Have you ever wanted to hear one of a private investigators best stories? Click on the video and turn your volume up to find out how is heart broke. Its very important to stay safe online, and this story will prove our point.
Hello, my name is Charles Hodgson, and I’m a chief investigator of Private Investigators UK. Over the years, I’ve worked on many weird and wonderful cases that many people have found very interesting and indeed funny. Although the names, dates and places have been changed to protect the innocent, the case I’m going to talk about are very, very real. The case I’m going to share with you today is – Email Scams. Do Not Let Your Heart Rule Your Head.
Finding The Ideal Woman
We were contacted by a guy from Germany called Wilfred in an absolute state of panic. He needed our help immediately. His fiancée was being held by Her Majesty’s Customs, and they needed our help to pay €39,000 in duty for the bars of gold worth quarter of a million pounds he had brought from Nairobi in Kenya, East Africa. The story started when Wilfred, a successful, wealthy 50 year old single man, decided he was lonely. So he decided to put profiles on many dating sites to try and find the ideal woman; the woman of his dreams. He started conversations with many women, but a very young and attractive woman from East Africa called Habiba caught his imagination.
She yearned to come to Europe and start a new life, ideally with an older and mature man. She had a dowry of a quarter million pounds in gold, and wanted to get together with a man equally as wealthy. Wilfred could not believe his luck, it was an absolutely perfect match. Over the next three months, Wilfred and Habiba spoke by phone and email four hours a day, and it was decided that, yes, Habiba would come to live in Europe with Wilfred.
Sending Money
It took over two months to organize Habiba’s trip to Germany. And over this time, Wilfred sent Habiba money via Western Union — €200 for cases, €1000 for a flight, €500 for a leaving present for her sisters. Every time Wilfred sent money, Habiba would send more and more explicit photos and more and more explicit descriptions of her love and lust for Wilfred. Wilfred ended up sending Habiba over €40,000. Habiba finally bought a flight from Nairobi to London, with her suitcases full of the quarter of a million pound dowry of gold bars. She would then take a connecting flight to Frankfurt, where Wilfred could finally meet the love of his life.
While Habiba flew, Wilfred was sitting in his house. If everything was going to plan, Habiba had landed safely already in London, and needs three hours to wait. Every cell of his body yearned for Habiba. Suddenly, the phone rang — it was Habiba. She needed the €39,000 to pay the duty on the gold. She was going to email a document showing the fine and the account to pay the money into. Wilfred dropped the phone and ran to his computer, turned on his email, but the email wasn’t there.
Wilfred started to panic. He suddenly decided to phone Her Majesty’s Customs, but they wouldn’t deal with him because the case wasn’t to do with him. He phoned the UK police, but again, they said it was a civil matter, nothing to do with him. Wilfred had used a private detective in Germany to aid him with a business matter, so he phoned them — but they said they couldn’t help, but they suggested that Wilfred phoned us.
As Wilfred was explaining all the details of the case to me, the email came into his inbox. I asked him to forward the email and any correspondence from Habiba over the last month. I already knew something was wrong, as Her Majesty’s Customs do not deal with border control, but it’s handled by UK Border Force. And in the UK for example, we don’t deal in Euros — we deal in pounds. Something was clearly wrong, and now time was of the essence.
Wilfred’s heart had already spent €40,000 on a woman I felt did not exist, and I didn’t want him to spend the near €39,000. While still on the phone to Wilfred, I deployed a team of five investigators immediately. They contacted HM Customs to confirm the document was false and their bank account was not a government account. They contacted UK Border Force to confirm that they now were in charge of duty, and again that the document was false. They investigated the correspondence sent from Habiba to Wilfred.
Scammers
The pictures Habiba had sent of herself were connected to many different profiles on many different dating sites. They were hundreds of reports of these profiles being used by scammers to defraud lonely men of money with a promise of never-ending love. As the team worked frantically to get the facts together, I sat on the phone and talked to Wilfred. I listened to the whole story. I listened to both Wilfred’s heart and head; his hopes, his fears, his plans, and how he felt about Habiba. It became very obvious Wilfred has fallen head over heels in love with this woman.
As he talked and I listened, the team started to feed back their findings, and slowly I started to tell Wilfred some of the facts we’ve discovered. Wilfred’s reaction to any fact that showed Habiba in a negative light was understandably one of denial and anger. He was so in love with her, and he did not want his dream shattered. But slowly but surely, the facts started to sink in, and Wilfred’s mood changed. He’d changed from anger to doubt, and then to sadness. Until finally, in a quiet voice, he said, “I’ve been fooled.” And he burst into tears. I could hear the sorrow in Wilfred’s cries, as a wonderful dream turned into a nightmare.
I spent another two hours on the phone to Wilfred, until I was happy he had calmed down and he was not going to do anything stupid. The next day, I contacted the private investigator in Germany who had put Wilfred in touch with us, to ask if he could visit Wilfred and just check he was okay. While working with Wilfred before he’d become friends, and he knew Wilfred was lonely and needed a loving companion. And he said he had a plan, and I could leave Wilfred in his safe hands.
Do Not Let Your Heart Rule Your Head
Six months later, Wilfred called me to say he was marrying a wonderful loving German woman. Claude, the German private detective, had popped around regularly to see Wilfred and finally persuade him to meet a friend of his that was looking for a man just like Wilfred. They talked, they met, and they fell in love. This case shows two things: firstly, do not let your heart rule your head; spending €40,000 on a woman you have not met is stupid, no matter how you feel about her. And secondly, while internet dating sites can help you find the love of your life, the old fashioned way of meeting people through friends or family may be a safer and more effective solution.
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