Those Irresistible On-Line Predators

"Definitely, there is always conscience."
"But poverty will not make you feel the pain."
Akinola Bolaji,35, Nigerian con-man

"There are so many people out there that are lonely, newly divorced, maybe widowed."
Everybody wants somebody to love and to listen to them and hear them. And these scammers know the right words to say."
Kathy Waters, head, Advocating Against Romance Scams

"For every one [dozens of Facebook imposter accounts] that I deleted, there was ten more that were popping up [using his name and his identity as props for their scams]."
"She [his real girlfriend] started questioning everything about what I was doing. It actually ended our relationship."
Sgt.Daniel Anonsen, U.S. Marine Corps

Reporter Jack Nicas shows Marine veteran Daniel Anonson examples of the fake social media accounts that are using his image. (FX)

"He kept saying, 'You're really funny. And you make it easier for me just to know that somebody is at home [in the U.S.] that I can talk to."
"How cool is this that I could really make somebody feel better?"
"There's no way I can go home and tell my husband [so she drove to a strip mall, bought sleeping pills and vodka, and downed them]."
"You open your eyes [in hospital] and the person you didn't want to face the most is sitting next to you; Mark".
Renee Holland, 56, Nigerian Facebook Scam victim

“How cool is this that I could really make somebody feel better?” Ms. Holland said in an interview about messaging Michael Chris.   CreditAdam Beckman

Browsing Facebook, Sgt.Anonsen discovered in 2010 unsolicited messages from women he didn't know, hundreds of them, saying they loved him, asking why he wasn't responding, imploring him to write back to them, based on prior months of correspondence. These were women who had 'met' him on Facebook accounts he wasn't responsible for, but which used his persona to persuade them that a romance was brewing that would change their lives.

The FBI has received close to 18,500 complaints from 'romance' victims of Internet scams for 2018 alone. These are people who were scammed by imposters who gained their trust by establishing intimate online relationships, asking for 'help' of a financial nature that they promised to repay but never did, with reported losses in excess of $362 million, an increase of 71 percent over 2017's victim pay-outs to scam artists.

One woman, Renee Holland, married and in her 50s believed that Anonsen and she had a very special relationship. A stranger had messaged her on Facebook in 2016, his profile that of a uniformed man whose name was Michael Chris, with the military, a bomb disarming specialist in Iraq. Chris in fact, the man whose photograph entranced her, was Anonsen whose image was popularly used endlessly. There were no fewer than 65 profiles on Facebook and Instagram using his photographs.

Mr. Anonsen left the military last year and now works on a ship in the Gulf of Mexico.  Credit Sandy Huffaker for The New York Times

Anonsen, now 31 years of age, experienced his parents being harassed on Facebook by women who believed he had romanced them, and in the process scammed them for thousands of dollars. His girlfriend at the time, offended by all these women claiming to be in love with him, questioned  his veracity when he claimed he was an innocent victim himself of a scammer targeting women, using his photograph as bait.

After a period of several months the online relationship deepened, particularly when 'Chris' started calling Renee 'my wife'. In 2017 she wired $5,000 for Chris and a friend to come to Philadelphia from Iraq, expecting to be paid back just as he promised. She went to the airport to greet them on their arrival, but no one arrived and she soon learned that there was no such flight. She left the airport, bought sleeping pills and vodka, fearful of telling her husband she had maxed out their bank account.

Renee Holland was the victim of a military romance scam on Facebook. Her story was the subject of a front-page article in The Times.   CreditCreditAdam Beckman

Her husband, aware of his wife's online friend, had no idea how deep that friendship was. She recovered in hospital and her husband, an Army Airborne veteran, sympathized to a degree, beyond his dismay at his wife's indiscretion. "I had a lot of anger", he admitted. "But I also had a little bit of compassion because I knew how bad she felt [about abusing his trust and their tight money situation]."

After returning home from the hospital, there was a cooling of her relationship with her husband Mark, 53, (her fifth husband) and her 82-year-old father who lived with them. And then 'Chris' began once again contacting her, explaining that he'd missed the flight as a result of some military operation that had delayed him, and he was sorry, and was expecting an insurance payment to reimburse her. He still needed to fly to the U.S. from Iraq and needed more money.

She sent him airfare, using credit cards in part, not informing her husband and once again Chris failed to appear. All together the Hollands were out $26,000 to $30,000. Mark Holland was arrested on a charge of domestic violence in 2018, and his wife dropped the charges. And then at the end of the year, Renee Holland and her father were shot and killed, and Mark Holland then turned the gun on himself.

Akinola Bolaji, 35, in Lagos, Nigeria, said he has posed on Facebook as an American fisherman named Robert.   Credit The New York Times