I HAVE BEEN CATFISHED-STAY AWAY FROM THIS MAN-PAUL BENJAMIN JONE

I have been duped, again.

I have been naïve, once again.

I have been taken advantage of AGAIN, believing the good in people who didn’t deserve it.

This is not a current situation. 

I actually wrote this blog entry 9 months ago in the midst of all the commotion and I have just been waiting for the right time to post it.  I figured there is no better time than the start of a new year.  It is time to leave the bad vibes of 2014 behind, cleanse my mind, release my anger and my sadness and look towards a brighter and better 2015.  I was hoping against all hope that I would have been proven wrong and I would get my money back but unfortunately I was wrong and it is only now that I am comfortable sharing my story in the hope of stopping another woman going through what I went through.  The emotional and the traumatic upheaval, the feeling of failure, the despair that I felt was so great, I literally withdrew into a shell (as much as my Kenyan friends would allow), if it was up to me, I would have stayed at home and become a hermit for an unmentionable amount of time until I was ready to pop out my head out into the world once again.  The thing that disappointed me the most was that it is my mum’s money, and I was just throwing it away, thinking I was helping people in their time of need, to only find out that this was not the case.  The world is full of bad people, and I have found another one. 

I watch the crime channel on TV at nights and there are programmes solely on women just like me telling and sharing their stories and even though nothing good comes from an experience like this, it makes you realise that you are not alone, there are other woman who are getting swept up in the romance of online scams, and they are also smart ladies.  They are lawyers and doctors, but these men, who prey on us women, are that good at what they do, even the smartest person gets conned by their deceit and their stories and as this type of crime grows, it is time for me to share my story and hope, if nothing else that this man will either get caught, or at the least, not able to use his alias and make it a hassle for him to start again with a new story and a new name. 

This is my story and it is time to share it.      

I have never used my blog to name and shame people but I feel I have to in this instance as I was a victim of fraud and I want to make sure that it doesn’t happen to anybody else.  It is humiliating having to tell the story as I am an educated woman and I got sucked in by this predator.  But I find it is worth my humiliation, my stupidity and my disappointment to try and stop other people getting duped.  I believe in the good of people and this does not always work in my favour.  So my message will be clear.  I will name and shame this man on my blog, on the internet, on Facebook and I am still to report him to the Internet Crime Complaint Centre in the United States at http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) which is where he needs to be reported.  I’m not so much after revenge, I also know that I will not get my money back BUT if I can warn other single ladies out there of this man, then for me it is all worth it, even though I am going to look like a total and complete IDIOT!  That makes me very sad indeed.

While I was in the UK in March, I also took the courage to visit the Paddington Green Police Station and I filed a report on this predator to the Action Fraud Squad UK.  After going through my story, giving the money transfer details and all the information that I had, I was reassured that it was more than likely a scam and I was advised to have no more contact with this man.  I was also told I was doing a brave thing as not a lot of women report these crimes due to the shame they feel for getting sucked into this type of situation.  It was my turning point in the whole 8 month ordeal, remembering that this was only March, this man kept on hassling and harassing me for a further FIVE months before he finally dropped off the scene to never be heard from again.  I maintained the contact, albeit it was reduced and no longer personal, as I still WANTED to believe I would get some money back if I kept engaging this individual, even when I knew he was a scumbag.  What I don’t get was not another penny was sent after March, so wouldn’t it just have made sense for him to have left me alone earlier?  I guess he still thought there was money left to be had and I just kept in the back of my mind that the Fraud Squad officer told me to not have any further contact with this man and I finally stopped emailing and speaking to him, albeit 5 months later, but at least I finally saw the light and decided to not have anything else to do with this man.  I should have taken heed earlier, just for my own sanity but I can tell you he still emotionally played with my feelings, and even though I knew it was a sham, listening to someone every day, pour out their heart, emotions, problems and chats, it is still a hard thing to let go, real or not, that is how good these men are. 

