"Words with Friends" Scam | A Perfect Scam | Forensic Files

[audio logo] [tense music] ♪ ♪ Julia: I am the victim of a scam, though I didn't think of myself as a victim in the beginning.
If I'm online, I play, like, Scrabble or Words with Friends. Some guy texted me.
He looked too good to be true. Doug Fodeman: The Words with Friends scam really boils
down to being a romance scam. Julia: He had this beautiful speaking voice that just kind of lured me in.
Bret Curtis: There had to have been more than 100 victims. Julia: This was over a long period of time,
almost eight years. Bret Curtis: They start off as victims, and then they run out of money.
Doug Fodeman: Suddenly, you can go from $1,000, $2,000 scam to suddenly jumping to tens
of thousands of dollars. Bret Curtis: They'll say, to help me, I need you to open up a business account.
So the victims are now laundering money for the scammers. [theme music] ♪ ♪ [ominous music]
♪ ♪ Julia: I waited for a long time for somebody who would say, "Good morning. Good night.
How are you?" We might think we've healed. We might think that we are no longer hurt by the loss
that we had in life, by the rejection that we had in life. It's still there. Those emotions that we feel can be played.
Doug Fodeman: Imagine after you've made that connection, you've started this relationship,
you think that someone is so interested in you and really wants to develop an incredible personal
relationship with you. This is human nature. Human beings want to be in relationships.
Hardly anyone wants to be a loner. We live our lives in relationships. And especially if that scammer can
find the most vulnerable people who are really lonely, someone perhaps has lost a spouse,
you know, a death, perhaps divorce a couple of years earlier, someone who is more isolated,
someone who is older and feeling that life has passed them by. Patrick Altiere: Romance scams, elder fraud scams,
it's the perfect storm, right? It's the convergence of the fact that the internet is new,
especially to them, and not something that they had to use during their working life for the most part.
Our older, retiring population has money. They've worked their entire lives, and they have money in the bank.
And so it's only natural that people coming from places who have not been that fortunate
look at it as an opportunity to victimize them. [phone buzzing] Every spam phone call, every spam email,
everything that these people get in their inboxes, in their text messages, is likely that initial reach
of a scammer trying to see if they can get them to bite, right? It's like fishing.
Doug Fodeman: The best scammers are unbelievably empathetic. They know what to say.
They know how to say it. I mean, anyone who's in a strong, positive relationship
knows how that feels-- to be loved, to be valued, to be heard. And believe it or not, a good romance
scammer is going to do that-- to manipulate you. Julia: He looked too good to be true.
It looked like professional photos. He was tall. He was handsome. All twisted steel and sex appeal kind of thing.
And I remember saying, oh, no, this guy is not interested in me. You know, I'm a hobbit.
He's not interested in me. [laughs] And they got mad at me. And so I responded, and he talked to me.
And in the course of our conversations, I went, I don't think you're the person in the picture.
And he got a little upset that I said that. Well, why wouldn't you think so? I said, well, unless you're walking
around with a professional photographer all the time, I don't think you're the person in the picture.
And there was something about his voice. He had this beautiful speaking voice that just kind of lured me in.
And he was very intelligent, very well read. So that also lured me in. So we talked, and he finally admitted, no, that's not me.
He hadn't asked me for money. He hadn't asked me for, like, a card to send them.
He hadn't asked for anything like that. So he sent me this other picture. He said, this is who I really am.
I said, well, then why are you the other guy? You know? And I don't remember what the story was that he gave me.
But we wound up talking for a year, year and a half. [ominous music] Doug Fodeman: Once you trust somebody,
then suddenly that someone has some pain or challenges in their life that you can help them with,
you're more inclined to want to do so. And I can tell you that there is a pattern.
And the pattern is that a romance scammer will typically spend a good four to six weeks building a relationship,
at least, and then there'll be a small ask. Something happens, some issue generally.
And by the way, with men and women, it can be different. So, for instance, men, the problems or issues that a male
romance scammer comes up with are often work-related or travel-to-work-related. And, oh, you know, I got mugged, and I lost my wallet,
and I need to pay for my flight here. Is there any way you can help me out? But with a woman, it's different.
