I was contacted 2 and1/2 weeks ago by a man named Michael Ferarri, his Email address is thesuperbrand@yahoo.com. Women beware, he is a scammer. He found me on Match.com. Asked me to please write back to his Yahoo email as his Match.com subscription was expiring that day. He proceeded to tell me he was from Rome, Italy and had moved to the Boston area with his 15 year old son, 6 months ago. His wife had died 4 years earlier from cancer. At the present he was over in Nigeria working for NNPC as as engineer. He would be retuning to Boston in about three weeks. Of course I had some suspicions but I continued on with him. He sent beautiful Emails, love poems and within days had fallen in love with me. He talked all about honesty and truthfulness and karma. Went on to say both of his parents had passed away and he was an only child. He had moved to Boston to start a new life for him and his son. Of course I got all caught up in his life’s story. He was so sweet, kind, sincere and romantic, everything I was looking for. Also 2 very handsome pictures were included. I finally asked if we could speak on the phone. He complied but only once and that was for 30 seconds, he said his battery died. Each time there after, when I tried to call that number it would never go through. Apparently he was using a phone that only dialed out. On the evening of May 27th, 2 and1/2 weeks after our initial introduction he proceeds to tell me the following. He was walking to the store to buy food for his son and himself and was robbed at gunpoint. They took his wallet with all his money in it. He had not even one dime to his name now until he will be paid on June 1st. He asked if I could send $500 and he would pay me back when he gets paid. Of course I told him of my doubts and concerns. For the next 2 hours this back and forth chatter continued. He was so upset that I didn’t believe and trust him after all we have shared. It went on and on. I did not send money. he signed off of yahoo when he knew I wasn’t going to give it. I am sure I will never hear another word from this scammer. I am grateful that I had enough common sense to know that this was not right. Ladies and gentleman PLEASE BEWARE, their are evil people out there. I have reported this to several agencies in hopes of a crackdown on this illegal activity. Use good judgement and NEVER send money to someone you have never met.
This post was submitted by Terry Barron.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I am grateful for your post, Terry Baron. You saved me a lot of heartache. I got the same song and dance from him. What a shameful thing he is doing.
July 7th, 2009 at 9:23 pm
He’s a busy man. Same story – May to June. Never got to the “was robbed” part. His son was in the hospital though. Who knows what would have come of that! Had long conversations on several occasions, but broke plans often enough to raise my suspicions. He was probably talking to Terry Baron above. Spoke to him by phone. He was willing to let it go longer than 30 seconds. No webcam, didn’t sound Italian, skipped responding to certain questions. Will go to great lengths to get you to trust him. He can be caught in lies however. He forgets some of the things he’s said in his Match.com profile. He’s not helping the reputation of his country or decent Nigerians. His isn’t the only Nigerian scam. I did feel rather good dumping him after his pleading because he “loved me so much”. And I kept copies of the poetry (on checking, none of it was written by him). Maybe it’ll come in handy!
July 12th, 2009 at 11:14 am
Thank You Terry. I am so glad I found your post. Seems our Michael is quite the busy man. I too got the same song and dance from him on MATCH.com. He has been romancing me on Yahoo messenger the last few weeks. How he is in love with me, wants to marry me, blah, blah..beautiful poetry and letters. Says he is working in Lagos, Nigeria as a Petroleum Engineer and has a 16 year old son named Fabio.
Says he is returning to the U.S. very soon, that he wants to start a new business and spend our lives together.
I was never totally convinced about him, something in the back of my mind saying, this guy is to good to be true and then last evening I asked for and address where I could send him a birthday card in Africa, because he said his birthday was July 12, so he gave me one. I Googled the address and surprise, surprise, websites about Nigerian Internet Dating Scams came up which brought me to your post.
Thank God nothing ever came up about sending him money but he did scan a picture into Yahoo messanger of a cashiers check for five million seven hundred thousand dollars supposedly from Bank of America to show me how much money he has. Wan’t impressed. I’m sure the next move would have been him sending it to me to deposit and then take money back out to send to him. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you posting about this evil souless man and I intend to post the pictures he sent to the Nigerian Dating Scammers Website so hopefully he will be stopped from spreading the poison he spreads.
Can’t Thank You enough !!
July 12th, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Terry baron is a liar i urge everybody seen this story she has said not to listen to her she’s not saving life she’s lackmailing the man she wanted to get marry to but later the man discover she was HIV positive and he ran away from her , since then she has been posting fake story all over site, Terry barron is a big Liar…
Collins cole
July 16th, 2009 at 8:00 am
This story sounds quite familiar to me, but I met a scammer who called himself Bruce Palmer on Singlesnet.com in April 2009. He was listed as being from Montreal, but soon after we started emailing, he supposedly started working as an engineer on an oil exploration ship in the North Sea. He said he was from Norway but was living with a friend near Montreal after his wife died about six years ago. He invited me to chat through Yahoo mail and also phoned me a few times. The phone he used came up as blocked ID so I couldn’t call back.
After a few weeks, I got the first request for money because he said his 15-year-old son was badly injured in an accident in London and the son’s guardian needed money right away to pay for medicine and doctor’s services. Because the son was supposed to be a foreign student, his medical treatment wasn’t covered through the British healthcare system.
