Meet the Army officer who's become the accidental face of romance scams around the world

These scammers it seems have no level they won't stoop to including as in this case ID theft. There are people that still fall for this though and these thieves continue to operate. There also was never a place I'd ever been deployed or any other military member where We could not access My own money, that just doesn't happen. A Colonel certainly isn't destitute and would not be asking for money.

My sister-in' law"met" a Soldier on line. Not this officer though. All was good until he started saying the I'm deployed need money stuff. She asked me if this was true. I told her he didn't need anything if he truly was deployed. I stepped in to help and found it was a copped identity. I contacted the Soldier who whose info was being used to let him know. Fortunately he was on AKO. I tracked down the phony and called him -
he was in AZ. I may or may not have made threats to his personal well being.. Bottom line, he stopped contacting my SIL.
Yes, I was prepared to go do bad things.

We believe what we want to believe. We don't think clearly when we are emotional. It is really difficult to convince people they are being scammed. The last year I worked (2021), I saved people over $10,000. The previous year even more since I had a member of our post (Vietnam vet) come in to buy $10,000 in prepaid cards. He told the cashier he needed it to pay his back taxes. She called me up front and I was surprised to see a man I knew get caught up in the scam. After 30 minutes poking holes in his story, the IRS won't call him, they don't take payment in Google cards, if he filed his taxes every year how does he $10,000 etc and trying to convince him this was one big scam, he thanked me and hugged me. Every week there is at least one person we help get out of a scam. For the ones that don't believe us, we usually direct them to the police since they can find out if their grandson was really in an accident or in jail. We We them to tell us if we are wrong.never had anyone come back and say it was legit. I told my Mother a number of these stories. I was really glad I did when she got a call from my Godson saying he needed money. Of course, it wasn't really him. Mom re3ally blistered the guy pon the phone as only she can do.