It's often related to family or hospital and health. So building sympathy, including, by the way,
I've fallen in love with you, and I want to come see you. But I need $300 to pay for a visa to come from my country
in Kazakhstan to be with you. But the bottom line is, you start with small asks.
And once you have the victim willing to pay a small ask, then they can grow. Julia: He started to ask me to send money.
And I said, well, what am I sending money for? He said, well, it's just for a friend of mine.
It was once, twice, and then it got to be a whole bunch. And I said, whoa, wait a second.
Hold up. Slow your horses. What's going on here? I don't think I'm comfortable with this.
And he got upset. And I said, I don't want to have an association with you. And I blocked him.
Doug Fodeman: The Words with Friends scam really boils down to being a romance scam.
So Words with Friends, like so many other methods, is just one way that a romance scammer can make contact
with a potential victim. Words with Friends, Word Bingo, it is a competitive game in which you
can play with strangers online, which is actually kind of fun if you think about it.
I mean, games, it's a great way to, you know, play with others, and whether you're friends or whether strangers.
But it's also a way that you can meet people online. There are lots of ways to do it.
I had a romance scammer use the word "bingo," for instance, not that long ago. And that's just the tool to reach to a victim.
Patrick Altiere: Any online game, if it's social and you can chat anywhere that these people can get in there
and not face to face, right, they're not meeting this person, is a danger for being scammed.
That doesn't mean don't do those things. That doesn't mean, oh, you can't go in the woods
because there's bears. It means when you go into the woods, be careful. And the internet is the woods.
Doug Fodeman: So there's a chat window. And you can chat with someone else and, you know,
begin to build a relationship, a friendship that starts, and then perhaps turn it into something a little deeper.
Imagine starting a chat with someone and engaging them and doing something especially fun,
so playing a game with them. And so that leads to additional conversation. And the romance scammers, the best ones
come off as incredibly empathetic and caring. Some of the professional romance scammers
are unbelievably good at that. So imagine if you are at the other end of this, and you're chatting with a fellow or a woman
you've just met. And they come off as caring and asking about you and about your life, I mean, it can be really nice to have
that kind of interest. And now the job of the romance scammer is to build that friendship, turn it into trust,
and hopefully grow it into a relationship. And by the way, not just via text or chat or DMs,
but it can also be over phone. I've talked to victims who have literally been on the phone for two hours with their new boyfriend.
[gentle music] ♪ ♪ [phone buzzing] ♪ ♪ Julia: He video called me as himself. And it was, this is who I am, this is where I actually live,
and I wanted you to be in my life. And he said, you have to make up your mind right now whether you want to be in my life or not.
And I was like, yes. [tense music] ♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: There had to have been more than 100 victims.
This case started off with a victim in her late 70s in Arizona, who had met someone online
playing Words with Friends. And that person had told her that he was working on an oil
rig and that he no longer had access to his money and asked her to send some money.
The DEA was monitoring cash payments that were being sent from Arizona, mainly looking for drug nexus.
But then they saw some large cash payments that were being mailed by our victim in Arizona.
Her story is super sad, because when it all started, she had moved to Arizona. Her husband and she were going to start a life
here, their retirement life, and they move into a retirement community. And then a year or two pass, and he gets dementia.
Eventually, she has to put him into a home, and she's just alone and depressed and lonely.
And the only people they can find to talk to them are the scammers. I find out that there's victims all over the country that
are sending money to these, what we call, money mules, people that will receive the money,
and then they'll push the money off to Nigeria or to accounts in China or to cryptocurrency accounts.
And so once I start to identify who those people are, I'll go and interview the victims
from all over the country. And then I try to build a case against those people that are collecting the money.
♪ ♪ Some of these money mules are victims. They'll meet someone online, they fall in love,
and then they run out of money. They mortgage their house. They send everything they have.
They don't have anything else to send. And so instead of just ditching the victims and saying, OK,
we're done with you because you don't have any money, they'll say, to help me, I need you
to open up a business account. And so these victims are now opening accounts. And then the bad guys are saying, hey,
I'm going to send you money. These are investors that are sending you money. And I want you to deposit the money into your account,
and then I want you to go buy cryptocurrency with it, or I want you to go and wire it to this account in China
or this account in Nigeria. So the victims are now laundering money, believing that they're helping the person
that they've met online, the person they're now in love with. [gentle music] ♪ ♪
- We developed a friendship where there was nothing but conversations, video calls, text messages.
