- Fraudster ‘wrote’ her captivating love poem she later discovered was stolen from internet
A single mother in Illinois was duped out of $85,000 by a scammer who posed as a Greek bachelor on a dating app after he strung her along with lovey text messages, emails and phone calls.
Christine Settingsgaard, 37, met ‘Mark Godfrey,’ a supposed architectural engineer from Greece, on the dating app Hinge and quickly became infatuated by the widower father-of-one who said he was working in the US.
Mark used pictures of an unknown man with brown hair and a gleaming smile to trick Settingsgaard along with messages vowing his love for her and planning vacations.
There’s no suggestion the man pictured is in any way implied in the scam perpetuated against Settingsgaard, who is a successful executive.
He successfully tricked her out of $85,000 by forwarding a check for that amount to Settingsgaard, then asking her to wire the cash to his sibling.
But Settingsgaard fell victim to a quirk which often sees banks make the cash available to the recipient of the check before it has cleared.
That meant Mark’s sister ‘Kelsey’ was able to withdraw the cash before the check bounced, meaning Settingsgaard had lost her live savings.
She faced being made homeless – until the Chicago Tribune reported the story, and her bank returned $82,000.
In one message, Mark told her ‘I picked a vacation spot for when I’m back… All I need is you.’ The statements of love worked, said Settingsgaard. She told DailyMail.com the situation ‘consumed’ her for months and left her ‘publicly embarrassed.’
Christine Settingsgaard was scammed out of $85,000 by a man on a dating app that used fake pictures and ended up being a Nigerian scam artist
Settingsgaard thought she had met Mark Godfrey, a widower with a daughter, but the pictures turned out to be stolen from an unknown man, who is pictured
In these messages, the scammer said he had a surprise planned for after Settingsgaard deposited the check that would ultimately throw her into financial despair
She said the ordeal left her ‘penniless,’ and if it weren’t for friends, neighbors and her parents, she ‘doesn’t know’ what she would have done, as she could no longer pay for her groceries or mortgage.
‘My six-year-old son wanted to go to football camp this summer, and the most heartbreaking thing was having to tell him he can’t go to the camp because I got scammed,’ she said.
After ‘liking’ each others profiles on the dating app Hinge, the pair began chatting off the app for weeks, where he showed interest in her hobbies and asked her personal questions to prove his interest.
He even ‘wrote’ her a love poem that made her fall even harder for the online love, but after the incident, she found the poem was lifted from a google search.
After six weeks of talking, Mark asked Settingsgaard for help transferring some money to his sister and daughter, who he said lived in Utah.
He asked Settingsgaard to transfer his ‘sister,’ Kelsey, $500 using Paypal. She promptly did so, and Mark paid the money back, further gaining her trust.
Still, Settingsgaard still felt slightly suspicious and asked to see a form of ID, and she says he sent a California drivers license with his name, which convinced her.
Mark then told her he earned $85,000 from a job in Houston, but couldn’t access his bank to send the money to his sister. He also claimed he was worried the IRS were monitoring his account.
He said he would mail Settingsgaard a check for the amount, and all she had to do was deposit the money and then wire the funds to his sister, which made it seem like she would not have to touch any of her own money.
But the scam is predicated on the fact that some banks don’t verify if the account the money is sent from have the funds before making them available to whoever is cashing the check.
This means that Settingsgaard saw she had the $85,000 in her account the next day, and sent it to Mark’s sister. He even told her she could keep $3,000 of the money as a show of good faith.
Despite that, she was uncomfortable with the situation and messaged him ‘I’m tired and don’t understand and feel like I’m about to get arrested for money laundering or something.’
‘No babe lol. No money laundering, you won’t be arrested, I promise,’ the scammer responded. He made sure she deposited the check into an ATM rather than give it to a teller, which helps ensure the check will be deposited.
After that, the bank realized the check bounced, and billed her account for it, putting it at negative $84,334.
Weeks after her money was stolen, the scammer contacted her again and tried to be ‘honest’ with her, and revealed his supposed real name along with a picture of himself
The check was issued from Central Christian Church in Mesa, Arizona, and security there quickly discerned the check was a fake.
Cory Calkins, a security consultant for the bank, told the Chicago Tribune ‘It was obviously a forgery and a fraud. We don’t write $85,000 checks.’
She also gave him access to her cellphone account after he offered to pay her monthly bill. He proceeded to make expensive calls from Nigeria, racking up $5,000 on the account, and bought himself five iPhones.
Upon seeing the enormous negative balance, Settingsgaard immediately contacted Mark, who played dumb and continued to make excuses, until she finally got one last strange message from his account.
‘This is Fiorani, E6 representative of the state Federal Bureau of Investigation,’ the message said.
‘We hate to break this to you, Mrs. Settingsgaard, but none of the info of this person is real … The perpetrator manages in stealing People’s info, opening bank accounts in their names and using their identity for laundering acts.’
The Facebook account stopped responding after this, and Settingsgaard realized Fiorani, like Mark, had been an impostor.
But after three weeks of silence, the account messaged her again and simply said ‘hey.’ An incensed Settingsgaard immediately responded ‘you ruined my life. Who are you? Where are you?’
The scammer replied that his real name is William Ojo, and in one last desperate attempt to keep her on board with the scam, professed his love for her, this time sending a ‘real’ picture of himself, which looked vastly different from the previous.
He also said he was part of a criminal network in Nigeria and scams people for a living. He claimed ‘I feel bad for scamming you but I don’t have a choice.’
In one message, the scammer wrote ‘Regular jobs here ain’t like the ones in the United States where it’s all good,’ along with ‘it makes my soul dark and I hate that but what choice do I have?’
He continued that he had fell for Settingsgaard over the course of him scamming her: ‘At a point I wanted to stop the whole scam cause I fell for you TOTALLY. I started diverting from my fake stories into my real life.’
But again, the loving behavior seemed to be a ruse, as she was again asked to deposit a check for $30,000, which she refused to do.
Settingsgaard finally reached a settlement with her bank to wipe the $85,000 debt, but she says they only did so after being threatened by bad media coverage, and were unhelpful and uninterested in her case before that point.
‘To this day, they have never apologized,’ said Settingsgaard. She also said the bank’s managers told her they made several ‘honest mistakes’ that contributed to her getting scammed.
Similarly, Verizon left her on the hook for the expensive international minutes he racked up on her account, and told her the situation can’t be considered fraud because she had contact with the scammer.
First published in Daily Mail (UK)