Hello,
My name is Emma. That's not my real name, but you can call me that, just for my safety. I live in Belgium, I'm almost twenty-one, that's real information.
Today, I was supposed to get two Ragdoll kittens, and wow, was I excited. I saw the pictures and I fell in love instantly. I was so in love with these kittens, my heart filled with joy, I was so blind that I did not expect anything wrong with it.
The lady was giving them away because her young daughter had cancer. Who would use kids to build up a lie? What kind of heartless person would do that?
But when it came to the paying process, I had to send money to Cameroon... Cameroon, where was that? Africa? But why would they ask me to do that? The questions crossed my mind, but free, absolutely adorable kittens had completely clouded my judgement.
Even if the desk clerk advised against it, my mother made the payment of €180 anyway.
It was then I got a little nervous. I was filled with good karma, I did good things, sure I've made mistakes, but would I really attract these bad people?
So I started looking the company up. The internet filled with great, positive reviews, but also terribly negative reviews.
Slowly but surely I started finding more and more similarities to my own situation.
Then I found the pictures that were sent to me on other sites.
I honestly felt so dumb. I felt like 'shame on you for fooling me, but shame on me for falling for it.'
I informed my mother the current pattern, and what their next step would be; to send a mail that something went wrong, or that the kittens need a vaccine shot for an additional amount. She was glad to be informed.
As I am typing this, my mother came in the room saying 'I just received the mail saying something was wrong and I need to pay €600 euro's to get the kittens'. I told her to either ignore the mail, or tell them to stick the €600 where the sun doesn't shine, and also give the kittens a shot of 'gofuckyourself'. (But that's not my mom, not even to people who just fucked her over.)
Of course, I am miserable, I honestly was so excited to get my kittens, especially because I already have a cat, but she hates my guts, and I feel so bad about that.
I cried for about an hour, and when my mom came home after work, she told me she'd get me a Ragdoll cat anyway, even if it would cost €600. (We're not the richest people, so I objected at first, but she insisted.)
So there's my story of my first meet with internet fraud, at nearly 21 years of age. I wouldn't say I'm that gullible, I just don't want to believe that there are really that bad people out there. But there are, unfortunately.
And I want to help others, keeping them from falling in the same trap.
With a fake email, fake account, fake name, I am going to respond to as many scams as I can, get to the paying process, and then throw all their information online. Emails, names, phone numbers, possible facebook accounts.
Gathering those, and putting them on the interwebs, they can't use them anymore and that's the plan.
You may send me your own experiences, the numbers and names you came across, and I will place them on here.
I'm not entirely sure if this will be the right platform to do it. But I'll make it work. This will be just another site showing up on the google searches telling you to watch out, and that's good enough.