We would talk about everything. He'd showed me all the books he was reading. He was finishing up his degree.
♪ ♪ Six months later, he said, let's open a business. I said, hold up. If we're going to open a business,
it has to be a legitimate business. And tell me what it is, tell me how it's going to work,
and tell me why I want to do it. So he said, you'll be a conduit. I'm going to be a seller on Alibaba.
And you're going to be the conduit and be the American connection to send the money from the person who's purchasing to me
or to wherever it was going to go. And I would say, did the person get their order?
I didn't talk to any of these people. I never talked to anybody. I only talked to him, because by now, there
was trust in the relationship. Then we started planning a trip. [jet engine humming]
When I went to Dubai, he was kind. He was respectful. He was very protective. We actually had a really nice time together.
We actually enjoyed each other's company because we had this established relationship where we laughed
together, we talked to each other, we were each other's confidence. When we left out of the airport-- well,
my flight got canceled. So we had to buy another plane ticket. He bought the plane ticket for me, but I had to pay him back.
He cried at the airport when I left. I don't know if that was real or not real. You know, I thought it was real at the moment.
[engine whining] ♪ ♪ So there was a conversation about this $50,000 with a person.
I don't know who was on the other end of the phone. And he was explaining to them that I
wouldn't have kept the money. It's not my money. It's not for me to touch. I made no money from this.
It was just me being a conduit, doing the paperwork for him. And I remember saying, I thought that she
received her merchandise? I remember that. And he said, well, I'm working on finding out what's going on.
I remember saying to him when I got home, I don't want to do this. I'm not comfortable with this because something
is not right here. It's too big amount of money. It's too much being moved. I'm not comfortable with this.
And I think I had sent it, and the wire hadn't gone through. But whatever happened is she did not get her merchandise and
did not get her $50,000 back. And that's what the FBI came here about. [ominous music]
♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: I know that with Julia, she had moved at least half a million dollars through her account.
So when we talked to her, we wanted to know why she was moving the money. We thought she was a bad guy.
And we thought that she was a target, someone that we should go after. Julia: When the FBI came to my house, it was almost surreal.
It was very, very, very scary. They came, and there were four of them here. And I think probably the hardest thing
was when they told me that I was being groomed, and I didn't even know what that word was.
They said, you were being groomed. And I was in denial about it, of course. I said, no, he loves me.
And they're like, no, you've been groomed. It took me a lot-- it took a lot for me to meet them there.
Doug Fodeman: She was in denial, and she's not alone. Sometimes when people are so invested
emotionally in a relationship, it's hard for them to accept. And they go through stages of complete denial.
No, no, it's not right. No, what you're saying, no, that's not correct. Bret Curtis: They believe what the bad guys
are telling them is real. They have these relationships. They're emotionally involved with the bad guys.
And they do not want to believe that they've been the victim of fraud. What also makes it complicated is
even after they find out it's fraud, they're embarrassed. A lot of these victims, they would rather
lose their life savings than to let their kids know that they fell for a scam. A lot of times when we come to their door, that's
the worst thing that could happen to them because we're telling them that this person that they've fallen
in love with is not real. And number two, we're telling them that all this money
that they've sent is gone. And that's just humiliating to them. ♪ ♪ The story with Julia is interesting
because he initially started talking to her under the name of Williams, and he used a photograph of a Caucasian male.
And then they started a relationship, and he convinced her to open up a business
called William TT Enterprises. And he convinced Julia to collect money from people
that he said were investors. She confronted Ittai and said, hey, I know you're a scammer.
And she cut off the relationship. And then Ittai reached out to her as himself, sent a photograph of himself-- he's in his 20s--
and said, hey, I know I scammed you, but I fell in love with you. And then as time goes on, he tells
her about these great business ideas that he has. And she's already opened up this business account
under William TT Enterprises. And he starts having people send money again. Of course, it's victims.
One of the victims is our victim from Arizona that-- that sends money over there.
