James P. Berlusconi

Total money lost $3,000

Type of a scam Romance

I was approached by scammer on POF. He asked me to email him because he is hardly on the site. He introduced himself as a small business owner, widowed with a 15 year old daughter. Sent me at least 10 picture of himself and his daughter over time. He told me he got a huge contract renovating an oil rig. He was going to meet me but called and said the Board wants him onsite asap, so he was flying out. Once he got there he chatted with me and then asked me for $|3000 because he ordered equipment but had to pay duty of $7k — $4k of which he got from a friend but need the remainder. He told me that he had reached his bank transfer limit and that is why he could not get it from his bank.

I fell for the whole thing because his love letters daily were amazing.

I said i was not comfortable with sending $$ to someone i have never seen live. The scammer told me that we would do a skype call. We did and there was the same person as in the photos talking. However, due to the bad reception on the rigs the words were separated from the mouth moving. The scammer talked to me as if he was him.

So of course i believe it and went to the bank retrieved the monies and deposited to a 3rd party account as he requested. I then realized that i think i was scammed but still was not sure and hoping i was not.

He continued to whoo me with his emails and finally a week later he said his equipment broke down and he needed $60,000 to repair it or he could not work and would lose the contract.

SO i went to work and checked his IP address which was in the netherlands, his phone # is voip so you cannot trace it and does not belong in Canada. He was upset today when i told him that i am not going to send the monies because i have no idea who he is. So again today we did a skype call and sure enough another call and James was wearing a different shirt and again scammer played the game of bad reception. Then he tried to make me feel guilty by saying that i was upsetting him and that he had no control over the internet. I have looked up romance scams, oil rigs and skype. Only to find out that a person can put on a video that they get from somewhere else. Once the skype video played he turned off the reception so i could not see that it was a repeat of a few seconds of movement.

He is still whooing me like crazy. So i asked him to give me his company name, his home address, and access to his bank accounts…………now i wonder how he is going to manage that????