Who are some of the WORST tinder swindlers out
there taking advantage of people with lonely hearts?! Let’s get started with:
5 - His name Was “Gabriel” A woman named Kate was scammed
out of thousands of dollars by a man she'd met on a dating site. The man's name was Gabriel,
and Kate never believed that he could scam her. Kate and Gabriel built an excellent rapport.
They flirted a lot, but also discussed the mundane nitty-gritty of their days.
Kate was cautious of this new found romance,
so she made sure she vetted him extensively- she knew that scammers gonna’ scam!
Kate tried a reverse search of his photos on Facebook and found an old Facebook account of him.
She also made sure she received a lot of selfies from him. Kate did her due diligence.
In the end, she discovered that the Facebook account was a hacked one.
And Gabriel walked away with $11,000.
London Bound
Gabriel eventually made his play when he told Kate he needed to rush to London to see his daughter.
She was to go through surgery, and Gabriel wanted to be with her.
When he arrived in London, he told Kate that he'd moved so quickly that his
bank had blocked his withdrawals and needed a little money help.
He then told Kate that he wanted to bring his kids to spend Christmas back home with her.
However, he still had issues with his bank and he needed her to lend him some money.
Since his bank wasn't working, he got Kate to buy some crypto and send it to him.
Kate sent him about $5,000 in crypto and fully expected Gabriel to pay it back.
On the day Gabriel and his daughters were to arrive, Kate went to wait at the airport for them.
After 45 minutes of waiting, Kate’s heart sank down through her stomach,
while her stomach was sinking through the floor of her car.
Not literally though, because that would be a whole different story.
Aftermath
When Gabriel finally contacted her, he said customs had detained him because of an antique
piece of jewelry he'd bought and he needed $5,000 to clear it. At this point, she thought she was
being scammed, but she still sent $1750 to an account Gabriel said was owned by a custom agent.
The transfer was picked up by her bank and she was informed that the account was linked to
fraud. After jumping through many hoops, Kate was luckily able to get her money back. Now,
she shares her story with others in the hopes that it will help them avoid getting scammed.
4 - Locked and Loaded Marcel Andre Vautour scammed Andrea
Sepwranza and two other women after promising them love and affection. After completing his scam,
Vautour vanished. When Andrea started doing some digging about Vautour and the nature of
his crimes, she discovered that he hadn't scammed her randomly. She was targeted.
Marcel Vautour sought out busy career women aged 45 to 50,
got them to fall in love — and then he'd rip them off.
When Andrea first met her scammer, he told her his name was March Hebert. Before long,
March Herbert was feeding Andrea sob stories about
his difficult childhood and how his parents suffered from addiction.
He went on to tell her that he worked on an oil rig, and had purchased thousands of acres in Nova
Scotia to build a youth-at-risk facility. Andrea ate up Vautour's tales oblivious to her own risk.
Targeted
Once Vautour has been captured, Andrea believes
that he specifically targeted her. He'd asked Andrea leading questions
to learn more about her and had built a personality he knew she would fall for.
Which she did- hard. That was when Vautour planned his exit strategy. He first tried
to get Andrea to invest in his fake facility for youth-at-risk since he knew she’d love the cause,
but she instead offered to help him apply for grants.
Realizing that his youth-at-risk gimmick wouldn't work,
the fraudster kicked things into second gear. Vautour claimed he suffered from
Crohn's disease and later told Andrea that he'd been hospitalized. He claimed
that his wallet had been stolen and he needed cash to buy expensive medication.
That was just the beginning of his demands. Afterward, Vautour told Andrea that he needed
to go get his dog from his ex, and needed cash for a hotel room and train ticket from
her. In total, Andrea gave him almost $5,000 and he promised to pay her back.
Once Vautour got his money, he ghosted Andrea and never looked back.
Other Targets
Andrea wasn't the only person that Vautour had played the game with. After Andrea
realized that she'd been had, she called the police and then met Jean-Baptiste Joachin,
a man who'd paid thousands of dollars to Vautour for training courses that never came.
By the time Joachin realized that he'd been scammed, Vautour had fleeced him out of about
$30,000. Unsurprisingly, Joachin wasn't the only other victim. Through social media,
Andrea was able to find even more alleged victims.
Despite knowing of Vautour's crimes, the police were unable to find him. So Andrea decided she
would take matters into her own hands. She built a website, StopTheMarchMadness.com, to help victims
of romance fraud connect, and started to build an entire community united against
fraudsters like Vautour. She soon discovered many other women had been scammed by Vautour.
Victims like Andrea went on to hire private investigators and
track down multiple phone numbers and email addresses connected to Vautour.