So the victims are now laundering money, believing that they're helping the person
that they've met online, the person they're now in love with. [suspenseful music]
♪ ♪ Julia: It was only up for about three months before the FBI came. I was seeing large amounts, and I was questioning it because I
said, this doesn't make sense. Why does somebody need to order from you for this amount of money?
This doesn't make sense, OK? Because it was an internet business. They didn't treat me like a criminal.
They treated me like I was a victim. And I didn't think of myself as a victim. And I felt like I should have known more.
I should have figured out more. I should have not trusted him. I should have not followed my heart
and thought I was innocent, OK? And I didn't think any of those things about myself at all.
I was angry. I felt like I had no common sense. But then once I started talking to them, I said, this is huge.
I think this is huge. They said, well, is there money in the bank now? I said, yes.
They said, would you be willing to, you know, give us the money? I said, well, yeah.
I said, it's not mine. Yeah, I'll give you whatever-- whatever you want, you have it.
And we went to the bank. The FBI agent came in, talked to the bank manager. And I looked at her, and I wanted to cry.
And I said, I am so sorry. I did not know. That made me angry, that I did not know
and that I didn't question it. So they closed the account. He took the money. It was a lot of money.
And gave them a whole bunch of other things, pictures, anything I had. Gave them my phone, gave them my laptop.
Whatever they wanted, they had. [solemn music] ♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: As we go and chase the money all over,
we find out that there's a lot of different scams involved. It's not just one scam.
It's an organization of scammers who are using these accounts to collect money from all their different scams.
And so as we start looking at all the different scams that are involved, the numbers get giant.
And so, yeah, there's hundreds of victims and-- and dozens of money mules that are collecting the money.
Julia had received a check for $47,000, and she turned that over to the FBI. We talked to the person who sent Julia
the $47,000 in Pennsylvania. I leave a message. Before she returns my call, Julia gets a call from Ittai,
from the scammer, and says, hey, the FBI has talked to Pennsylvania. And Ittai, during these recorded calls,
was saying, hey, this is all legit. All this money is good. And we find out that her scammer has told her something
happened with the $47,000. You're going to get the money back. But I need you to send $22,000 to a person in California.
We intercept that, and we go talk to the person in California. [phone buzzing] The person in California is a victim.
She's lost about half a million dollars to the scam. She's also been turned into a money mule.
So she's been collecting money from other people. As she's talking to her scammer,
we tell her to say, yeah, I'll send the money to you, which we're not going to. The scammer says, hey, I need you
to send the money to an account that belongs to this bogus company, which belongs to a guy named
Onovughe in the Atlanta area. So we knew that Ittai was working hand in hand with Onovughe.
I did some research into Onovughe and found out that he came to the United States
recently from Nigeria. And the way he was able to do that is through a visa he obtained by marrying a US citizen.
I interviewed that person that he married, who was in her 70s-- Onovughe is in his 40s--
and found out that she had met him online and that they arranged to meet together in Nigeria.
He said, hey, let's get married. And then all of a sudden, they had their whole wedding ceremony, and
she went home a married woman. Then he continued to communicate with her, and he ended up opening with her all these bank accounts,
all these businesses. And she, during the next couple of years, as she's helping him get a visa to the United States,
laundered over $3 million through all of these business accounts for him. Her story is a sad story.
After he gets to the United States, he lives with her for a week or so, and then moves to Atlanta.
Ditches her, finds a woman his own age, and starts living with her, but still continues to tell this person he
married that they're in love. Gets her to mortgage her house and give him all the proceeds from that
so that he can buy bitcoin and invest in properties in Nigeria. And just an awful person.
[ominous music] ♪ ♪ So this criminal organization is a lot more complicated than just Onovughe.
The Black Axe is a large criminal organization based out of Nigeria that is involved
in these type of frauds. They're responsible for over a billion dollars' worth of fraud.
And Onovughe and all of these other co-conspirators are just a small part of this.