I did receive a follow up email 2 months later from the fraud squad in the UK telling me that my report I had made with the Action Fraud UK was sent to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) which is run by the City of London Police, the national lead force for fraud. The NFIB collates intelligence from these reports, and puts all information received to the most effective use possible, either through enforcement, disruption or prevention activity.  My report had been assessed by the NFIB and the information I provided enabled the police to take action to disrupt the activities of suspected criminals. This activity can be in the form of requests to suspend or take down fraudulent websites or email accounts, telephone numbers and/or bank accounts or foreign currency exchange accounts.  I was thanked for taking the time to report and helping them to make the UK a more hostile place for fraudsters to operate in.  So it may not be much, but it was something, a small ray of hope and it was good to know that it had been followed up with.
www.actionfraud.police.uk 

So what does that mean?  ‘I’ve been Catfished’. 

According to the Urban Dictionary, a catfish is someone who pretends to be someone they're not, using Facebook or other social media to create false identities, particularly to pursue deceptive online romances.  There is a TV show called Catfish that I have been watching the last year which is an American reality-based docudrama television series airing on MTV about the truths and lies of online dating. The term "catfish" is derived from the title of a 2010 documentary film, in which filmmaker Nev Schulman discovered that, the 20-something woman he'd been carrying on an online relationship with had not been honest in describing herself.  These "catfish" usually intend to trick an unsuspecting person or persons into falling in love with them.  Some of the stories you watch on the show, you just wonder how they get sucked into these online relationships.  Can people be that stupid?  There were some relationships that went on for years and they lived in the same city and had never met.  I now have to categorize myself as one of these ‘stupid’ people, and after being in their shoes, being a victim of this sort of crime, I am now more sympathetic and certainly more wizened up and as the good quote says, ‘we live and we learn’ and again I am just happy I didn’t lose the lot.     

So my story in a nutshell:

My world changed in January when I was approached on Facebook by someone I had never met before.  We had no friends in common and it was just ‘another’ random message.  I get friend requests and message from people I don’t know all the time and I generally don’t give them the time of day and just delete them as they come in.  I have literally get at least one every few weeks.  It’s not new to me, but this message was different, it grabbed my attention, it was well written and I just had an impulse to reply back.  If I had of known where it would have taken me a month later, I should have, and would have been smart enough to delete that message along with the rest of them.  But I didn’t and the ensuring weeks was filled with 4-8 messages a day, 3-4 poems a day, phone calls daily, words of love, whispers of the future and even an impending visit to Kenya.  I can see you have your own warning bells ringing already, and I did too.  I have done the internet, online relationships before, and let’s just say that they were less than successful and I was weary from the start.  I had promised myself I would never get sucked in again by words being uttered and phrased via online, and much to my own shock, I was again.

Things turned very serious very quickly, and I now take back all my judgemental thoughts I have had of the people on the Catfish show, or more so now, these crime shows based wholly on vulnerable women giving all their life savings to these predators.  If you have not been in that situation before, then you also should not judge.  But to cut a long story short I got sucked in by this person I had never met and I felt like I had the real thing with this guy.  My Kenya family were worried, but as I told them, money had not been discussed, he was paying for his own ticket to Kenya, so what did I have to loose.  But one forgets the emotional commitment one puts into an ‘online’ relationship and a full on one at that.  Especially when you invest yourself, your time, your heart and all your feelings, it does drain you.  It doesn’t even have to have a monetary value to it and again I say what did I have to lose, besides my confidence and credibility and a little face, I thought it was worth the risk.  I had learnt from the Catfish TV show and I Googled the photos that Paul had emailed to me via images and there was not a hit, which was great news that his pictures had not been taken from other web sites.  I Googled his name and got no hits, which some people thought was a little weird, but if I look at my Best Friend or my Ex Husband, they don’t have a big internet presence and I didn’t think that was unusual these days.  I asked for a copy of his passport, which he scanned and sent through and all the information he had told me added up.  I even got a friend who works at the US Embassy here to take a look at the passport scan, just to see that it all looked legit as it could and that got a thumbs up without her actually doing an illegal search on her side.  I thought I had taken all the care that I could to check this guy out.

