Victim Location 78729
Type of a scam Romance
A person I know in real life wanted to introduce me to someone she thought she knew as Robert E. from playing Words w/Friends 2. I said I was pretty much in old hag mode but that if someone wanted to tell me I was amazing & wonderful I would not object. Robert Ellington did. We exchanged multiple emails starting 8/11/20.
I knew the things he was saying likely were not true but I wanted them to be true & I was enjoying talking w/& getting to know the person he was pretending to be. When I liked who he was online enough to try to get him to meet in person he acted like he wasn’t ready. I told him to take his time. I tried being respectful & trusting.
When I told a friend how he’d said he was having trouble w/his phone she said if he wanted to talk w/me he would find a way. The next time I said I wanted a phone call he called (via Hangouts on 8/20/20).
He was nice. His story was consistent & his voice matched. From Norway. Came to the US at 19. Wife, Olivia, died of Leukemia. Kids, Annie (14) & Logan (10) were being homeschooled to be safe but Robert goes out dancing until 4am w/friends in from out-of-town. He took his kids to the zoo in the afternoon heat in Texas.
The day after I talked w/him he told me about a fabulous work opportunity that would take him away for three months.
Of course, he should take it, I said. We talked again the night before he was supposed to leave (8/21). (His kids didn’t need to be w/him.)
Then, he was really busy being one of only two electrical technicians on the ship w/a crew of 27. Sadly, he realized there was no cell reception on the ship. He had said we would be able to keep talking the same way. He’d realized that the Wi-Fi in his room needed recharged or he wouldn’t be able to talk w/me again after that night until they reached Barcelona (3 wks). That’s where they were picking up the crude oil. He wasn’t sure where they were taking it.
I told friends I was having fun talking w/him.
I said it was like playing a video game or choose your own adventure story. I kept calling him my pretend boyfriend but part of me did hope somehow he was real.
One of my friends told me she loved that I had a pretend boyfriend but also told me about a Ryan Gosling movie called Lars & the Real Girl. Robert Ellington’s fabulous story was a lot like Bianca’s.
Robert got a bit accusational when I said, "No one thinks you are real," after he asked for money. "It shouldn’t matter what anyone else thinks if you trust me," kinds of crap.
"Darling, why would you believe someone would pretend to be in love with you?" got to me a bit. What if he was real & wonderful & I was blowing it?!
After I asked things like why his friend who was watching his kids couldn’t help w/the Wi-Fi, why he hadn’t seemed worried about money before this job suddenly appeared, said the conversation was sad, he disappeared for a few days.
I was sad. I did miss the person he had been pretending to be &/or having someone check in on me regularly & seem to care about me & my family. He said my son reminded him of him.
He resurfaced after 4 days saying he was sorry about how we left things. Then, he needed to get back to work. This biggest thing that finally got me to drop him was he’d said that they were leaving out of the Port of Dallas. I called the Port of Dallas & asked if there was a way to verify the things he said were true. The operator said, "There’s no ocean around here so I would venture to say, ‘No.’" I blocked him.
Later, the person who introduced us said that she had been talking w/him for nine months & that during that time the amount of time since his wife’s death had not changed. It remained three years.
After he asked for money, during the days when we were not talking, I remembered that he had told me about having driven to the beach to watch the sunset. I had mentioned the ocean in my response. Then, when a hurricane was headed towards Houston expressed concern about him being by the beach/ocean. He said they were fine & later said they were in Dallas. When he resurfaced, I asked him which beach. He hesitated a bit then gave me the name of a beach in Dallas. Sigh. There was always just enough to get me hoping he & the things he was saying might be true.