I stupidly sent a few Western Union money transfers to this “guardian” as Bruce said he couldn’t send any money himself until the Saudi Arabian oil company paid him $1.5 million at the end of his contract.
This went on for about two months. He sent me two official-looking documents showing that the oil company had authorized payment to a bank in Aberdeen, Scotland for his work, then the next day cancelled the payment because they found him to be responsible for a workplace accident involving an oil spill, fire and the death of five workers who Bruce had been training.
When I finally refused to send more money, he stopped communicating with me.
So please beware if you read anything that sounds like this on an online dating site. This man – whoever he is – is a criminal.
July 30th, 2009 at 7:09 am
I, too, will share my story. In early July, I met a guy who called himself Steve Gibson. His MO was the same as I have since read on sites like romancescams.com. He contacted me through match.com, asked me to move off the site and correspond through yahoo messenger within 1 day, was professing his love for me within a week, and said he would move to the US to be with me. His match profile said he was from the UK and that soon, he would be interviewing in Nigeria for an engineering job. I was stupid and gave him my phone number. The calls came all throughout the day and night. I grew suspicious when he could never seem to remember the time difference. Still, he’d sent me his flight info. It looked real until I dug deeper. Then I got really suspicious when the same pictures he sent to me appeared on someone else’s match.com profile. (That showed up in my “who has viewed me” section.)He claimed his former best friend did that to scam him. Just prior to that, he’d asked me to take down my profile as a symbol of our committment. He, too, had lost a wife to cancer and was raising a daughter on his own. The “daughter” even e-mailed me and chatted through yahoo. This man’s written and spoken English were horrendous, particularly for someone who supposedly grew up in the UK. Some of the e-mails I would get were so incredibly sappy and full of his promises to love me until the end of time. He pretended to be worried someone would steal me away from him and said he would die if that happened. He asked me to promise not to tell my friends or family about him so that we could surprise everyone once he moved to the US. Once he went to Nigeria for business – I now know he was there all along – he started calling from a different number. He claimed his cell phone did not work in Nigeria and that the hotel manager was loaning him his phone.
He needed me to send him a cell phone so he could get calls from his prospective client. When I asked why the client couldn’t just call the hotel and why he couldn’t go buy his own cell phone when he supposedly had millions of dollars for me to invest for him in the US, he stalled. He said he’d maxed out his credit card on a previous trip. I wondered how he was able to book a flight, motel, and rent a car with no credit card. Again, my questions were avoided. By the way, the cell phone he wanted was no simple Trac phone. He wanted a $500 phone and grew indignant when I would not comply. He even sent me links to target.com so I would be able to find a phone quickly. My own cell phone isn’t even as nice as the one he wanted.
Now that I have become aware of these scams, I have found that my “guy” was probably operating off a script with a group of other scammers. That is why his messages seemed fishy, never really specific to my life and things I’d told him about what I was doing. Some of his poems and letters were actually copied and pasted from things I found through google. One was obviously written by a female to a male but my guy failed to change the wording. What he copied and pasted had almost all the words spelled correctly….another clue.
The only help I received from match.com was a form letter telling me how to block users. Well, this guy under the 2 names I know him as, is long gone. I feel sorry for the person whose pictures he used. I have been educated through websites like this. Now I know how to spot a scammer. If the pictures look like they are from a magazine or are professional models, they probably are.
Learn how to track an e-mail’s IP address. Ask questions. A person who supposedly travels the world on business should know things about the world. My guy could not describe the direction the US is from the UK. Keep all messages and e-mails and then look at them after a week or so to see if it seems as they were written by different people. No matter what, do not fall for someone who claims to be doing business in Nigeria. No one you want to be with falls in love with you without even meeting you.
I have many other stories about this man and will post if anyone is interested. I am still a bit embarrassed I fell for this, and I am hurt that my emotions were played but . . . I am not out any money. I am at least lucky that way.
August 2nd, 2009 at 3:14 pm
Ya’ll can ignore the post from the person calling himself “Collins Cole”
He’s none other than our scammer “Michael Ferarri” aka “Steve Gibson” aka “Bruce Palmer”
These scammers are nothing but dirty little “PARASITES”. When they are called on the carpet for the web of lies they tell they become the beligerent, hateful,uneducated little scumbags that they really are.
It goes back to the old adage….
If it’s to good to be true.. it’s probably a scam…
It’s too bad the lazy bastards don’t get a real job that doesn’t involve hurting innocent people.
Their government needs to do more to eradicate these criminals and punish them to the full extent of the law. Cutting off their hands so they can never touch another computer keyboard sounds like a fitting punishment.
Ya’ll just beware Ladies
October 2nd, 2009 at 4:50 am
The information provided within here saved my relationship and the effect was almost immediate!
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
brucepalmer2521@yahoo.com
1-203-401-8212
…on yahoo messenger.
kill the man 9online by complaining
October 22nd, 2009 at 11:27 am
He sent me the same old story … Mom in accident in Oslo, had to go to London UK for her surgery.
Then sent to an oil rig in Indian Ocean .. his teeneage son went to Bali and was dying of an accident — needed $5000
Called him a scammer .. he berated ME — I was EVIL STUPID AND UNEDUCATED.
October 29th, 2009 at 8:01 am
Jess