Stolen Valor, Stolen Hearts: Military Romance Scam
The Perfect Scam
AARP
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 23 August 2019
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
After 26 years of service, U.S. Army Col. Bryan Denny retires from an incredible career in the military and begins to receive odd messages. They're coming from women around the world who claim to be in online relationships with him. But Bryan isn't on any dating sites. Meanwhile Kathy Walters is learning about the online boyfriend of her friend Sharon. They plan to marry, but Sharon has never met the man in person because he claims to be in the military stationed overseas. Sharon shows Kathy a picture of the man she knows as Ross, but the name on his uniform reads Bryan Denny. Unsure if her friend is in a real romance or caught up in romance scam, Kathy begins to investigate. She heads to Facebook, and what she finds is shocking. The same picture Kathy's friend has fallen in love with is featured in multiple profiles across the internet under a wide variety of names. That's when Kathy knows she needs to track down the real Bryan Denny. After some digging, Kathy is able to locate him and reaches out to see if Bryan has any knowledge of what's going on. Bryan has been fielding calls, emails and sometimes in-person visits from women who've fallen in love with his picture. Together, Bryan and Kathy uncover hundreds of fraudulent social media and dating site accounts that are using Bryan's image, as well as images of his family members, to entice women into romance scams. Disgusted by what they've found, Kathy and Bryan decide to fight back against these scammers.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Coming up on AARP the perfect scam. |
| 0:02.5 | Well, I don't think anybody ever expected a lot in retirement. |
| 0:05.0 | I don't think anybody ever said, wow, this is going to happen and they're going to get caught up in a scam where people are basically trying to use your identity to take advantage of people. |
| 0:14.0 | Never in a million years did I think that would happen. |
| 0:17.0 | I'm most surprised by the cruelty of humans to other humans, |
| 0:20.0 | to be able to do this to somebody. |
| 0:28.0 | All right, welcome back to AARP The Perfect Scam. I am your host, Will Johnson, and I'm here in the studio with AARP's Fraud Watch Network Ambassador Frank Abagnale. |
| 0:34.0 | Frank. |
| 0:35.0 | Well to be with you well, thanks. |
| 0:36.0 | All right, Frank, we are talking this week about a scam that involves identity theft |
| 0:41.2 | is really what it is and social media and in particular |
| 0:44.5 | targeting people who are in the military. In general the image of the |
| 0:49.9 | military man or woman in the uniform is often used by scammers, right? |
| 0:54.0 | Absolutely. And as I remind people all the time about social media, I'm not on |
| 0:59.7 | social media, but I remind people the three things to remember about being on social media is, |
| 1:05.0 | one, you never want to tell someone where you were born, two, you never want to tell someone |
| 1:09.5 | your date of birth, and third, you do not want to post a picture on social media of a picture that I |
| 1:15.2 | would say would be a driver's license passport graduation type photo. |
| 1:19.0 | All right well let's get into today's story. We'll talk a lot more about social media and advice and tips you can |
| 1:24.0 | pass along. This week we're going to tell you the story of a stolen identity and the |
| 1:28.6 | astonishing ripple effect it had on the lives of countless scam victims. |
| 1:32.8 | Our story starts with Sharon. |
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