In the end, Vautour was arrested at a hotel in Toronto because of a police
tip-off and made no attempts to struggle with the officers. He's now been charged with fraud,
and his next relationship will be with some handcuffs.
3 - Swindler Recipe Patrick Giblin scammed
hundreds of women with false promises of love through online dating sites. Giblin wooed these
women with stories about his respectable family and got them to send him thousands
of dollars. By the time Giblin was caught, he'd scammed his victims out of thousands of dollars.
Giblin wasn't just your average loverboy scammer. He was an extraordinarily prolific one, and had
scammed over a hundred women using the same potent mixture of lies, promises of love, and fraud.
Playbook
The only way Giblin maintained his prolific record with his schemes was to target specific
women. Giblin targeted vulnerable women who had just recently ended a long-term
relationship or suffered the death of a loved one. His mother must be proud.
Once Giblin found women that fit his profile, he went on to provide a
shoulder to lean on. Then he gained their trust and used that trust to scam them.
One peculiar thing about Giblin is his dedication to his craft of fraud. Even after getting caught
and serving prison time, he still found himself perpetuating the same scam over and over again.
Even while he was in prison, he went online and still scammed women with the same awful lies.
Even after serving prison time, Giblin got himself arrested again,
but escaped custody like the slimy little goblin he is. Giblin became a fugitive
thereafter, but even that didn't stop him from continuing his scam.
Meticulousness
Giblin was so meticulous with his scams that he kept detailed notes on every potential victim.
These notes included their names, what they did for work, their hobbies, and what sort
of man they were looking for. Giblin had to make sure he never got his victims mixed up.
Giblin's scamming operation is so extensive that the authorities say they've never seen so
many romance scams connected to one scammer. At his hearing, Giblin admitted that he'd
stolen up to $200,000 from women over the years. That number is likely higher,
as police have evidence that Giblin has been in the scamming business since at least 2000.
Escape Artist
Giblin was first caught by the police in 2005 after investigations revealed that
he'd scammed an Ohio woman. While in the system,
Giblin admitted to the police that he'd scammed over 80 women in five years. That 16 women in a
year. Giblin pleaded guilty to his crimes and the courts slammed him with a 9-year sentence.
After serving five years, Giblin was placed in a residential reentry
program in Philadelphia. At the program, he was given a one-day pass to get a job
in Atlantic City. Giblin left in the morning and didn’t return..
But he couldn't run forever. A few weeks later Giblin was caught in an Atlantic City
hotel. The authorities searched his room and found a cell phone, money transfer receipts,
and the notebook he used to keep his lies straight with his victims.
Giblin was charged to court again, and this time he pleaded guilty to escape charges.
He was sentenced to a further eighteen months in prison for good measure.
In 2013, Giblin was released again on probation. He was supposed to inform his probation about
plans to leave the city if he wanted to. But Giblin wasn't the kind of parolee who
cared about such silly rules that could get in the way of his scamming, so he fled again.
Aftermath
While on the run, Giblin focused on carrying out more scams, and was able to get ten more
victims. Giblin, of course, was caught again, and this time was sentenced to five years in
prison. While in prison, Giblin didn't give up on his dream to become the most
prolific scammer ever. He continued to grind on dating sites and scammed multiple women.
In 2020, after just serving three years of his sentence, Giblin was approved to be transferred
to a residential reentry system in Newark. Federal officials say they saw Giblin getting
on the plane to Newark, but Giblin never emerged in the city. He'd found a way to escape again.
In 2021, police caught up to Giblin once again. He was arrested in Atlantic City and charged
with escaping from prison and fraud— again. He was sentenced to five and half years in prison— AGAIN.
Giblin doesn't seem affected by this ruling at all. He said he believed that the trial
was fair and that it could even help him kick his gambling addiction. Or maybe he
was just saying that to the public and is already planning his next jailbreak.
Maybe his real addiction is getting apprehended by the police after escaping
custody after getting arrested for scamming vulnerable women?
Maybe just escaping custody doesn’t scratch the itch. We don’t judge.
2 - Catalina’s Fake Gold Catalina Rosa met Eric Benson
at a trendy restaurant in Florida. Eric convinced Rosa that he was an art dealer
and a stock and commodities trader for wealthy clients. He spoke quite charmingly to Catalina
and she became captivated by him. In no time Catalina grew quite close to Eric.
He invited her over to his apartment at an exclusive resort and often arranged
their meetings in stylish and exclusive locations. One day he invited her over
to an amazing Spanish-style mansion and showed off a brand-new Ferrari that he'd just bought.
