Hi. Â Thanks so much for all who answered my SOS Bat-signal in this dire situation for my family. Â Really excellent help all the way around, and very sweet support. Much appreciated!
UPDATE:  Earlier this week, I sent my sister an email containing excerpts from all the Nigerian scam-victim resources I could find, incluing the brief checklist I posted in my story last evening.  I heard from her daughter, my niece, today, for her to tell me Sis received my email, read it, then discarded. “That’s not him,” she assured her daughter. “Milton is not like that."
Then she proceeded to ask her daughter to come and help her get her travel vaccinations, and to help her “pack her household up” to ship it to Nigeria.  I just hardly have words at this point. 😱 😡
My niece and other siblings report that she is not responding to any further attempts to contact her.  I also sent her a copy of this book:  arriving today.  It will save her life if she will give it a chance.  Apparently not much chance. 😰  So now we are gathering by phone conference this evening to map out a plan, implementing all the excellent suggestions and recommendations posted here.  Thank you all so much!! ❤️❤️
Hi Kossack family.
I know that headline and photo makes it seem like I, too, want to scam people here. Â But this is a real emergency for me.
I have an older sister, age 69, who has just been grabbed into the clutches of an evil scam that is running rampant across our Country, in service to ISIS terrorism, and Boka Haram in Africa. Â No kidding.Â
My older sister has just retired into a comfortable independent living facility in a beautiful town.  She’s doing great, getting settled in for the rest of her life, and generally happy.  But lonely.
She was doing really well in her new home in a new town. Â (Away from our uber-Rightwing family Klan.) Â Until last Fall when she was in a terrible car accident with a drunk driver. Â She spent a lot of time in the hospital, and had several surgeries.
Fortunately, my sister recovered well from the accident and is back home attempting to get on with her life.  Which included putting a profile on a dating site, and linking it to her Facebook page.
However, she (with attorney) is now in settlement negotiations with the driver’s insurance company.  Given the circumstances of the collision, she will be receiving a large sum of settlement money any minute now.
Well, apparently this made her a target for a despicable, rampant SCAM that is raging across our country, and probably other countries as well.  It goes like this:
Enter:  “Milton Rogers”* who contacts my sister from her dating site post and her Facebook page.  Milton has a apparently been casually monitoring (trolling, like for fish) my sibling’s posts to her FB page, after getting friended by introducing himself after seeing her dating-site profile.  She was writing on her FB page all about the travails of her car accident. Milton appears to have been “following” her since last December or so.  *(Not the name he gave her.)
But then my sibling foolishly puts on her FB page about her impending “settlement” prospects from the accident. (Don’t ask me why. 🙄) Like, she’s now a lonely, older woman about to come into some substantial cash.  Bingo!  Got a big fish to reel in now!
So suddenly “Milton” steps up and says he’s fallen in love with her, based on their previous communications and her writings on her FB page.  She's beside herself with the flattery.  He sends her a photo of a handsome man.  He says he didn’t tell her before now about his ardor for her “because he didn’t know how she felt about him.”  She’s all a-heart-fluttery now.  (Milton is allegedly more than 10 years younger than her.  From the photo, my sister could be his mother.)
Milton reveals that he is an American from Santa Monica, CA working for UNICEF in NIGERIA (what was her first clue?), and asks her to open a Facebook Message channel so they can talk, internationally, long distance.  She is so charmed by his “sexy accent”, which puzzled me, as he said he’s a Californian American.  He explained that to her as, “Well, I speak FIVE languages.  It gives me this accent.”  Yeah right.  Did I mention NIGERIA?? (The photo he sent her is likely just grabbed from some dating site, poor schmuck whose photo is being used in the scam. I also saw photos of Anderson Cooper and General Patraeus being used as the face of “Romeo” scams, with names like “Ralph Jones”. 😄)
So, unbeknownst to our family, Sis has been carrying on this ardent long-distance Facebook IM romance with this "Milton” ,who allegedly works for UNICEF in Lagos, Nigeria, for several months now. Recently she revealed all this to us.  With the news that she is applying for a visa to leave immediately (this month!!) to go to visit him in Nigeria!!
Okay, this is where the situation takes a very dark, dangerous turn.  I put these search terms in Google: “romance scams Nigeria”, and a horrific pile of information came tumbling out, like opening a dark closet in the basement.
It turns out that this is a textbook scam that is being run against gullible Americans by terrorists in Nigeria:  ISIS and Boka Haram.  The FBI is aware of it. There have been thousands of reports of the scam, and probably more than that not reported by embarrassed, devastated victims.
According to the information provided by this website established to help romance-scam victims, especially from the Nigerian scams: Â
www.romancescams.org
Romance Scams Quiz |
Yes |
No |
Have you been on a dating or social network site in the past 6 months |
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Has someone fallen in love with you quickly |
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Do they immediately want to leave the dating site to use IM or email |
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Do they claim to be from the US but working overseas; Nigeria or UK |
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My sister’s situation checks off all of these boxes.  When we tried to confront her with Milton’s scam, she wouldn’t hear any of what we had to say.  She went pretty ballistic about “how dare we try to interfere with Milton’s business!!” And some hissing and spitting epithets as well at me.  This is so sad.
