The screenshots that follow are from an account that is most definitely fake and the scammer first messaged me on Instagram. Unfortunately it was so long ago now that I can't remember his Instagram account name so thus I don't have a screenshot of the profile page. Suffice to say this guy was masquerading as a white American man who lives in Texas and was working as a contractor as indeed do most scammers of Instagram.
A little bit of background here is needed before you read the following screenshots from the end of our conversation yesterday. He first messaged me well before the school summer holidays and must have been in July. We spoke for a little on Instagram and then our conversation moved onto WhatsApp. The phone number provided was American but really these days that means nothing as numbers can be cloned etc but scammers think they lend a degree of authenticity.
He decided that he wanted us to have nicknames for each other so he became "Bear" and I was "Pear" for some stupid reason. We had chatted on and off for July and August and into the beginning of September when all went quiet. I had spoken to him on voice call and realised that he was a black man from Africa but hadn't had the opportunity to call him out on it as he didn't call again until yesterday.
There are always new scams on the go or something happens in the scamming world which piques my interest again and yesterday this happened when "Bear" contacted me again out of the blue for the first time in just about two months. I knew this meant that he more than likely wanted something from me and this certainly turned out to be the case. Here follow the screenshots of our last bits of conversation plus a screenshot of "Bear" that I took when he did a video chat.
And at this point I quit the conversation, made sure I had all the screenshots I needed and got him blocked and reported on WhatsApp.
I think the screenshot of the real guy coupled with his definite African accent makes it clear just what and who he is. Doesn't look like he needs the cash does he? Scammers almost never look destitute - all I have seen look well dressed and fashionable. Not like they are struggling. He certainly wasn't struggling as he was driving and talking to me yesterday.
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