 

Things were all thrown into a spin 6 weeks in when indirectly Paul, who had now become an integral part of my daily life and routine, was chasing money.  My heart dropped the second I read his message and it is hard to put it all into context that after 4 weeks, we were entwined emotionally with email messages, up to 50 a day, Facebook chats for 1.5 hours each night after he got home from work and phone calls thrown in on a daily basis.  Yes, this man was cemented deeply into my life and who wouldn’t want to hear how special you are, what you mean to them and the bright future we were looking to, even though this man was still a relative stranger.  I’m not stupid, I had warning bells ringing.  I had friends concerned, one even sent me an email of what a classic ‘catfish’ and online predators do to unsuspecting women and I ticked a lot of boxes on both of these lists. 

http://www.drphil.com/articles/article/726

http://m.fbi.gov/#http://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-releases/2013/looking-for-love-beware-of-online-dating-scamshttp://m.fbi.gov/#http://www.fbi.gov/sandiego/press-releases/2013/looking-for-love-beware-of-online-dating-scams

Even though I ticked a lot of those boxes, I still continued on with the farce.  I must have known that it was wrong as I didn’t speak to any of my friends about it in the early days, I knew what they would say, and that should have been enough for me to NOT send cash.  But I was hopeful that I was wrong and I wanted to prove to them all that ‘they’ were wrong about Paul when he turned up on my doorstep with what he owed me in hand.  A pipe dream, I know, but I believed it to an extent.  The money was for a work emergency that he had been telling me about all week.  A workman had died on site and he had to pay the family a negligence fine and also a fine to the UK Safety Commission in breach of safety.  He did that out of his own funds, but it left him short to purchase the last of the goods required to complete the job he was working on.  Enter idiot, Bernie Jamieson.  He said he would pay me back the minute the job was finished and he had been paid.  Of course there were additional hold ups, additional monies to be sent for various reasons that you can rationalize all you want, and you really do just get caught up in it all and you start to think, well I have already sent X amount of money, I may as well send the rest so that I can get it all back quicker.  There was always urgency, a deadline, so the pressure that was put on me was just too much to bear at times and I would just cry myself to sleep at nights. 

The MOST EMBARASSING thing about this WHOLE thing, through the whole 8 month con was it was with some-one I HAD NEVER MET.  That is the most stupid thing, the most idiotic thing and ridiculous thing and to say it makes me feel like the BIGGEST LOSER on the planet, but I did it.  I can’t change it, I need to learn to let it go, find peace within myself and look towards a positive 2015.  As I write this and even at the time, I knew it sounded wrong, it didn’t pass the stink test, but as weird as it sounds I had promised this person help, and help I would do, even if it went against what I was thinking in my head.  It is so hard to explain, the thought process to try and explain it all and until you are in that pressure cooker, you will never really understand and I hope that it will never happen, even to my biggest enemy.  I had an awful feeling of the validity and sincerity of the man 85% of the time and still I went ahead and sent this fraudster money, on several occasions.  I have tears in my eyes as I write this, as it breaks my heart.  I am disappointed in myself, I know my friends, although supportive when they find out, I feel I would have let them down, I feel I have let my mum down especially and that I didn’t learn from my first experience a few years ago.  To think I was going to invite this man into my home and my friends lives is seriously disturbing to me and I have to say I am quite depressed, I really hot rock bottom, the lowest I have ever felt and I was the only one to blame, it was solely my fault getting myself into this situation and this is why finally I wanted to share it with people so they don’t make the same mistake.  Whether it be with this particular person or some other predator.   

