Facebook profile we saw the multiple red flags but she wouldn’t hear any of it. She was convinced he was real and that they were in love. He was perfect, he was a widower with one son, he was a Christian who wanted to spoil her. He wanted to travel with her and spend his retirement with her. He knew all the right things to say.
My sister and I both tried to get her to slow down, to ask him questions, to get him to actually call her on the phone and FaceTime her. She believed all his excuses as to why he couldn’t call or FaceTime. We both asked her if he had asked her for money and she repeatedly said he didn’t. He claimed he was going to come to Canada and be with her! First it was in November, then it was before Christmas, then he was going to meet her at the airport in Toronto as she flew home from spending Christmas with my family. Always a reason why he couldn’t make it, each excuse more outrageous than the last but she kept on believing. But I had my doubts! I decided to do my own research, I got his “phone number” from her cellphone when she was at my house for Christmas and not looking, which was really hard to do because she was watching that cell and her iPad like a hawk! I went onto a catfish site and sure enough there was the proof! The real person in the picture was a man from the UK that has had his pictures stolen from instagram and used by scammers all over social media! I paid to look up the phone number and that too was a bogus number that he was using from Tallahassee, Florida! There was no one by the name he claimed to be in San Diego at all. I also searched the employee list of the company he claimed to work for and not there either. Should be enough to make her see sense, right? WRONG!!
Against my better judgment, I listened to my sister and didn’t tell her about what I had learned right away! My sister felt that he hadn’t asked for any money and as long as she was only “talking” to him on Facebook messenger there was no harm. She was lonely and he was filling that void.
I forgot to mention, I am her next of kin and executor and as such she added me to her bank account, so I see all activity that goes on in her account! Now mind you, it’s not like she’s rolling in it! She’s a senior on a fixed income that pretty much lives below the poverty line in Canada. But she does own her home. So when I saw a deposit for $4000 into her account from one of those loan companies with outrageous interest rates to say I was freaked out was an understatement! I began calling her right away, no answer! I called my sister. Told her what was going on, what I suspected was happening too! Mom finally calls back, freaking out because I had called at least 20 times! I told her everything! I begged her to tell me she hadn’t sent him any money! I could hear the iPad binging away in the background! She was crying, I was crying! Who wants to break their mother’s heart? She said she believed me. I told her he would deny it, he would beg and plead that it wasn’t true. But I thought I had gotten through to her! WRONG!
I work nights, had to go to sleep, I woke up to several messages from my sister telling me that mom had sent him $750 worth ITune cards. She sent the message to my sister by mistake with “hey babe, here are the cards!” I lost my shit!! She denied sending them, didn’t know if they sent or not! Blah, blah, blah. She said she believed me but what if it wasn’t true, what if he is who he says he is? What will you do? I told her if the man that she believes is Adam Thoma is the man in that picture, if he shows up in her house, I will fly to her house, get down on my knees and beg him to forgive me for doubting him. I said that will never happen because he is not real!
I even went so far as to message the real Adam (his name is Adam Smith, he’s just a guy living his best life) but when I told him about the fake he blocked me on instagram! I was hoping he would go after the bastard that is scamming my mom.
So for a few months I thought maybe it was all over with. She wasn’t talking about it, but I was a little worried that she was too calm, too detached. My sister was thinking the same thing. He was still on my moms friend list on Facebook so I decided to test it out. I made a Facebook page and with the help of some of my coworkers I set out to catfish my mom’s cat-fisher. It took a while to get him to respond but then he did. He played right into my hands. I said all the right things, I pretended to be a lonely widow with a healthy pension and no one to share it with. It only took about two weeks for him to start professing his love! 🤢. And when I asked who the woman(mom) was that was commenting on his photos or calling him babe, he said he didn’t know her; twice! Once he said this and said he wanted to build a life with “Mary” (my alias) I figured I had enough. This would do it! If she wasn’t done before she would be now! I told her everything, I sent her screenshots of the conversations. She said she believed me. She said he gave her a story about being kidnapped and needing so much money to get his passport back. She said she knew he was scamming her. I thought finally it was over. WRONG.
It’s been a couple months, she hasn’t mentioned him or any of the crazy stuff he was trying to convince her about. He wasn’t on her friend’s list. I assumed she deleted him. She was talking about doing up the house, she said she was going to take out a small mortgage to pay for it. I knew there was work she needed done, and that’s really the only thing she could do. But then she sent me a message on messenger that she immediately deleted but not before I saw “hey babe”! And then I saw her taking large amounts of money out of her account, money that she was supposed to use to do repairs on the house. She’s still talking to him, she’s lying to me about it, she says she has FaceTimed with him which I know she absolutely hasn’t! Because it’s not him! And when I call her on it she gets all defensive and says “you’re calling me a liar” Yes because if he was real you’d be rubbing my face in it! So now she’s sent him thousands of dollars, she could lose the house that we grew up in, the house that our dad built. And she knows she won’t see it ever again but she still thinks that once he gets his passport back he will be released from the kidnappers in Ireland🙄 and he will come be with her.
So that’s it in a long dragged out post. I wish I had a way to expose this piece of shit that has done this to my mother. She thinks I did all this because I’m upset about her being with someone other than dad. When I deny that, she says it’s because I hate Americans, which I don’t but this guy probably isn’t American anyway!
She tells me not to worry about her, that she’s fine, I told her I’m worried she’s going to lose the house but she’s just going to do whatever she wants! I’ve got to wash my hands of it for my own peace.
