Oil rig romance scam

by Ana
(Los angeles,CA)

Hi. My story started on zoosk, met Sean Affleck charming petroleum engineer, salt and pepper hair, goatee and 49 years old from Beverly hills CA.

Owner of a small company. He was charming, and told me he was a widow and had a 15 year old living with his mom in Australia. His daughter visits every time she can, but he desperately wants her back so they can be together, he prays to find a good woman so he can marry and bring daughter back.

We moved from the chat from zoosk to texting, and also had talked on the phone. I had a hard time understanding him but he told me he was from Australia so I did not think anything of it. We texted every day, charming but very soon started telling me he loved me. I thought it was weird but I followed his game. I did not love him or anything I just liked the attention.

He said that in the oil rig they did not have internet and that his equipment broke and he did not get a signal, he only had a cell phone that was not a smart phone so he was not able to receive or send pictures.

He was working on uninstalling 200 pipes on a rig in Alaska on an island. After the installation he needed to install the pipes again. After a few weeks of texting he said could I help him check his email because of the problem with the internet, so I agreed and tried to get in the account from mail.com and i was not able, so a few days later he sent me another account so i could try it and it worked.

A strange thing I thought how would you have 2 accounts for one business so I opened an email that he was looking for, and this mail was from China regarding some pipes quote that he needed to know about. I emailed on his behalf asking for a catalog and pipes pricing.

All was good and I was helping him, and he was excited, as he was doing all this for us, for our future. I was a little concerned because it was too good to be true. I Helped him out with other emails back and forth regarding prices, and it ends up the quote was around $91000 for all those pipes to be manufactured in China.

I was curious then I suspected when that other email was from Yahoo and not from the company. I told him, he said don't worry it is ok. I went to the Chinese web site and they had a warning that some people were doing some kind of scam with clients selling bad pipes. Red flag!

I kept talking to Sean and he was so charming and he said everything I wanted to hear. Then another email came in, this was from Barclays Bank in London telling him they could not wire transfer money on his behalf. He needed to pay for the pipes in China, and he already had the bank account and all he needed to do was transfer money to China.

I started to suspect he wanted me to do it!! No way I was going to. Asked my friend and she said don't do it! She told me it could be money laundering. I gave him all kinds of excuses, I am not home, I am working, I don't have my computer etc. Until he got pushy he said this was urgent and I needed to do it, that I need to help him.

I told him that my life was stressful that I had a lot of problems and I was not going to solve his, to go figure out how to leave the rig and fly to town to fix his issue, that I was not going to do any of that for him, that he was the engineer and he was there for a reason (we were on the phone, I was yelling at him, I was very mad). He got mad and hung the phone on me, and I felt relief, at that moment I knew this was for sure a scam, looked real, all the contracts which I read, the emails from companies, banks, etc so ladies be alert. All the emails were from Yahoo or gmx.com letterheads, permits etc did not match from actual web sites, so I investigated, dug, and his picture came up in 3 different links in accounts.

I could not trace his company anywhere. His last few days ago read the following "I wanted to give you a day, you were all messed up hope you are ok". I did not reply until the night, and I said I am ok, and I hope you are not too tired of working all day. Btw Nobody hangs the phone at me, so loose my number as I do not want anything to do with you, see you never, bye.

At that point I was already informed and read all this stories here. I think he knows I investigated, and he has not texted at all. Hope he never does, I am glad I did not click the link on that email and transfer or did whatever he wanted me to do, so ladies be aware.

NEVER transfer or send mony to anybody you met online or that you dont know. Hope this helps someone, if it looks to good to bd true it's probably a scam.