Thread by @CrispinBurke

Many of you have asked me about this series of articles from @jacknicas in the @nytimes this week about Nigerian romance scammers who use pictures of US servicemembers to scam victims out of money. I have been dealing with this problem since 2012. 1/n

nytimes.com/2019/08/01/tec…

If you want the short version of this story, read this article in @cracked which is based on an interview with me. 2/n

cracked.com/personal-exper…

You're probably wondering how I got here. Back in 2012, I was working for a general officer whom we'll call General Jones. One day, someone sent an email to General Jones' wife. 3/n

The email was from a woman who wanted to let Mrs. Jones know that she and General Jones were going to run away together and get married and that she owed Mrs. Jones an explanation.

Oh boy.

4/n

I overheard General Jones talk about this with his inner circle. I immediately realized what was up.

"Sir, that's a well-known scam...sort of an updated version of the Nigerian prince email." 5/n

That, coupled with my extensive social media experience, meant that I had just volunteered to take on General Jones' romance scammers. And boy, were there a lot of them. 6/n

On a weekly basis, I would make my electronic "rounds", searching for General Jones' name on Facebook, Twitter, and Skype (the three biggest offenders). On an average week, I probably found about 30 fake Facebook accounts, a dozen Twitter accounts, and worst of all...

7/n

At least 200 fake Skype accounts...EACH WEEK. And I stopped looking for fake Skype accounts because Skype will only return 100 requests for a name. I looked at each Skype name:

Bob.Jones (pic of general)
Gen.Jones (pic of general)
Bob.Jones1234 (pic of general)

8/n

I limited myself to those three sites, fully aware that there were probably dozens more on dating sites all over the Internet. Of course, most of those sites were probably blocked on government networks. 9/n

This went on for several months. Occasionally, one of the victims would contact the public affairs team and report the scam. One time, a woman in Europe physically mailed a letter to the general's house containing the correspondence with her scammer. 10/n

Think of this -- she didn't do any research into the general when she was chatting with her scammer but suddenly she did enough research to track down his house? Cray cray. 11/n

I learned some crazy African scammer tricks, too. One time I was monitoring General Jones' Wikipedia page and noticed that Wikipedia claimed that his wife and kids were killed in a car accident. (Spoiler: They were not) 12/n

Turns out the scammers were actually editing his Wikipedia page to match whatever sad sob story they were telling their victims. They also used anonymous accounts to edit the page...which actually worked to my advantage. 13/n

When you edit Wikipedia anonymously, Wikipedia lists your user name as your IP address. I checked the IP address associated with the edit and found that it came from Accra, Ghana. 14/n

You can see more about this in the NY Times Weekly episode but many young men in western African nations (Nigeria, Ghana, etc) take part in these scams. Police turn a blind eye to it. 15/n

There's a lot of violence in Nigeria (ISIS, Boko Haram, etc) and the last thing you want are a lot of unemployed young men. The local police would rather these guys scam people in the West than join these sorts of groups. (Oddly enough, same dynamic w Russian hackers) 16/n

Most of the victims send money to the scammers via services like Western Union or (increasingly) Moneygram. Western Union was actually fined over $500 million for its role in these scams. 17/n

ftc.gov/enforcement/ca…

The scammers pick up the money at their local Western Union location using IDs they must create in Microsoft Paint. Many of them are so laughably bad but Western Union accepted them. 18/n

This took up a few hours of my time each week. That was until our headquarters was contacted by a woman in Venice named Susy. I've actually saved some of her correspondence. Susy quickly became the bane of my existence. 19/n

Susy tried her best to write to my official email account in English. She had fallen in love with fake General Jones. Using Google Translate, I advised her to provide us with the URLs of any fake accounts and above all to cease communicating with these fake accounts. 20/n

Here's the thing -- many of these victims are very lonely. They often suffer from mental illness. They often look for excuses to contact US military headquarters because they want to talk to *someone*. There's also a little delusion of grandeur here... 21/n

Once the victims figure out what's up, they think they're in the middle on an international manhunt with the US military to track down Nigerian romance scammers. Ugh...

22/n

Anyway, Susy would contact me multiple times a day. My work contact information (work phone #, physical address) were in my signature block. She would use a translation service to call me at work to talk about the romance scams. 23/n

Every time she called, I pleaded with her to stop contacting the scammers.

NARRATOR: She totally kept talking to the scammers.

24/n

Every day I got an email in which she purported to have cracked the entire case. In this series, she believes the man who is impersonating General Jones is none other than...Raymond Chandler, the former sergeant major of the Army. 25/n

It got to the point where I was concerned she would do something crazy and illegal in her efforts to unmask these guys. In this one (I think) she's trying to commit wire fraud? In another one she got her Facebook account locked for...something? 26/n

But the worst was this...she decided she'd come up with a master plan to unmask her romance scammer. She basically dropped my name to the scammer. Only...she copied and pasted my name and contact info from my signature block. 27/n

The scammer then admitted that he wasn't General Bob Jones. Instead...he was another US service member. HE HAD ANOTHER FAKE IDENTITY READY AND SHE BOUGHT IT! 28/n

Soon after, I got an unusual friend request on Facebook from a stranger with an African name. I blocked it quickly but by then the damage was done. Within a few days, there was a fake me on Facebook. Here was my cover photo. 29/n

But I had enough information on this particular scammer to mess with him. I threatened to drone strike him...that at least kept the scammers at bay for a little while. 30/n

But from that day on, I would see fake Crispins running around the Internet. Usually on Facebook, but sometimes on other applications. I would regularly search for myself on Facebook and get the imposters taken down. 31/n

Other times, I would be contacted by the victims. 32/n

Once these women know they have the real me, it gets...bizzare sometimes.

Oh, hello fiancee, @LauraWalkerKC! 33/n

Sometimes I'm on dating sites I've never heard of. 34/n

Final note -- In the NYT video, @jacknicas tells a DOD public affairs official he found hundreds of fake General Dunfords and other senior leaders. These leaders are prime targets for two big reasons. First, they are public figures so lots of pics. 35/n

Second, scammers usually prey on older victims, particularly widows so they need pictures of older people. That means lots of fake generals. That said, generals have staffs that can work on this problem. 36/n

I don't have a staff to work on this problem. And when I get out of the military, there are literally no resources for me unless I hire a reputation manager (which is hundreds of dollars a month). 37/n

Lastly, the reason this is so difficult to fight is because no one really wants to tackle this problem. If I go to the police about this I'm simply told that I'm not a victim because I didn't lose any money. 38/n

There's little local law enforcement can do to help when the scammers are in Nigeria. Nigerian law enforcement won't enforce the laws. Western Union and Moneygram barely police this activity. Facebook has its hands full with "coordinated inauthentic behavior". 39/n

And no one in the military wants to do this full time. Who joined the Army to deal with Nigerian romance scammers? 40/n

That's my story. I've gotten tired of repeating it so it's all here. 41/n

I've heard from a number of service members that occasionally they will get a *very* angry message from a stranger along the lines of "Hey, you stole my grandmother's savings...I'm calling the cops on you."

Hasn't happened to me yet *knock* but it probably soon will.

Also...I've changed and sanitized the names in this story but the rest of the correspondence is real.

Another note...you'll see this in the Cracked article but there was one time a woman contacted me about her fake soldier (apparently Ms. Susy told all her fellow victims that I'm like a world-renowned Nigerian romance scammer hunter or something).

She asked me if I knew this particular soldier. She showed me a picture of her and her 20-something soldier boyfriend badly photoshopped together.