“I’ve gotten death threats. People tell me I’m the scum of the Earth. Women say, ‘How could you do this to me? I loved you.’”
That is the story of happily married Camp Pendleton Marine Sgt. Tristan King’s life these days.
He is the unwitting victim of romance scam artists.
The drama started playing out about two and a half years ago when the active-duty Marine and fitness buff started growing his social media platform. He has 65,000 followers on Instagram alone, where he is a sponsored athlete and posts almost daily fitness and nutrition promotional videos.
Tristan King is a sponsored athlete and promotes fitness and nutritional programs.
(Courtesy photo)
First, a friend informed him that someone was pretending to be him and was using his photo on the dating app Tinder. Then he learned about another fake online account, then another and another as family members and friends spotted his image on different social media apps.
After a while, King was receiving several reports a day about profiles impersonating him. He reported them to Instagram and other social media site administrators, asking that they be taken down. But new ones quickly popped up.
King discovered that his military profile was being used to lure lonely and vulnerable women — and some men — into online romances for the purpose of bilking them out of money.
It came as no surprise to King that a significant number of his new online followers were Nigerian. In fact, he initiated a video chat on one of his fake profile accounts on Instagram and a startled Black man who could barely speak English, likely from Nigeria, appeared on the screen and quickly hung up.
This is the image that popped up when Tristan King did a reverse Instagram video call to determine who had stolen his identity. He was unable to converse with the stranger, who spoke little English.
(Tristan King photo)
The victims we usually hear about in these romance schemes are the lonely ladies desperate for love coerced by their online suitors into sending money. But there is another set of victims — those of identity theft. People like King whose names and reputations are impugned.
A new study by SocialCatfish.com, an online dating investigation service that specializes in verifying identities, confirms these romance scams have skyrocketed during the coronavirus pandemic when many people are confined to their homes with little to do but peruse the Internet.
The coronavirus also provides a convenient cover story for people who decline face-to-face meetings under the guise of health safety.
The study, “Catfishing: A Growing Epidemic During COVID-19,” uses data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. It includes an interview with a Nigerian scam artist, a leaked Nigerian instruction book on how to pull the scam off (including samples of sweet talk perpetrators can parrot word-for-word) and the stories of victims, including a West Virginia woman who sold her house to give money to a scammer and is now homeless, heartbroken and suffering from depression.
California leads the nation in catfishing scam reports, logging 2,206 victims. Florida is second with 1,363 victims, followed by Texas with 1,287, New York with 931 and Pennsylvania reporting 607.
The money reportedly lost by Americans to these schemes in 2019 was $201 million, up from $143 million in 2018. This year, the Better Business Bureau has reported a huge increase in banks with customers trying to recover money they lost to these impersonators.
“We believe the number we have data for is actually much lower than the real number,” says SocialCatfish.com President David McClellan. “We talk to thousands of people, and the majority do not report it or file complaints.”
He added that the scammers cast a wide net, not simply targeting people using match.com or other dating apps, but trolling for would-be victims on Facebook and Instagram. “They don’t care what language you speak,” he added. “They use Google translate. We see this happening all over the world.”
King said it’s very common for military members to have their pictures stolen. “It’s happening to so many people I know.”
At first, he felt sorry for the women, but he finds that many remain in denial, even when they learn that he wasn’t the person with whom they were communicating. “Some say I owe them money because they sent the scammer money. They say I should pay them back because it was my picture.”
King isn’t the only victim in his household. His wife, Daisy, also gets an unwelcome earful.
“Women have called me all sorts of names,” she said. “They tell me, ‘I hope you know your husband is going to leave you for me,’ that he was planning everything and that Tristan had told them I died.”
She even sent a photo of her with her husband to convince one lovelorn woman in denial, only to have the scam victim denounce the couple’s picture as an old one and claim that Tristan had told her about everything, and she believed him.
Sgt. Tristan King is pictured with his wife, Daisy, who constantly gets emails that allege he is cheating on her as a result of his identity having been stolen.
(Courtesy photo)
“Every day I have about 10 new messages from women saying either there’s another fake profile, or your husband’s cheating on you, or your husband’s going to leave you for me,” says Daisy. “At this point, it is so out of hand, we just want it to stop.”
King believes that getting the word out about these scam operators is the best way to help make it decrease. If someone says they don’t have a webcam, or it’s broken, or they don’t want to Facetime, then they probably aren’t who they say they are, he cautions.
“The pandemic gives them a built-in excuse not to meet. Beware,” warns the SocialCatfish.com study. The military cover also gives scammers a convenient excuse. They say they can’t meet because they are on deployment overseas.
The study highlights other red flags: Frequent, repeated contact; quick expressions of affection and love, and pleas for money because of COVID-related issues or other emergencies.
King is a combat ready Marine, but this is one war for which he isn’t prepared. “It’s an ongong battle,” he says.
