For a month this year, an Internet lothario wooed Pat McAdam by telling her what she wanted to read. After laying this foundation, the mystery man preyed on her affections, telling her the only way to show her love was to send him money.
McAdam, 72, a widow from Fisher’s Landing, says she was scammed out of nearly $20,000 over three months, as part of a textbook Internet fraud case with ties to Africa.
If you believe you are the victim of Internet fraud, you can report it to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at http://ic3.gov.
She lost most of the money trying to help a man she thought she’d befriended on an Internet dating site, and then lost a smaller amount trying to get her initial money back once she realized the deception.
“I felt like someone had fallen in love with me,” she said. “It’s embarrassing to admit it, but it’s a sad situation.”
While McAdam regrets her “gullible” behavior, she is far from alone, Clark County officials said.
Over the past decade, Clark County residents have submitted thousands of Internet fraud complaints to the FBI’s National White Collar Crime Center, said Jim David, Clark County senior deputy prosecutor.
“They fill my in-baskets,” David said, noting he had 977 such complaints, dating back to 2003, in his email inbox. He has deleted countless other emails and estimated that county residents had filed up to 2,000 complaints over the past decade.
“It’s a sad situation when you’re dealing with international transactions,” he said. “There’s often little recourse available to (the victims), and there’s often little recourse available to us.”
In layman’s terms: The victim loses money and the perpetrator is never caught. Many of the scams start in African coffee shops, far out of local jurisdiction.
Among the common frauds used are ones involving false email addresses or cashier’s check scams offering recipients a large sum of money if they return a small amount. For instance, the scammer sends a $2,000 check with the expectation that the person who receives it will send them back a certain amount. The original check inevitably bounces — after the victim has sent off their money to the scammer.
The scam that caught McAdam in its web is a spin-off of the cashier’s check scam. The victim sends money to the perpetrator with the expectation of being reimbursed. But the money disappears.
Shortly after signing on to christiancafe.com, McAdam began chatting with “Gary,” supposedly a resident of Missouri City, Texas. He said he was a native of Sweden who had lost his mother and father.
After weeks of chatting online, “Gary” told McAdam he was going to Sweden to complete an architectural project and to meet with his mother’s attorney. From there, he told her the attorney had advised him to go to west Africa to retrieve gold bars his late mother left him.
Until then, Gary had not asked her for money. But once he arrived in Africa, he asked for $2,500 so he could travel to South Africa to obtain the gold bars and then return to west Africa.
She complied and from there, “it just seemed to snowball.”
Along the way, McAdam got unknowingly roped into a “re-shipping” scam, too. As part of the scam, another Clark County resident’s credit card was used to purchase items that were sent to McAdam. Her instructions were then to ship them to Ghana.
Camas Police investigated the credit card fraud. McAdam is not believed to have participated in the scam knowingly and does not face criminal charges in the case. The investigation is complete unless new evidence is presented, according to a Camas Police Department report.
McAdam’s losses did not stop with the initial con. She met a person on another web dating service, seniorpeoplemeet.com, who claimed to be able to help her find the person who stole her money. She wired them more than $2,800. She never received any of her money back.
In addition to money, people should avoid giving out account numbers and passwords to strangers, said Detective Brett Robison with the Camas Police. Being too eager to aid strangers online puts you at added risk.
“It’s hard to protect people from themselves,” Robison said. “You’re talking about people who want to help.”
McAdam regretted not seeing red flags when “Gary” wanted to chat on a site that did not track their interactions or when he mentioned that his children were being raised in Ghana.
Now, she has to live with the deception. She continues to chat online, but is skeptical. The scammers continue to call her house. She has learned the hard way to be wary of strangers.
“I doubt very much I’ll get the money back,” she said. The faint hope of the statement evaporated after a brief pause. “I know I’ll never get the money back.”
Ray Legendre: 360-735-4517, or ray.legendre@col_smallcities
