In September 2015, I was contacted via a LinkedIn invitation by a man calling himself "Donald Walters." His email address was
waltersdonald396@yahoo.com. This man said that he was 52 years old, living in Honolulu, HI, widowed, with a 21 year old daughter named Jane. He sent me her photo; see attached photo of blonde haired/blue eyed young woman. He said his wife died in "a gruesome car accident" six years ago and that he is horribly lonely. His daughter, Jane, lives in Atlanta with his sister, Nancy, and brother-in-law, Robert. Donald stated to me that he was an independent oil and petroleum engineer, with engineering degrees from the University of Hawaii at Honolulu and Princeton University.
He contacted me first through LinkedIn, and then asked me for my personal email address and then we started to talk on the phone and Skype. Note that this guy is very articulate and intelligent in both his oral and written communications. He appears to be VERY educated. (I have three college degrees and he fooled me at first.) He says that he is Hawaiian-born, but grew up in Rome, Italy. He said he returned back to Hawaii to attend college. His accent is tricky as it he does say Italian words and phrases (which are correct), but he actually sounds more French. His mode of operation was that he was in Istanbul, Turkey, working on an oil rig and pipeline project for Chevron. (See an example of what he sent me from Chevron – obviously a fake.) The scam includes Donald asking me to wire transfer money to him in Turkey to finish his project because he was robbed at gunpoint. He also asked for money to fix a crane and sent me a copy of an invoice from KoneCranes for the repair. The invoice at first glance looks legitimate because KoneCranes is a legitimate company, but when I made some inquiries, discovered the invoice was fake.
I have let LinkedIn know that this guy's profile is fake and that it needs to be removed.
This was his first message to me from LinkedIn:
How are you doing today..Hope you are having a blissful weekend?.. I am glad that you are now part of my connection as I can deduce from your profile that you love what you do and very good too with people.. There is this great desire to reach out to you as I was surfing through your profile and was captivated by the strength of your profile and the cute disposition in your profile photo. There is something about you that I'd love to know more about and hopefully we get along in the nearest future...
Sometimes it's imperative to let it out, when feelings that we can't really explain befalls us.. We can do little to suppress it regardless of the place or time it hits us.. Hope you make out time to get back??.. Have a nice day.
Donald
