Nigerian Dating Scam - Andrea Neil Tonelli - same profile picture on Facebook under Fabrizio Tonelli

by Lizzy
(New York, USA)

I received a friend request from Andrea Neil Tonelli the day after I joined a closed Facebook group called Pitlove. When I accepted his friend request he contacted me through Instant Messenger.

He claimed to be Chief Pilot/Chief Instructor at Copa Airlines and to live in Los Angeles, California. First time we chatted he claimed to have been raised in an orphanage in Los Angeles and to have no family or siblings around him. Also claimed to have lost two sons, a daughter and his wife in a grocery store shooting, and had one son left, Henry, and to have a strong religious belief.

That day he also gave me two telephone numbers for him and forwarded pictures of him and his son. That same day we switched to text messaging and phone calls. Within a week he started calling me by pet names and professing an undying love and requesting promises that I would never leave him, would never hurt him, and would be with him forever.

Shortly thereafter I received a couple of nude photographs. He then claimed that he flew to South Africa where the airplane he was flying experienced mechanical difficulties. As he was an "independent contractor" with Copa Airlines it was his responsibility to pay for the repairs.

That's when the requests for money started. He claimed he only took $1,000 with him and used most of that money to buy an i-Phone and get a new cell service because the one he had wouldn't work there, and to pay his motel bill. We started talking on Whatsapp then.

He asked me to send money for the repairs ($5,150). When I said I couldn't do that, he said "we" could pay it a little at a time. He also requested money for food and his motel bill. He wanted money sent by Western Union or another carrier to be picked up in Nigeria by Emmanuel Gidah since Andrea didn't have a government issued ID and wouldn't be able to get the cash himself.

When I questioned whether he was a scammer he became angry and asked what I thought he would get out of scamming me. When I began talking to him again he claimed to have attempted suicide when I accused him of being a scammer and stopped talking to him. He asked me to marry him and promised to make it legal when he got "home".

He told me that if I stopped talking to him again he would commit suicide and his blood would be on my hands. A little over a month after we started talking, I stopped responding to him and blocked his numbers. His page is still up on Facebook and I discovered another page under the same name with different pictures of the same man, and the same profile picture is being used under Fabrizio Tonelli on Facebook.

Andrea also has or had a listing with Badoo dating site.