Lars König

by Anonymous
(Germany)

I have been in contact with this person for a while, he sent a friend request via FB which I ignored for a very long time and then accepted for whatever reason. Nothing happened for a while, then he started chatting via messenger and later whatsapp.

He claims he was born in Hanover, Germany, moved with his mother back to the US after his father died when he was 5. His mother died when he was 14 and he grew up with his aunt. She died about six years ago from cancer. He has a daughter called Sonia, 9 years old, who's currently schooling in Kensington, London. His wife cheated on him, he tried to fix his relationship but she wanted a divorce which happened 3 years ago. His wife is not at all interested in their child, that's why he is taking care of her.

He says he is a medical surgeon working for the International Committee of the Red Cross in Sanaa, Yemen.

He was all sweet and attentive and we really did have a fun time for a few weeks, chatting about this and that. He made me a lot of compliments and got all into loving me (which I found rather strange, but at some point I went along - with a big portion of doubt in the back of my head).

I did realise, that there were some personal questions he did not answer.

His story was a bit strange in parts, so I started researching a lot on how things are done with the ICRC but it was impossible to verify anything or prove it wrong. But it just felt wrong, especially for a organisation like the ICRC.

Then he kept telling me that his camp was attacked by terrorists, in one of the attacks one of his colleagues supposedly died. That was the point where he decided he wanted to get out of this place before his contract ended. He got information from his colleague how to go about it and asked me to send an email to his supervisor's private email address, pretending to be his wife and telling him that "our" daughter Sonia is so so very sick and needs him there for blood transfusions. I did that reluctantly, because it felt wrong, and that sobby story about his daughter's illness and all that was rather strange, but I did it. I did open a new email account for that, so I don't have all that strange stuff in my account.

The supervisor gave two options: getting him out officially, which would mean he would lose his benefits, or by finding a replacement surgeon. That was the option he chose. A few days later I got another mail giving me three names, he could choose one. Each of them had a "price tag", an amount of money to be sent to the supervisor in order to pay for the travel costs of this replacement surgeon. That was where I was quite clear that I had a scammer thing going on.

He then told me he got about 2/3 of the money from the money he had left for his daughter with the school master, but the rest, which was € 2900, was still open. I had told him ways before that I was already rather skeptical and all, but when he did ask me to send the money via bitcoins, I was out and I started researching in the scam direction and I then found out that there are so many surgeons in Yemen either with the UN or the ICRC or other organisations, that the whole story just got completely incredible.

When I told him I didn't believe anything of his story anymore, because I could not verify anything and he had never called or video called (apparently for security reasons), he did eventually call. His accent was definitely not that of a person who was born in Germany and grew up in the US. He then claimed he did his masters in Australia and the accent was that. I do have relatives in Australia and I know that this accent is not from there either. His English was pretty good, but not that of a native speaker. In writing he was also very good, but there were certain typos and ways of spelling I would think a studied person would not make.

I then researched the pictures he sent to me and they belong to a Danish Politician (Poor guy).

I have not lost any money, just quite a few hours of time and a little bit of my heart because he was very nice and charming. But I do want to warn other people of this person.

Here is his facebook profile:
https://aus01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fprofile.php%3Fid%3D100089091622571&data=05%7C01%7C%7Cf4b6d43850b940d7414308dbd63e3f8a%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638339335091688104%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJWIjoiMC4wLjAwMDAiLCJQIjoiV2luMzIiLCJBTiI6Ik1haWwiLCJXVCI6Mn0%3D%7C3000%7C%7C%7C&sdata=SOGBPLuV5pW8BaWYScjmOuGIBiQynwdXusfTrGHN%2Br8%3D&reserved=0

And this the email of this dubious Supervisor, which I could not at all verify either:

Supervisor Dunford Dunford Antonio