This week I was told about the ‘unbelievable’ story of the woman who was ‘almost’ scammed by Take That star, Gary Barlow.
Janet Smith, 62, from Colchester, was offered concert tickets and the chance to meet him after making friends with Gary on Facebook.
As the ‘friendship’ grew, Gary bombarded Janet with compliments and told her that he had recently split from his wife… and that he was ‘in love’ with her, Janet.
Yes, you are right… this wasn’t the real Gary Barlow.
Janet became suspicious and asked ‘Gary’ to reveal his true identity.
It turned out that Gary was actually a 24-year-old from Nigeria. No surprise there, then.
He apologised for lying to Janet, and then said that he really did love her… and then… asked her for money!
I kid you not!
It turned out OK in the end for Janet because the real Gary Barlow saw her story online and reached out to her apologising that she had been targeted by a scammer pretending to be him, and offered her the chance to go to one of his concerts and meet him in person.
I have to be honest; I was a little taken back when I was told that Janet genuinely believed she was actually talking to the Take That singer for about a week.
I mean… these people are usually incredibly busy and they tend to have people manage their social media accounts for them.
Those that don’t use social media managers are highly unlikely to be sitting around talking to complete strangers.
I imagine that famous stars such as Gary Barlow are incredibly picky and careful with whom they connect with online, and have private accounts that are for close friends and family only.
I cannot imagine for one minute that the real Gary Barlow would be reaching out to a 62-year-old woman in Colchester, let alone declare his love for her after one week.
So the question is…
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why did Janet think she was friends with the real Gary Barlow?
The truth is, scammers are incredibly convincing and they simply say the things ‘people want to hear’.
People love compliments and they love being made to feel good about themselves.
Even the most sceptical and suspicious of people can succumb to constant compliments over time.
After hearing about Janet’s story, I spent time talking to Andi who was telling me that his wife was often getting friend/follow requests on Instagram and Facebook from ‘doctors’.
She follows a lot of popular doctors – those who have their own television shows, podcasts, or have released several books in a specific field of research – and so it would seem that scammers scroll through people’s lists of friends and the people they follow to see who they are likely to follow or make friends with.
Scammers figure that because Andi’s wife follows a lot of specialised doctors, the way to connect with her is to try and pass themselves off as doctors.
Fortunately, she doesn’t make friends with people who she doesn’t personally know or know of.
Andi said that he often gets messages from people he is already friends with… but they aren’t actually those people.
Scammers clone Facebook accounts and then send messages so that when they land in the message inbox, they appear to be coming from people’s friends.
They steal all the videos and pictures from people’s profiles so that at first glance, their profile looks just like the people they are cloning.
Unless you look at their actual profile name at the top of the page you could easily be mistaken into thinking that it was your friend’s account.
Andi knows his friends well and so when he receives a message out of the blue from a ‘friend’ talking about buying crypto currencies through a dodgy looking link, he knows that they are not his actual friends.
He has spoken to most of his friends too, and so if there are no previous messages above the scammer’s message, he knows that it is a new message from an imposter trying to scam him.
Another type of friend request Andi gets are from profiles of young and attractive women.
Scammers know that people like young and attractive men and women and so when they reach out to people pretending to be a young and attractive person, they can be hooked in easily.
For a man in his 50s balding and with a potbelly, a young and attractive twenty-something women sending a friend request can be an exciting moment.
If the person the scammers are targeting is living a mundane life and wants a little more excitement, having an attractive young man or women send them a friend request and start talking to them can give them a ‘boost’.
Many fool themselves into believing that these young women are actually interested in them.
Truth is, they are not who they appear to be.
Scammers look for your weaknesses.
They look to see who are single, they look to see what it is that people like, and who they follow.
As in the case of Janet, the scammer must have seen something that gave him the indication that she was a big Gary Barlow fan. Once he knew that, he was able to make a play for her.
I sometimes wonder if these scammers are ‘pushing the envelopes’ purposely to see how far they can take it and who they can fool.
I still can’t believe that people actually believe that celebrities would connect with them out of the blue and declare their undying love for them.
I heard of another story where Keanu Reeves was used to lure older women in.
Imagine having Keanu Reeves message you and then ask for money because he is stuck at an airport without a wallet!!
It’s preposterous!
And yet amazingly, some people fall for it.
What I find sad is that there are so many scam artists out there that could actually make a decent amount of money if they were to do what they do but without pretending to be someone else.
They pray on the vulnerable… and dare I say it, the stupid, but they could quite easily spend their days talking to people offering them services and products that they actually need.
Good communication and conversation is key to selling.
Scammers spend a lot of time ‘conversing’ with victims. They know what to say and how to talk to people. They could easily become great sales people.
OK, they cannot tell potential customers that they ‘love them’ and ‘want to marry them’, but they certainly understand how people ‘tick’.
More importantly… they can make money without fear of being sent to prison for fraud.
As I say, good communication and conversation is key to selling, and that is what the people in the exclusive password protected report, $10K In 10 Days… Is It Possible?, are using to make thousands of dollars each month.
Click the link below to read the report.
$10K In 10 Days… Is It Possible?
The password for this post is:
$10Kin10daysReally?
Type out the above password as you see it including all characters.
If you copy and paste the password, please ensure that you do not copy any whitespace at either end otherwise the system will read the whitespace as characters making the password incorrect.
Kind regards
John Harrison
PS… Due to increasing interest, Andi, our Facebook chap, recorded a new video that has been added to this exclusive report and can be found at the bottom of the page.
If you haven’t yet seen this, you need to act fast as I’m considering turning this into a Micro-product, even more so now that we seem to keep adding to it, so act now before it’s hidden behind a ‘Buy Now’ button.
Here’s that link again:
$10K In 10 Days… Is It Possible?
