Melendez Victor Andrew

(Barbados)

Got a follow request on Instagram from victormelendez1121. I have never carried on a conversation with anyone online before but I had just ended a relationship because I felt neglected. We started corresponding on Google hangouts. From very early on I knew something was wrong because his grammar was not so good.

He told me he was a single father. The boy's mother died in a car accident and his son was in boarding school in Texas, where he was supposedly from. He now lived in Brooklyn with his uncle. His parents had died.

He said he was 40 but was now learning the business of importing cars from his uncle so he could start his own business. At the beginning of November he said his uncle was sending him to Nigeria to attend a trade fair to get some cars.
After a while some of the things he was saying didn't add up so I googled the address he gave me in the US. I am from the Caribbean. It was a vacant lot.

I should have cut off correspondence with him but I was lonely. Plus, sometimes I began to doubt myself, wonder if I was overreacting or just being paranoid because some things seemed really honest. He would tell me he is going to the barber and send me a pic from the barber. I actually googled the name of the barbershop and found out that it was actually in the UK and not the US.

Long story short, I never sent him money. Whenever he asked, I told him I didn't have it. I suppose that is why I thought I was being paranoid because even after I didn't send him money, he continued to contact me.

I kept begging him to tell me the truth and I don't know why, but he came clean. He told me he is a 20 year old Nigerian named Andrew and gave me his correct Instagram handle slim_mani_

I don't know anything else about him but my only regret is that I don't know who the man is whose pictures are being used so I can warn him. I feel terrible about that.