Romance scams on the rise
Hardly a day goes by that I don’t get a request from Mary at POW Network to check on whether someone who is writing romantic internet notes to women (usually on Facebook) is actually in the Army. Here’s the one she sent last night;
Mark Seymour David
Hello, am sgt seymour of the United State Army,i saw your
profile on DATELINE and its captivating..i will be so happy if i should know you more and you know more about me too thanksMark Seymour David
i am not that close
i am 39 years old and single never married but i have a son he live with his mom I am a true romantic.I love sunsets and candellight dinners with soft music,walks in the woods,hiking and romantic picnics.I am very affectionate and love to cuddle by the fireplace on cold and rainy days.I love to have a glass of wine in a hot bath and gaze into each others eyes.I am a very good cook. I am also a very good dancer and can dance to most music, including ballroom dancing.
I am a little older than you. I would be what they call a plus size woman. Any objection to either of those items?
Mark Seymour David
yeah it is my career and dont worry about the age thats just a number if we have the same look on that babe and you size is nothing to me also
I am looking for a lady who is very strong, but not overbearing and unbendable.our strengths must compliment each others weakness. u must appreciate a man that can cook and clean and that will go out of his way to ensure that you are happy.I will appreciate the tenderness and sensibility of a virtous lady.u must love affection,hugs and kisses and constant expression of love,including mind blowing unforgettable — love sharing! I want to fall in love, and have my heart beat in a rapid fashion with yours.I want it to pound and for the butterflies to make us feel so giddy that we feel like teenagers and that evert moment of the day is filled with excitement and anticipation of when we are able to look into each others eyes again and be consumed with the passion that we both have for each other. I know God has someone for me and I’m still looking.I AM LOOKING FOR MY SOULMATE! COULD IT BE YOU? ROMANCE LIVES !!!! ..
Mark Seymour David
oh no problem babe i have been here for 6 month now babe and i will be coming back in 7 month time i live in DALLAS what about you
Mark Seymour David
oh ok babe hope all is ok I CARE
Mark Seymour David
awwwww babe why do you talk like that you dont believe me ok babe this is my id card ok i hope you believe me now
Here’s the ID card he sent her;
If you look closely behind the picture that was probably taken from a candid shot, you can see there’s another picture beneath it. A sergeant’s pay grade is not O-2, it’s E-5 (duh). Now I’ve never looked at the new ID cards, but I’m pretty sure there’s no “Afghanistan Special Force” ID card. Here’s the gumball’s Facebook page. To ease your mind, I checked AKO and found no “Mark Seymour David”. I did find a Mark David, but no match. And there were a few Mark Seymours, but again no one that would match that name, so I’m not putting someone’s real ID card on the internet.
But like I said, hardly a day goes by that someone doesn’t contact Mary, and I only see the Army pretenders.
It’s a jungle out there, ladies.
Category: Phony soldiers
Well, Army SGT will be disappointed. On the flip side, the Chippendale SEAL will be dee-lighted.
A sergeant’s pay grade is not O-2, it’s E-5
Anyone else reminded of the episode of M*A*S*H where Hawkeye tells people that Radar is a “Corporal Captain” so he can drink in the Officer’s Club?
Where his states “Afghanistan Special Force Identification Card” (in the same font as SGT, which looks a ppt paste), mine states “Geneva Conventions Identification Card”
Smh…i got nuthin’ this is just bad. Is the schmuck even trying?
Reminds me of the guy from my unit who had a “gf” online she was from south Africa. No matter what anyone told him he would send her money and was convinced she was going to meet him at the airport when he went on leave…
I’m going to need an interpreter to decipher whatever that language is that he was writing in. The lack of punctuation, capitalization, and run on sentences turns in to a hieroglyphic type writing after I try to read it.
-“I love to have a glass of wine in a hot bath and gaze into each others eyes.”
Bahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
one glance tells you he cant work photo shop very well…. LMAO
Ladies use a little common sense.
The language he is using may be English, but it’s being typed by someone for whom it is a second language. Most likely, he’s from one of the African nations. The sentence structure he’s using, along with his inability to use capital letters correctly (and punctuation marks) means that he’s working hard to translate from his native language. He may even be using babelfish, etc.