Goldmember
Eric was quite fond of gold and said it was his favorite
type of investment. After eight months he gave Catalina some gold coins to sell for him and
offered a 20% commission for her troubles. Catalina did this for him twice. Then when
Brexit happened he convinced her to cash in half of her IRA and invest it in gold.
Eric told her the financial markets were about to be uncertain and that Catalina wouldn't be
able to withdraw from her accounts when that happened. So she did as he asked and withdrew
$35,000 cash from her savings and gave it to him. In return,
he gave her 27 gold coins that could, in theory, be exchanged for its cash equivalent at any time.
Her son also withdrew $12,000 from his savings account and
gave Eric for the same purpose. He received 10 gold coins in return.
Eleven months later, Catalina became worried about her finances
and spoke to her banker. The banker became concerned over her story and
recommended she quickly get the gold coins authenticated. And wouldn’t you know it:
the coins were fake. Catalina went to the police to get help but there wasn’t much they could do.
On the Hook
If the police couldn’t do anything, then Catalina decided she would have to catch
Eric herself. She met up with him on the pretense that she wanted to buy gold for
her daughter. She recorded the meeting and then got into contact with the secret
service. The secret service took her case very seriously and quickly began investigating Eric.
Catalina contacted the owner of the beautiful Spanish-style house Eric had arranged their
meeting in and met Eric's other girlfriend, Jennifer. She told Jennifer about Eric's scam,
and Jennifer immediately flipped. Once she confronted Eric, once again, he disappeared.
After Catalina met Jennifer, the spurned women bonded over their mutual boyfriend, and decided
to do some digging on Eric. They discovered that his real name was Blayne Frederick,
he was a big time con artist, which isn’t exactly a hot news flash, and that he was a wanted man.
Aftermath
After nine months of being on the run, Eric was finally arrested at a golf club in Jupiter,
Florida. A bartender recognized him from a flier that the police
had dropped months earlier, and notified the police. Eric tried to escape on foot,
but he wasn't as good a runner as he was a scammer. He was caught pretty quickly.
Once he was caught, Eric claimed that he was penniless. All of Catalina's money
had disappeared into thin air. She’s unlikely to ever get her money back,
but Catalina comforted herself with the fact that Eric would be spending a long time behind bars.
1 - The Handbag Sugar Baby Siriluck Fatima Chimalee ran a love scam and
duped a Sydney man out of about $400,000. Chimalee scammed the man through a series of fake invoices
and intimate text messages that painted a picture of a false reality for her victim. Chimalee used
the money she got from her victims to fund her luxury lifestyle filled with luxury handbags.
Sugar Trail
But this wasn't Chimalee's first fraudulent foray. She had a pattern of going after rich
men on dating apps and spinning a web of lies for them to fall into. Chimalee
had met the Sydney man she scammed on an internet dating service that specializes
in a ‘sugar daddy’ type relationship. The service showed that the man made up to
$250,000 a year and had a networth of about $10 million.
He had more than enough money to spend,
so Chimalee decided to help him do just that with a robust portion of lies.
First, Chimalee lied about her occupation and claimed that she worked as a cleaner and wanted
to become a lawyer. She later convinced him that she was also a trader in high end luxury bags
and she sent him an invoice for a bag worth over $300,000. The invoice had been forged,
as the barcode on it carried the map of the world, which is weird that she would just leave it there.
Once her victim saw the invoice, alarm bells started ringing and he realized that he might have
been scammed. In court, he testified that he'd hoped to marry Fatima, and her fraud hadn’t only
jeopardized his financial future but his romantic one as well. To show how serious about marriage he
was, he'd sent her $13,000 to get an engagement ring. Fatima would never purchase the ring.
Fatima wasn't just a one-off fraudster. She was a prolific one, as police discovered that
she'd scammed another victim in the same manner. She'd used this victim's name to
open a loan for a business idea, and had then defrauded him of about $27,000 into a service
she called PickMe. The service was supposed to be an Uber-style delivery service, but for parcels.
Aftermath
The long arm of the law finally grabbed Chimalee as she was arrested and charged. In court,
she claimed that her actions were caused by her anxiety and depression which were
caused by a miscarriage and the death of her father. She also said she'd been forced to
support her three kids financially because of the awful conditions she'd found herself in.
Unfortunately for her, the judge wasn't someone who could be scammed by her tales.
Just to throw a little shade her way, he even called the scam unsophisticated,
which probably made her weirdly self conscious- should he have tried to be more sophisticated?
Chimalee was convicted of fraud and sentenced to four years and two months in prison.
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Let us know in the comment section what you would rather have happen,
if these were your only two choices: have an arranged marriage with your
partner picked by your parents OR picked by Artificial Intelligence?