[unsettling music] ♪ ♪ Through my investigations, I've learned that this criminal organization has a lot of different layers
to it. We were able to do a search warrant on Onovughe's phone. And when we did a search warrant on his phone,
we saw there were conversations with people in Nigeria. And during these conversations, they
admitted to their membership in a criminal organization called the Black Axe. One of the lowest layers are the guys
that are actually doing the scamming, the guys that are on the phones. A lot of times, those are just street criminals
who are just hustling. Those street-level people will go to the higher level members
of the criminal organization. Those higher level members of the criminal organization
have, a lot of times, earned their credibility by doing the street-level stuff, by making calls.
But then they have made contacts in the United States. And those contacts are so valuable to
the criminal organization, people like Onovughe Because you can take all the money
in the world from everybody in the United States, but if you can't get it to Nigeria,
then it doesn't do the scammers any good. And so these people at this next level
have all those contacts that allow them to collect the money in the United States
and then move it to Nigeria. Now, there's also people who have been working this
a long time, who have made contacts with other people who can create fake documents.
And so a lot of these scams, there's investment-- fake investments that they're trying to convince the victims that they're involved in.
So they'll create certificates or they'll create documents showing that taxes are owed,
or they'll even have lawyers who are willing to do video chats with people. The cases are hard because the bad guys are pretending
to be people who they are not. And so when they are having money sent to them, they're having the money sent to, a lot of times,
to these money mules, or they are having the money sent to people like Onovughe who are involved with the crime.
But he wasn't the one who made the call. And so he doesn't know the specific information
about the specific fraud. All he knows is that he's collecting money, and he's being paid a commission
to move the money on. So our job is to prove that those people that are receiving the money knew that it's fraud proceeds.
And if we can't do that beyond a reasonable doubt, if a money mule says, I had no idea where this money came
from, even though common sense says, come on, you're receiving millions of dollars,
there's no legitimate purpose to this, we're not able to prosecute them unless we can build
that type of a solid case. We've already got Onovughe We've seen all these bank accounts belonging to him.
And now we have a current victim is being told, hey, send some more money over to him again.
So at this point, we know he's still active, and he's still involved. He's still doing it.
He's got some bogus company. It wasn't even registered. It wasn't even a real company.
So we flew out there and interviewed him. [engine whining] Onovughe is an interesting person.
He had in his garage-- the best thing I can describe it as is a Hollywood set, what he imagined
a business would look like, and he set it up in his garage. And so he had shelves of three-ring binders,
and each of them had labeled his different companies. So there's PTL Solutions. There's all those other fake businesses.
But as I go to interview him, I say, oh, well, yeah, these are all your companies.
And can I look at your books? And he's, oh, yeah, sure, look at my books. I open up his books-- and there's
a whole library, whole shelves of books labeled his different companies. And I opened them up, and they're just
spreadsheets that are blank that has the name of his company and nothing else. It's all a facade.
It's all fake. And I don't know what he was thinking by letting me look at that stuff.
Maybe he thought that I'd be fooled just to see the set. During that time, I felt like I was one of the old ladies
he was talking to. He was trying to scam me. He was trying to convince me this is all legit.
At one point, I got frustrated with him, and I said, we got to talk about the truth.
[tense music] I reminded him that it's a felony to lie to the FBI and to disrupt our investigations.
There was a turning point at that time, and he started to explain how the scam worked.
And he told me about the criminal organization, not just in Nigeria, but also the criminal organization
in the Atlanta area. He talked about going to houses in the Atlanta area where there are five or six different people just sitting
on computers, creating fake Facebook profiles, fake dating site profiles. He explained how they created them, by going online and
just finding what he called attractive white people, where he would take their pictures,
he'd start following them, and then he'd create his own website, his own Facebook site
using the photos from these-- these random people he found online. And he'd keep on following them so he
could update his own website using his fake name. He talked about a whole group of people
who would buy fake Social Security cards or fake passports so that they could create
fake businesses using these fake names to make it so it was difficult for the law enforcement to follow them.
♪ ♪ He received hundreds of thousands of dollars. He'd keep his 10% commission, and
then he would hand that money off to other people within his criminal organization,
who would then take that cash. They'd buy cars and ship those cars to Nigeria. They would buy property in the Atlanta area.
They would take the cash and then buy bitcoin, or they would go and send it accounts--
directly into accounts in Nigeria or China. ♪ ♪ He decided to represent himself.