This wording is almost identical to those found in the Nigerian Oil Minister scams, UN scams, etc.
As was said earlier, let’s be careful out there.
What a fu–ing retard! photoshoped ID card…isn’t that some kind of crime? If not, it should be….oh yeah, he’ll likely say it’s his “Freedome of Speech” or some bullshit…
arrrggggggggggggg I’m blowing a headgasket……
His FB pictures 2 of them show a 1Lt rank on the Body Armor. I get the feeling this is a Nigerian scam and they somehow found this guys pictures.
K just for kicks and giggles i did a yahoo search on military id, and know y he has O-2 & LT1 I sure hope the rest of the ID pic have wrong info on them :. Ya its some kind of a scam, I have gotten a few hits on FB, I think the find soldiers that have there info visible and hit there friends up to be friends, for what ever reason i have no clue. would like to see the posers get hung thou….
My four year old nephew has better Photoshop skills than this poser. One Delta Ten Tango, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, over?
You mean that 2 grand I sent to the lottery official in Nigeria to process my 8 million dollar check is a scam? Fuck!!!!!
One “dating” site I subscribe to has a crapload of military guys who are all widowers….Go figure.
@12
NDV, if you post your real name, SSAN, and bank account number here, I’ll be glad to check on that for you.
Okay, I really don’t think anyone here is stupid enough to actually do it, but just as a CYA disclaimer… DON’T POST YOUR INFO!
@ 14 Malclave, I may be a dumb grunt but I know better than that! When the nigerian lottery officials asked me for all that I told them to go pound sand. I won’t be taken for a fool
Oh, I know nobody here is dumb enough to actually do it. My CYA comment was because I posted a similar joke at another site once and some idiots pretended that they thought I was serious, reported me to site moderators for phishing, etc.
I kind of dig the fact that he states Afghanistan while the photos are in front of Iraqi stuff. I know there’s a penalty for impersonating an officer but what if this guy is an O-2 impersonating a Sergeant? WTF??? A Sergeant has earned 3 more promotions.
Agggghhhhhh!!!! Where’s the insulin??
This is just TOO saccharine sweet, I’m going into a diabetic coma.
And as for all the scams, I used to have some fun with them. They’d send me an over amount check, and I’d make up excuse after excuse why I hadn’t cashed it and sent them the difference. String ’em along for weeks at a time. I have quite a collection.
Special Forces must have found out that Mark had put some shit up, his FB page seems to be “unavailable”.
I tried, and couldn’t post anything on his page, it’s still up, but comments aren’t available.
you’d think a special O-2 Sergeant would know it’s illegal to scan your ID card.
…granted, that’s obviously fake, and I guess if we were getting into that, posing as a vet would be just as bad. Still, what a douche.
Cheese n Rice! When will this crap ever end?!?
Jonn, why don’t you just start the TAH dating site for all the singles?
#24 Amy, yeah, that’s the hole in my life that needs to be filled.
Oh God, then insipid and Joe will try to sue Jonn because there’s no gay dating section. Yeah, yeah, line forms to the left, no cutting in regardless of how many fucktard posts you’ve made.
Go for it, Jonn! It would be worth it just to read the profiles! 🙂
Interesting that the digital info was masked.
Could have found out who’s card it really was…
Copying CAC cards is not recommended.
First pass of the scanner bar was not an issue.
Second put enough of a residual charge on the chip to unleash digital karma.
“I have no idea what happened to it”.
“Just stopped working yesterday”.
New CAC.
Also missing the bar code lower left
Yeah, I cut the bar code out.
One of the fastest growing segments of internet fraud and romance scams is that of criminal portraying active service members or personnel in the U.S. military. Cyber criminals are increasingly claiming to be in the Armed Forces, stationed overseas in places like Afghanistan, and use sites like Match.com and Facebook to initiate contact, and build relationships and trust with their victims. Once they gain your trust, they begin to gather information to be used later for blackmail or identity theft. For example, the criminal (often based in Eastern Europe or West Africa) will ask for your date of birth, address, etc. Once trust is establish, he or she will ask for financial assistance. In some cases, criminal may even assume a real identity of someone who truly is fighting in Afghanistan, and provide a real address and date of birth to match! It some cases, it requires a trained investigator to learn the truth.
