Mom has an online "boyfriend" who wants her bank account info and SHE GAVE IT. What do I do now?

This can happen to women of all ages. Back in the day, they were called confidence men, but this has gone beyond that. These are world-wide international crimes ring set up in Africa, India and other participating countries. They don't care if they milk a person's life savings and have them living in a cardboard box.

I almost got scammed a few weeks ago when I called a fake number off the internet set up for Amazon. People should be careful calling random contact numbers posted on the internet posing as major companies. I called the number thinking it was the original contact number and was told that a hold was placed on my Amazon account and that three locations had been found for it. The woman who had an accent did not want me to leave the conversation. I hung up the phone and managed to find the real contact information on the Amazon site through my account. Even though I didn't lose any money, I still lost about two hours of my time trying to sort out this mess that included speaking with someone at the Amazaon fraud department. After the investigation, there was no criminal activity found on my account.

I joined a dating app back in 2019 and the same thing almost happened to me. I had been communicating with someone in Africa who was posing as a US soldier stationed in some remote area that I didn't think had US forces. I was getting texts morning, noon and night. This is called lovebombing. I got suspicious, and finally figured out that I was communication with at least three different individuals. Some of the convos appeared like they were cutting and pasting texts from some other source because it appeared very formal. Then later on a text would follow with broken English and poor spelling. All I know is something appeared off.

They usually target people in their late fifties, sixties and up, but if they find someone younger, even better. I quit the app and a year later, this person appeared in people you may know feed on my Facebook page. It didn't take long for this person to contact again. I still couldn't believe this was a scammer until he started asking for money to support an orphanage in some eastern European country. When I said no, he cut off all contact. His facebook information disappeared completely and he was nowhere to be found. These criminals steal pictures of attractive people from their social media accounts and use them in their criminal set-ups. The innocent people in these photos do not know their pictures are being used in these scams. Also, why would a thirty something year old want with someone my age? There are a wide range of beautiful and young women to pick from.

Please contact your mother's bank and let them know that she is being targeted by a scammer through a dating app and contact the police and file a report with the FBI. Hopefully, she will lose nothing but time if you act fast. Get the police report first, and take it to the bank. Take her ID and yours and any other documented evidence you will need.

There is a sweepstakes scam on the rise now. I just read about this one the other day.