And the opening day of the case, he was in a jumpsuit. And the judge said, hey, you really
shouldn't wear a jumpsuit if you're representing yourself. But he said, I'm a prince, and I can't wear anybody's
clothes that are borrowed. So unless I have my own clothes, I'm going to wear the jumpsuit.
And so that was just kind of how they set the stage for the rest of the trial. We brought in four or five victims
from all over the country. Our victim in Arizona was there. I know there was a victim from Florida
and another one from New York that was there, and a couple of other victims that came in.
And then I was able to testify about what Onovughe told me about the scam and about his participation.
He admitted he was paid. He also identified the name of the caller, the person who
had actually talked to our victim in Arizona, and had identified the way that he
had been directed to collect money for our victim in Arizona and for these other victims.
I don't know why he went to trial on this because his interview was recorded, and he admitted to everything.
Onovughe goes to jail. He's forgotten. They just move on to their other guys. They've got a million of them.
It's the cost of doing business. I look at it kind of like drug cartels. You take out one drug dealer, and there's several more
that will take their place. That being said, it's a fight worth fighting. It's worth going after these guys.
And the more we do, the more people we arrest. It makes it more difficult for them.
Shows like yours, letting people know that, hey, don't fall for these scams. And everything we can do to stop it is worth it.
[somber music] ♪ ♪ Julia: I did finally meet Bret. And while I was there, my phone kept going off.
And it was Ittai. Well, where are you? And I had to, like, lie about where I was.
Well, where are you? Well, what are you doing? Like, every-- it was, like, every 20 minutes.
And Bret looked down on my phone, and he goes, does he track you like that all the time?
I said, yeah, he does. So maybe he was, like, suspecting something at that point.
[ominous music] ♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: Julia identified for us a person by the name of Ittai, who is in Nigeria.
Even though he's involved in this scam all over the place, and even though he's been successful in bringing,
to my best estimate, well over a million dollars from different victims, he's still
a lower level guy because he's just a guy calling. And he has to go over to people like Onovughe, who
have those contacts, to collect the money in the US and get it back to Nigeria. [somber music]
♪ ♪ Julia: I don't know where he is. I don't know what's going on with him. I don't want to know.
It took me a long time to heal from it, to realize that what he was involved in,
to realize that I was a part of it, to realize that I had been played, to realize that I wasn't worthy,
that I wasn't really worthy of real love, but I was worthy to be played. Like, that's all I am.
Doug Fodeman: There are lots of different phases of a romance scam because romance scams are complex,
which is also one of the reasons why they are so brutally harmful to the victims,
where victims have committed suicide, victims have been deeply angered and emotionally distraught by what's happened to them.
There are a lot of reasons that people are desperate for a relationship, understandably.
That's who we are. Julia: The FBI actually saved my life. I think figuratively and literally,
they saved my life because I was going to make a bad decision. There was a time there where I wanted to actually kill myself.
And because of them, I did not go down that road. Doug Fodeman: One thing I have to say,
sadly, about scammers is that they are remarkably opportunists. They are clever.
Some of them are incredibly smart. They can turn on a dime and take advantage of circumstances.
But that means that everybody is targeted and everyone can be a victim. Honestly, there isn't anyone who couldn't
possibly be victimized. I've met lots of smart people in this journey. Lawyers, doctors, professors, psychologists
have been victimized. It is human nature not just to want to connect to another human being,
but it's human nature to trust and believe. I mean, think about the whole ideas and roots of tribalism,
where, you know, humans were-- you know, came up in evolution and were with tribes and groups where
we had to fight for our very survival with other tribes and groups. And you trusted your tribe with your life.
And I know that seems a little corny. But in many ways, that's still part of human nature.
It literally means that anyone can be victimized. Because if you can connect to somebody,
if you can believe in somebody or believe in something or desire something so much,
the right fraud can do you in. [quirky music] ♪ ♪ - Not even a year ago, probably--
I don't remember the exact time frame-- I received a phone call from my bank. And they told me that my account had been compromised,
and they needed this piece of information and that piece of information, until a light went
off in the back of my head. Now, a year ago when this happened, I essentially have the same knowledge that I do
today sitting in front of you. And I still almost got sucked into this thing. I was about to give them everything.
