Bryan Velden

by Anonymous

I was scammed by a male (Bryan Velden) that I met on a dating site called Tinder. We had been speaking for months on his cell phone. He is Dutch and had been living in Los Angeles for about 11 months. He moved here from Texas. He was a widower with no children. We bonded because my mother had recently passed from pancreatic cancer and his wife died of ovarian cancer.

I left on vacation to Hawaii for about a month. We spoke the entire time I was there. He has his own company and was getting ready to go on a work trip to Texas. He claims to be a geologist and that he was trying to get a contract with KCADeutag drilling company.

We went from speaking on the phone to Instagram phone. His handle is lovingheart60. We started to talk through because he was on an oil rig that had some kind of scare that could no longer use mobile devices. I still thought nothing of it.

He ended up getting the contract with the drilling company. He sent me a copy of the contract via email. After I got back from my vacation, everything seemed normal until one day he had asked me for the check that the company was giving him to get cleared. I was very skeptical at first, then he provided me with a photo of the check, which I still have.

We had already established a relationship about 6 months, so I thought nothing of it. I proceeded to send him a wire transfer from my bank to his Wells Fargo account. The total amount was 15,270. It wasn't all at once. We went from speaking a couple times a day and texting to hardly at all.

This started about 8 days ago that he hadn't responded to my messages. When he finally reached me he claimed that there wasn't any reception due to a storm or something like that. I started to get suspicious, so I began to research this drilling company and ended up finding out there are what are called oil rig scams.

The more and more I read, the more and more things were similar to my situation. I sent him a message and he got upset with me because I questioned him about the check and when would I get my money back. I still haven't heard from him.

I don't believe who he says he is. I do know that he does have a Dutch accent, but does not live at the address provided nor does the cell phone number belong to him.

He did send me a copy of the contract and a copy of the check he claims was the fist payment. I started suspecting something was up when we weren't talking every day. His excuse was poor signal due to the weather. You can only use that for so long.

I knew I shouldn't of sent him anymore money, however I had never heard of such thing as "an oil rig scam". I normally do not trust anyone, but I did with him. He was very convincing. He had the classic story line that he was a widower that lost his wife to ovarian cancer, but no children.

I had recently lost my mother to pancreatic cancer. We communicated for quite sometime before he asked for any money, as I was on vacation. I have his voice recorded in a voicemail. Thick Dutch accent.

Anyway, I alerted my bank and opened a fraud case and the FBI. I provided them with everything I had 2 1/2 weeks before I confronted him. Obviously he ended up deleting everything. He is killing my dog that has cancer, because I need that money for his treatment.

I am firm believer in Karma and that my higher power sees everything.