In the meantime, Milton has filled her head with dreams of their “wedding” in Paris.  And how they’re both gonna retire to South Africa together.  And how she will come to Lagos, Nigeria (this month!) to help Milton with his work with Nigerian orphans for UNICEF.  He is even allegedly sending her $30,000 to buy her airline tickets to Nigeria, and other moving/travel expenses she might have, to arrive at their new, apartment there in Lagos. (What, he doesn’t already have a place to live?)
The problem with this plan (besides the obvious) is two-fold:  if Milton convinces my sister to give him access to her banking information so he can “wire” the $30k directly into her bank account, well, the security risks with that are obvious.Â
The second aspect is even darker:  terrorist groups have been using this scam to get Americans to accept stolen money wired into their bank accounts; and then to have their victim-”love” send the money back to the “Miltons” in Nigeria, which becomes criminal money-laundering activity to fund terrorism.  No kiddin’.
So, this is where we are now: Â
- my sister has a large amount of cash pending to be deposited to her bank account from her accident-collision settlement with the drunk driver who had his license suspended at the time of the crash.
- Sis has a new Internet-romance “fiancee” now, who happens to be working, allegedly for UNICEF in Lagos, Nigeria.  He claims to be a Californian, with a house he owns in Santa Monica.  He comes and goes “home”, frequently, he says.Â
- He is sending her $30k to pay for her travel and moving expenses to Nigeria, post-haste.  (Sometimes the scam-victim actually does go to Nigeria and has a wonderful time, which convinces her it’s all “real”.  Which sets her up for ever more downward spiraling involvement in the scam quagmire. My sister, in her dreamy illusions of “soul-mate at last” will likely not notice that all the “friends and colleagues” she meets there are actors.  These terrorist-funding groups are very slick and will carefully craft the scam.)
- My sister will be in grave danger if she goes to Nigeria.  Many of these victims are kidnapped, beaten, raped and murdered.  She will be pressured to give the scammers access to her banking funds.  And then they will pressure her to try to scam all of us into sending her money there, under threat that we will all be harmed if she doesn’t comply.  And they do have the long-reach here in the States to carry out that threat, according to FBI reports. (Unfortunately, she has already told "Milton” about how well-off and financially comfortable her other siblings are (not me) and what they do for a living.  She bubbled at us in her giddiness about how Milton was “looking forward coming to the States with her to meet her family.” No doubt.)
The scam cabal may well show her a really good time during her first visit there.  The photo of “Milton” shows an attractive white guy. I wonder if this will be the same guy there to meet her in Lagos? (Not likely.)
Then they may send her on her giddy, romance-fogged dream-cloud back to the States to collect her accident-settlement. She now believes “Milton” is coming back with her “in September”; although, exactly as the scam playbook predicts, Milton suddenly has an "excuse” why he can’t plan to come back with her then.
Or, if my sister’s accident settlement comes through before she leaves for Nigeria in July, I fear we may never see or hear of her again. She has a daughter living nearby her, who is apoplectic about this situation.  My sister just won’t hear anything against her new “love” and her new prospects for "happiness". Â
I have my niece alert to “Milton” urging my sister (her mother) to open a separate bank account that he can send the alleged $30,000 “travel funds” into.  That is textbook terrorist money-laundering. Textbook!  My sister will be complicit then in a federal crime.  I’ve told my niece that if that separate bank account gets opened for this funds-transfer from Nigeria (or from wherever else he has laundered it), she is to notify the FBI immediately.  I hope they will intervene or advise us at that point.
So what if we convince my sister she’s being scammed?  This is where Phase II of the scam kicks in:
She confronts Milton with her realization of the scam.  He weeps and admits he had set out to scam her, but in the process, has really fallen in love with her.  Please forgive him, and still plan to come to see him and marry him.  Really.  Apparently many victims succumb again at this point.  Never to be seen or heard of again from Nigeria.
Then there is Phase III:
Suppose she is really angry about the scam and wants revenge?  An alleged “scam-artist detective agency” will contact her, offering to help to track him down in Nigeria and bring him to justice.  For a fee/s.  This is still the same cabal operating in the scam.
The FBI and victims’ help groups vehemently urge victims to not try to take any retaliatory actions against their scammer.  Many have done so and just gotten sucked back into the scam. Or have found themselves in ever spiraling levels of dangerous involvement.  The FBI says to cut them off online, change phone numbers, and never allow contact with the scammer again.  These scam terrorist-funding cabals aren’t playin’ around, and they do not take losing their funding source lightly.
So, we are now at a loss as to what to do to protect our family member from this horrific, impending danger. Â Any help or suggestions would be welcome.
If you or a friend or loved one has been victimized by this scam, or are currently in this scam, or wondering if you are in such a scam, please, please, run this search in Google for all the resources for truth you need to see:  “romance scam Nigeria”. OMG.Â