Tag: financial fraud

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Catfish Conviction for fraud-but why does money hold more weight for conviction than abusing someone for sex?

Catfisher sentenced to five months in custody.

This is an amazing step forward for the current legislation being used for Catfish. I was told by Kent police that  mine couldn’t be convicted for Fraud due to him ‘not asking for a sum of money’, yet he gained personally through gifts, use of my house like a hotel including meals and other things bought through talk of being together in a longterm relationship.

But the biggest thing for me was that he used me for sex on top of all this. He used all of us under the pretence of the lies he told, of long term relationships and marriage.

When does money become more important than using someone’s body?

Do we consider that a person who asks for £10 pretending to be homeless to deceive the owner of their money a worse offender than a person who is premeditated and intentional in their plans to misrepresent themselves and their life, including their marital status, to purposefully use women for sex?

Is this not coward’s rape? Are they not similar in their intentions of your typical rapist, in that they want and need to have control and get satisfaction from gaining sex from multiple women/men?

One to think about…

Here’s the CPS article on the Fraud conviction for this Catfish that got Caught!

31/08/2017

Robert Brown, 29, from Portsmouth was sentenced on August, 31, 2017 to five months in custody today at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to six offences of fraud by false representation after he lured two men into giving him money after creating false accounts on social media, a practice referred to as ‘catfishing’.

Senior Crown Prosecutor, Nick Hoyle for the Crown Prosecution Service in Wessex said: “Robert Brown is a liar who put together a scam where he lured two men into giving him money by creating fake profiles on dating websites.

“He targeted the first victim by posing as a young woman called Fran via a dating website and then chatted to her on Whatsapp. One of his first messages was ‘see I am real’ then he sent photos of her face and in a state of undress. ‘Fran’ aka Robert Brown said that she would send more if the victim would pay her money. He then pretended the money had not gone through. In total the victim sent £600.

“Not only did he defraud the victims of their money but he also gloated to them at the end of his scam. Over a 24 hour period he defrauded the first victim, a 27 year old man, of £600 and at the end of his scam he sent a voice message to the victim saying: ‘Thanks for the money mate …Hahaha Gutted’.

“After luring the second victim, a 29-year-old man, into giving him more than £1000, he laughed at him sending the following message saying ‘Hahaha, I know you sad xxx thanks its (sic) Dean haha’’.

“Both victims said in their victim personal statements that they have been left distressed, depressed by what happened to them, and that they find it difficult to trust anyone. One of them is also struggling to recover from their debts due to the fraud.

“We hope that this prosecution will bring them some comfort that justice has been done.”

Notes to editors

The second victim, a 29-year-old man contacted him via another dating website. Robert Brown used the same modus operandi and this time created a fake profile under the name of ‘Sammieandi’. Robert Brown, pretended to be a woman who had no money to pay her rent. The victim who described himself as being vulnerable and gullible as he was going through a difficult time sent the money. Robert Brown/Sammieandi said that she was going to lose her house and needed £200. Each time the victim sent money, the defendant said that the money had not arrived and asked for the money to be sent again. Sammieandi was also offering sex in exchange of the money. He then created other profiles making up more stories as a result the victim gave him a total of £1860.

Read the article online here

Also..

Woman who posed as man to dupe friend into sex, jailed. 

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What is a ‘Catfish’?

What is a Catfish?

Urbandictionary.com defines a ‘Catfish’ as:

‘Someone who pretends to be someone they’re not using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.’

The term was created by Nev Shulman’s experience of having a longterm online relationship with a woman he thought to be young and single. The reality was, Angela was in her 40’s and married. Now the executive producer of MTV’s show ‘CATFISH’, which came off the back of the 2010 American film documentary of the same name, at the end of the film, Vince (husband of the lady that ‘catfished’ Nev), tells a story. He says that when live cod were shipped to Asia from North America, the fish’s inactivity in their tanks resulted in only mushy flesh reaching the destination; but fishermen found that putting catfish in the tanks with the cod kept them active, and thus ensured the quality of the fish. Vince talks of how there are people in everyone’s lives who keep us active, always on our toes and always thinking. It is implied that he believes Angela (Nev’s online romance) to be such a person.

The Independant in a recent article about Nev:

‘To be clear, ‘catfishing’ refers to the act of luring someone into a relationship by adopting a fictional online persona with fake personal information. The term emerged from the 2010 American documentary Catfish which follows Schulman on his journey of falling in love with a girl he has met online and later finding out she is not the person she claimed to be. ‘

Not all ‘fake profiles’ are Catfish. Some fake profiles are created with a purpose to ‘troll’ others online (which is a criminal offence), or to hide the owners of illegal business transactions (also a criminal offence). Some are legitimate in reason where anonymity is needed from an abusive ex partner or similar. Some people are mistaking ‘Catfishing’ with identity theft. It’s not. Identity theft is where a criminal will literally collect and steal another person’s real life personal information. This is explained by Action Fraud:

‘Identity theft happens when fraudsters access enough information about someone’s identity (such as their name, date of birth, current or previous addresses) to commit identity fraud. Identity theft can take place whether the fraud victim is alive or deceased.’

When the criminal uses this information to get money or other using your details, they are committing identity fraud.  You can read more about this here.

Catfish are not into identity theft as such…

What Catfish will do it trawl the internet for a suitable picture to use on their profile. Some choose to steal an everyday person’s pictures from a public Facebook Page or similar,  some will go for ‘catalogue shots’, model’s pictures which are readily available in ‘stock image’ settings online. These often allow the catfish the option of having several pictures of the same person. Some will choose to use an actor/tress’ picture, maybe from another country where the actor/tress is not known…like mine. Some go for military personnel and keep their name too. Some (like many in the show Catfish) use photos of people they know and admire…

However, they don’t want ‘Joe Blogs’ life story. They want to create the image of a life that is going to touch the emotional aspects of their targets. They want to create someone who can get inside your head. This is the common thread between all Catfish. It’s how they manipulate you to get what they want BUT what they may want as a result of their scam can be very different. There are many misconceptions about Catfish here too.

Catfish are not all after the same thing. There are many variations to these individual’s incentives.

What do they want from you?

I will never be able to list every motive and intention of a Catfish here but if caught by one, none of them will end well for you. Without doubt, new incentives and cover stories, whether financially motivated or personally motivated will be created constantly but we are seeing some as the main culprits that have been used for many years now and are big business, financial fraud. The other type of Catfish motive is very personal. It has nothing to do with financial/personal gain as such (although they can achieve this in their game), but it’s not their primary incentive. Their incentive is to get their needs met, whatever they may be…and not get caught out while doing that. However the only outcome for the victim is hurt and humiliation on many levels.

I was aware of the kind of romance scam with financial fraud being the primary motivator. If at any point my Catfish had started asking for money, I would have been suspicious because I had been fortunate enough to have seen and read about these on top of training when I worked at a bank in my teens, when Nigerian money fraud very first started. I was alert to this kind of ‘game’. 

Not everyone is so fortunate and the ‘hooking technique or love bombing’ used by all the Catfish is the same. You can read more about love bombing Part 1 here and love bombing Part 2 here.

Of course my Catfish didn’t stay online either…he became an ‘offline Personal Catfish’. I had an ‘in person’ relationship with him for several months after our initial 3 month online introduction. Is this the new breed of Catfish?

You can read my post about Romance Scams with Financial Fraud here.

You can read my post about Personal Catfish here.