Facebook Scammer Poses as Dallas Anchorman
/
Stop me if you heard this before. A woman falls in love with a guy she met on Facebook, only to find out the guy was not the same person in the pictures.
This must happen hundreds of times each day, but this time the man in the picture was WFAA (Dallas) Morning Anchor Ron Corning.
Kansas women said that she carried on a 5 month Facebook relationship with a man calling himself "Robert Williams".
"We started talking on the phone. We would message all the time," she said. "In his voice, he sounded real trusting and caring, and you could really believe what he said."
When the scammer asked Yolanda (she did not want to give her last name) for nearly a thousand dollars to buy a plane ticket, her daughter Kim her sister decided to reverse Google image search.
"That's when we discovered the photos actually belonged to somebody else. The whole profile belonged to somebody else," Kim said.
The supposed "Robert Williams" pulled up the page of Ron Corning - a WFAA Dallas morning anchor.
"Everything fell apart, Yolanda said. "I couldn't believe it at first, I was like no you guys got the wrong person. And I looked at it and it was the same pictures. And I was like oh my gosh, this is real. This is wrong," she said.
Kim reached out to Ron, telling him about the fake "Robert Williams."
"I realized he'd used all of my profile pictures over the last year and a half, including one with my own mother," Corning said. "I was shocked."
Ron immediately reported the fake profile to Facebook, who removed the profile within minutes.
Yolanda and Kim hope their story will help warn others.
"I am angry he hurt my mom," Kim said. "It's sickening and it's unfortunate. If he's going this far, he's definitely going to keep on going," she said.
They caught the scam before sending money. But Yolanda is left with hurt that will take a long time to heal.
"I was by myself for a long time, so it did feel good for somebody to say nice things to you, and make you feel important, feel like you were somebody, and that you were loved and cared about," Yolanda said.
H/T KWCH