So over the last 4 months I have had to deal with the fallout.  I have processed my actions, I am responsible for them and I am still learning to forgive myself for getting myself into a situation that I possibly knew deep down in my heart was too good to be true.  I was not a total goose, and I told Paul of all my fears, my worries that he was not the real deal, how uncomfortable I was about the whole money thing and he was very good at ailing my fears and reassuring me that I was doing the right thing.  This man was a professional that is for sure and I got well and truly done.  How much money did I send in total?  I am embarrassed to say and I think that is a fact that I will keep to myself, but let’s just say that it was a lot.  It could have paid for my rent for the next FOUR years or 8 trips back to Australia, to give you an idea.  In saying that a dollar would have been way too much, but send it I did.  It is now gone and this is what I have to deal with now. 

So who is this scum bag, this predator, this Catfish-er? 

Before writing the blog entry I did ask the Fraud Department in the UK if I could post it online to name and shame this man.  He was more than encouraging and said more women need to come forward and report these crimes.  He said that only 3 in 10 women will come forward due to the shame they feel and the stupidity that they feel getting caught up in an online scam.  He did give me a word of advice and told me to use the word ‘alias’ when naming this piece of shit as there is probably some poor chap out there, a real guy with the following name, and he has more than likely had his identity stolen.  I don’t want to be dragging, trolling and involving and this innocent, this real life person into something he may have no idea about.  There just seems to be an endless chain of people involved in these types of things and many, many victims. 

This man has used his ‘alias’ in several different ways and the ALAIS names that he has used when dealing with me were:

ALIAS's

• Alias Paul Benjamin
• Alias Paul Benjamin Jone
• Alias Benjamin Paul Jone – his passport was in this name
• Alias Paul Jone
• Alias Benjamin Jone Paul
• Alias Ian Anthony Dryden – has a bank account in this name

Email addresses:

• pauljone@live.com
• paulbenji@hotmail.com

Phone numbers:

• +44 793 762 3155
• +1 559 421 7892

DETAILS:

• Has a European accent.
• Lives in Seattle, Washington, USA.
• Originally from Arkansas, USA.
• Apparently working in the UK, Stelling Minnis.
• One daughter, Andrea, who happened to die in a car crash during the scam.(This, I finally did not believe but shows the depth that these guys stoop to)
• The passport that he was using at the time was an American one, which I have the details of and thought it best not to post on this forum.

I have a wealth of more information, but I think the most pertinent details are listed above.  If you feel you have been contacted by this man, please get in touch with me.  Safety in numbers and lets catch these scum bags, together.

Pictures sent to me.

Some parting words to ‘Paul’ should he read my blog:

"There is so much that I want to say to you but I am not going to. 

I am just going to congratulate you and say well played.  I was captured in your deceitful web, sucked into your online world and I just want you to know that you won this round.

Good things happen to good people and bad things will happen to bad people and I believe that is called Karma.  I will expose you as much as I can on my blog, on the internet and on Facebook to stop other women from falling prey to you and your online scamming ways and will report you to the Online Internet Crime Complaints and register you.  You have ruined my faith in people and you will have to live with what you have done eventually and be answerable to a higher power at the end of the day.

Please enjoy the money you stole from me and I hope that you will rot in hell and all I can say is watch your back my friend as you never know what or who is coming….ever.   

I regret the day that you entered my life.  

You broke my heart and now I have to deal with all that plus the loss of my mother’s money".

For people reading this, please do not judge me.  I know I am smart, but I still got ‘Catfished’ and it will take a long time for me to recover from this.  I had to prepare myself as I faced all my friends, after months, to tell them the truth and try and recover, take responsibility for my actions, that I currently hate myself for.  I’ve been physically sick over it all.  My confidence was at an all-time low, but I have bounced back, as I always do and there is nothing like the start of a new year to shake off the last of 2014.  I have done it before and I will do it again.  There are people in a far worse off position that me, and it is what I have kept in mind as I dealt with all this the last 9 months.

We live and learn.

I feel better already and if this story helps just one lady, then it was worth the post.  I was just lucky that I did cotton on to this man and didn’t lose my whole pot of gold.  There are women out there who are not left with a red razoo, and for this I am just thankful that I did come to my senses. 

Bring on 2015!!!