Victim Location 60134
Type of a scam Romance
Met "Simon Edwards" on Tinder in April 2018. His profile read he is a petroleum geophysicist, age 53. He asked me for my cell phone so we could talk but I insisted on receiving his phone first so I could try to scan the internet or Facebook for proof of his identify. I couldn’t find anything, not even in public records or any research documents for an oil company. While texting, he told me he was a widower from Iowa from about 7 years ago, that his only son was 3 when his wife suddenly passed away and that his Aunt was the only one who could care for him because the death was too traumatic for him and he needed to secure work closer to Chicago. He described that his parents were long dead and that he doesn’t really have true friends. His own family was distant from him (siblings, other relatives). For his work, he explained he is an independent consultant doing testing and research for a major oil company. His photo looked like he might have Hispanic roots but he said he was born in Budapest, Hungary. His last name would have been English, not Hungarian. We eventually talked on the phone a few times, and he had an accent but his English was not articulate. The phone connection was also not clear at times, and considering he was local raised concern. He would send me a sweet text message early in the morning every day for the 2 weeks I knew him. Just this past Sunday he shared he was flying to Bangkok for 2 weeks to work on the Gulf of Thailand. He said his work had him under a confidentiality agreement so he couldn’t share any pics or tell me his true location. He said his work would be at an oil rig of sorts. Today, I decided to run his profile pic under the reverse image scan and discovered that his profile pic really belonged to a real estate agent in Arizona, a Hispanic man and I was able to see Facebook photos that matched the images Simon sent to me. It was then I realized I was in the process of being scammed. Luckily, I was able to stop the communication before anything further was done, like money transactions or whatever.