Another Nigerian Dating Scam Story

by Tom J
(Chicago IL)

I have a very good friend that was the victim of a Nigerian dating scam. She met a man on Facebook playing Farmville and it grew into a relationship to the point that they would marry when he came back to the United States where he lived.

His scam name is Lior Cooper (still on Facebook)claims to be a white guy originally from Australia but now lives in California and was an engineer working under contract in Nigeria for Shell Oil SPCD Warri. His company name in California is Marcon Engineering and Fitzgearld Contracts in the UK; I personally checked with both these companies and he did not work for either.

Lior Cooper also has contacts listed on Facebook that he refers to in the United States to confirm his work Terry Landreth and a woman to confirm his story that he has a divorced wife in the states and a 10 year old daughter named Tracy (if you look and read many of the different stories on these Nigerian fraud/scam sites there are quite a few guys with a young daughter named Tracy)!

Lior's promise was to send her money and help her to get a divorce so they could be together, once she was hooked his story twisted and his briefcase with all his identification and the payroll he needed to pay his workforce in Nigeria was stolen and the Nigerian authorities wouldn't let him leave the country until he paid up.

Lior asked for money ($17,000) as a loan to help him get out of this situation. My friend opened up new charge accounts and set him up on the accounts as a way to get cash advances but luckily since she was trying to send these advances overseas Citi Bank denied the advances as she continued to try different avenues without any luck.

In the mean time I had two Nigerian business associates that were looking into this story and with the phone numbers I supplied they tracked the numbers to a Nigerian named Lucky Hype they brought Lucky in and presented the evidence they had and he eventually confirmed that he was Lior Cooper and it was a scam.

As a favor to me the Nigerian authorities called my friend with this evidence and she was devastated but just couldn't believe it. She presented all this evidence to Lior/Lucky and he had a twisted tale to explain it all. She asked for a social security number but he couldn't remember it and all his ID's were in his briefcase.

My friend hesistantly agreed that it must not be true but I still suspected that she might try and contact him.

After a couple of weeks I found out that she was still corresponding with him and he set up a new Facebook account using the name Geary Hopkins but his requests for money got heavier and heavier one email said that any amount of money will help him $500, $1,000 or $1,500 and if she didn't have it to ask her friends.

After another week went by he suggested to her that she should get a job to send him money and he sent her a scan of a phony U.S. drivers license card. This was the final straw and she finally agreed that this was a scam.

On another fraud watch site I read the lines "there are no white men or woman stranded and held in Nigeria against there will". These people are ruthless and they don't have a heart or a soul.

Please beware!

Luckily in this case this guy never got any money this time!