What finally clicked was the lady said, now, we're going to log in, and it's going to send you a code.
We need you to read us that code. And I was like, wait a minute. No, you don't. But I'd already given them my bank account username
and my password, right? That's me. It can absolutely happen to anyone. I'm sitting here telling you how much I
know about this stuff, and I just about got my bank account drained. Because if there's one person in this location
where we are right now who should not get scammed, it is me. [dramatic music] ♪ ♪
If you think you've been scammed in the past, if you have the capacity to or the strength
to report it, please do. Because even though if it was a year ago or six months ago,
it doesn't matter. We can still feed that up through the system. It's never too late.
My advice to someone who is currently being scammed would just be stop. If they think they're being scammed, they are.
Stop cold turkey, right? Just quit, quit giving them money. Ignore the threats. Ignore the followups.
Ignore the emails. Block everything. They're not coming to your house. One thing I've never seen in 20 years of being a police officer
is a scammer who's threatened to show up at someone's house, show up at someone's house.
I wish they would. That makes it easy for me. [laughs] Then they can just call 911, and we can--
we can have a chat. ♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: Local law enforcement will a lot of times receive calls from these victims,
and they'll be frustrated because they're not able to chase down cases that are going all over the country.
And so they'll refer them to IC3. IC3 is a database that the FBI keeps. And we refer people to make their complaints to IC3
because there's quite specific questions that are asked in IC3 that will allow us to classify a case
or classify a complaint and join it up with other similar complaints. And then through IC3, I can go in as an agent,
I can search IC3, I can find out what some of the complaints are in my area, and then I can clump those complaints together
that are similar because I'll be able to figure out how they're connected. And then I can start building a case.
Patrick Altiere: What motivates me is actually interacting with and seeing the victims, and sometimes being the first
person on the ground to do it, to walk into the living room of an old man who has just given away $400,000 because he
thought he was buying gold coins or because he thought he was buying crypto, only to find out that
he wasn't doing any of that. He was just giving money to somebody. And to see how that is going to affect his quality of life
for however long he has left, I want to stop that. I know I never will. I know I won't stop it.
I'm not crazy. But I want to-- if I can keep even one other person from falling for it,
I feel like I've done a good job. [grim music] ♪ ♪ Julia: It took me a year to work through the fact
that I can't love someone like that. It doesn't matter what they did, you know, what they said,
what they did. If anybody takes anything away from this, is that people should understand the heart is a liar.
It is a deceptive liar. Those emotions that we feel can be played. These guys are insidious.
♪ ♪ Bret Curtis: I will tell everybody that I meet with that has been the victim of a scam,
that the chances are they're going to be victimized again because what happens is once someone
is identified as a good mark, they sell your information. And they'll sell their information to other scammers.
And the sad thing is they fall for it again. So I will tell the victims, if you've met someone online
and they're asking for money, it's a scam. Just make it that simple. If you're on a dating site and you're looking for someone,
and they say they can't meet with you, drop them. Just look for people that are going
to meet with you for real. And even when you meet in real, it might be a scam. But if you're trying to build a relationship online
and they're asking for money, my advice is run away. ♪ ♪ [theme music] ♪ ♪

Upon their retirement, a woman and her husband move to Arizona to begin a new stage of their lives.

This true crime series unmasks the sinister world of scams, examining how perpetrators exploit trust.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

This episode reveals the emotional manipulation in romance scams and the devastating impact on victims, featuring Julia's personal story and expert insights.

Key points

The Romance Scam Unveiled. Julia shares her experience of being scammed over eight years, revealing the emotional manipulation involved.
The Empathy of Scammers. Experts discuss how scammers exploit loneliness and vulnerability to manipulate their victims.
The Cost of Trust. Julia's journey reveals how trust can lead to devastating financial loss.
The Criminal Organization Unveiled. The investigation reveals the layers of the Black Axe criminal organization.
Facing the Truth. Onovughe's interview reveals the inner workings of the scam.
A Complicated Love Story. Julia's relationship leads to a scam that costs her emotionally and financially.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

It's still there.

Julia reflects on lingering emotions from past rejections.

1:52WatchJul 17, 2026

Tension

80/ 100High tension

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