When is a Golie Not a Goalie?

Goalie
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When is a Golie Not a Goalie?

I logged on to my Facebook page and I noticed that someone by the name of “Golie K” that I don’t know had liked 10 of my posts, some were several months old. I looked at the profile and it was for an attractive woman in her early to mid-30s. Over the next three days, they liked more posts. I was curious who she was and how in the hell did she get into the inner circle of privacy settings, she isn’t on my friend’s list, WTF.

Well, problem #1, a few months ago, I shared a few posts publicly, not just to my friends. It appears that that setting stuck and all posts after that were public, Okay,  FIXED!

Believing this is a phishing attack, I did what any good IT guru would do, I hit her up on chat with a quick and simple “Do I know you from somewhere?”, to which I received a reply of “No, I like your page”

Then the deluge of chats stated, simple enough, “Hi”; “How are You?” and stuff like that. After about 10 chats being traded, came the hook that I have been waiting for, it was simple enough and I have to give them kudos for sliding it right into the conversations though their grasp of the English language sucked, however, they were smooth. “I have to take care of my parent’s estate… they died in a car crash last year”.

From there it went to general pleasantries, never anything very specific. However, I learned their “real name” was “Kayla”, (from this point forward in this post I will refer to this person using female pronouns, though I have no clue who was really on the remote end) her daughter, who was in several photos on her wall, was 7 years old and she lived in California and was a PFC in the U.S. Army and she was in Civil Affairs. A little later, I broke the chat session up with a ten-minute intentional break (I wanted to see how the chat changed after this break, thinking that I would very likely get a different “Kayla” at the keyboard). When I got back we talked for about 10 more minutes, and I said something about how is the weather in California and she said that she lived in New York, in this tiny little town and when we ended the chat for the evening with it was late and she gave me the correct time for New York, not California.

Alright, it was obviously either a different operator on the other end, or they were carrying on a series of chats with different people at the same time (likely the case here) and they got confused. I mean, the average person doesn’t ask the same question more than once, lol.

The next day, the same thing, and the “estate was tossed in again”. But I was armed with pre-staged questions just for fun. This time I spelled her name wrong and gave her daughter a three-year bump in age, I also made sure I confused the location that she lived in and promoted her to a Spec4 and her MOS was a 38A (An Officer in Civil Affairs, not enlisted).

The funny thing is that she never once correct any of it, so now her name is Kila with a 10-year-old daughter living in California again. She did however tell me that she can’t remember her MOS, lol. Alright, I have NEVER met anyone who didn’t know what their MOS was. Instead of correcting me, she feed off of that and this is where she really fucked it up. She told me that she was out of the Army, and left to take care of her parent’s estate and mansion in New York, but she can go back anytime, she is unemployed right now, but later she tells me that she is at work. Alright “Kila” this is getting fun, lol.

So I wanted to see how far can I move the conversation to the far right, instead of the left, where the “estate” is. More chat about the Army, more chat about this and that and she tried very hard to name-drop the estate every chance she could. Alright, let’s drop the last grenade and see how she takes it. I’m going to drop the MOAB (Mother Of All Bombs) and see how they handle it. “Do you like sex” (this is usually where the operator on the other end disconnects and I have no intention of talking about sex with her)? She ignored it the first time, and the second time, she tried to change the subject, so her hard turn to the left met my correction with a hard right and asked again for the third time. Knowing that she is beaten and is losing the conversation she told me that she is a 32-year-old virgin. Instead of pulling harder to the right, I nudged the wheel a little to the left and said, “Wait, how do you have a daughter if you are a virgin?”  She told me that the little girl in some of the photos is her niece, not her daughter and she is 7 years old.

Damn, they fucked up and they knew it, I have her on the ropes now. Changed the subject, not once, not twice, but three times and I kept pressing and pulling a hard right again and again. There is no way that they can work the estate scam back into the conversation and not sound obvious. Shit, I was wrong, she come back with, “I need to go and work on the estate some more, I will see you later, bye.” LOL

At this point, I realized that they are not going to drop the details of the scam now. I took too much control and now the goal would be to get rid of me. So I said “good night” and then blocked her.

Internet Toll and Scammer

So for those that haven’t figured it out yet, this is what is called an “estate scam“, where they try to get you to send money so they can pay lawyer fees and get the estate money and they will pay you back. It has been around for a very long time, you know the old Nigerian prince scam. They usually work very hard to quickly establish a relationship with you and then not asking, they state that they need to do this or that to try and get money for the estate. Eventually, they hope that you will offer the money. The funny thing is in real life, the lawyer will collect his/her fees after the payout and they usually take their money out of the estate, before paying you what is due. They would never ask for any money like that upfront, they know that you likely don’t have it, so why even ask, but they know that once the estate is settled, you will have money and can pay them.

It was fun while it lasted and I really wanted to get her to drop the scam on me, but she wasn’t going to spell it out for me, as I kept hijacking the chat, trying to force it, lol, oh well. I knew I risked that, but she was taking way too damn long to get there and I didn’t have the patience to keep fucking around. I got my blog post anyway, lol, I just wanted to see how it was executed.

Lesson learned, watch out for the Facebook scams, they are all over the place. Kudos to Facebook messenger, which reminded me on my phone (not on my desktop) several times to not give money to strangers and do I know this person. Not sure if that is good enough, but there is only so much that they can do.

To the scammers, I do have to give them a thumbs up for:

  1. There was an actual photo of a woman in an Army uniform with “Golie” on the name tapes, but that can be photoshopped easily enough
  2. The photos that they used were not stock as I couldn’t find them via a reverse image search, they were likely from a Facebook page that they hacked before.

What did the scammers did wrong?

  1. The female that they were portraying didn’t have any online presence, which is a red flag
  2. They used a very unique last name that isn’t popular, if they used Smith or Jones or the like, they wouldn’t have to worry about #1 above
  3. It was evident that I was talking to several different people throughout the three days
  4. The English was horrible, it was obvious that they were ESL (English as a Second Language)
  5. The facts of the story changed: Spelling of her name, ages, locations, personal history, military status
  6. They didn’t set the hook, not even once, they should have at least tried after three days

Score!!!!

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Average Joe

Welcome to the Average Joe Weekly blog. This is basically my place on the web where I can help spread some of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the years. I served 10+ years in the Marine Corps on Active Duty, but that was some 25 years ago.

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By Average Joe

Welcome to the Average Joe Weekly blog. This is basically my place on the web where I can help spread some of the knowledge that I have accumulated over the years. I served 10+ years in the Marine Corps on Active Duty, but that was some 25 years ago.

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