Yes, the risk for scams is certainly rising and it’s important to verify relationships started online.
There is another one like this making the rounds. The other one, used to gain “information” actually has a guy in Class A’s and the rank is correct. If it weren’t for the fact that the bottom of that one says “Iraq Special Forces” I could see a civilian being duped. This is sad, but we MUST let people know, American Soldiers don’t contact random strangers and ask for “favors” nor do we move money out of countries. We found some money back in 2004 and before we could decide to count it, CID came and took it. LOL.
I see that the Nigerian chow hall security that we contracted in Iraq have found a new buisness venture.
The scammer who you have got listed on here I spent nearly four months talking to. The words he used are exactly the same. His name he is using is the same sgt mark seymour david.
Oh this one is definetly a Nigerian Military dating scam I should know I spoke to him for months. I did an IP check on his last email to me and even though he claimed to be in Afghanistan it came from Nigeria !
The date is wrong too. Military standard is dd/mm/yyyy. They r always facing dead center in the photo too, its not glamour magazine. And I’m pretty sure affiliation says “armed forces” and no, there is no “afghanistan special force”
Ok the dates are in fact correct on the card, of course the BAR Code is missing. The Name is 2 lines under the picture, First line is Last name second is first and middle, at the very bottom is states Geneva Conventions Identification Card, not the Bull shit he has on that one. I also reported his profile to Facebook as a Military Imposter, as I could find no one by that name on AKO as well. I am really getting sick of these shit bags and heaven help one I meet in person !
I would love to meet one in person and slowly torture them for everything they have done. They are the scumbags of the earth.
nicki: that’s a negative. As MSG Retired observes, the dates on the altered CAC card are in the correct format (I just checked one to verify that fact).
MSG Retired: the bar code was present on the original photo sent to Jonn, and appeared to be unaltered. Jonn removed the barcode from the photo posted here to prevent anyone with the proper know-how and equipment from extracting further info from the barcode.
iwas scammed by this manmark david seyour ,iam writing this for women out there ,he is a very sweet talker ,then ask for money ,to come home to you ,ilost 1000,00dollars ,but i blame myself too ,over this weekend some things didnt add ,i wentonline checked some sites out ,his picture poped up, and what he is and what he does to women ,thats why iam writing this ,igot hurt real bad ,i had lost my husband to cancer 17 months ,he also knew that ,so thats why he could ,but iam a strong woman ,it will never happen to me again ,hope theycan stop him ,thats my story on nov,4.2012
Can anyone help me know if the I’d card this guy sent me us real , I don’t wanna make a mistake and fall for a scam artist
mark seyour david told me all the bull crap that he told mary the girl that told the story ,,,,
The guy I’m talking about is not the same , photo is different, the name is different , but the ID card looks almost the same , but with no photo mistakes like the one from David , I don’t wanna publish it here in case this guy is for real but how can I know, I’m from Canada so obviously I don’t know anyone in the military in the States , can someone help me?
when are the f,b, i, going to do something about catching this man mark david seymour ,,
This man just started writing to me. His 3rd text was word for word the same as one of the women wrote. This is a scary situation. You never know WHO you are talking to on face book!! BEware
they is another man posing as a man in the army ,women out there he uses the trunk of boxes story ,he will ask you to help him get his boxes home from a company called global secity ,it is a lie ,he was or is still on facebook ,the u,s, army should do something about this men posing as miliaty men ,it shames the armys name ,he is not in the army ,he lives with his mother and daughter ,his name is or goes by is james muller or muller james ,ihave blocked him from my f,b, women out there be very about those sweet talkers ,lets dont let them get away with this ,
My feeling is that it’s a foreigner using a real Soldier’s pic.
This was just done to me a few weeks ago his name is David. The ID card looks so real. He also sent me pictures of this guy who is also on FB with another name but same pictures as this David sent me. Unreal. Confessing his love and looking for a wife and so on…. So not cool! UGGGGG!
Ladies: best way to get anything done is to go to the “Contact Us” section and send an email in. These are older posts so they may not get any attention for a while.