When “Bobby Brown” sent me a direct message on Instagram, I knew right away he wasn’t the real deal. A tall, handsome, 40-something man who said he’d found my social media profile and become enamoured.
“Nice smile,” he wrote. “I’m Bobby Brown from Sacramento, California, USA. Currently living in Scotland working here as an oil drilling engineer.”
Usually, I delete messages from strangers who reach out on social media claiming to be soldiers, surgeons or, like “Bobby,” oil rig engineers. An uncannily high number claim they are widowed.
I suspected this online Romeo was running one of the most popular cons going — the romance scam.
With Valentine’s Day approaching, Go Public asked the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) for statistics on romance scams and received some staggering figures.
Romance scams were responsible for some of the highest financial fraud losses in 2023, according to the CAFC, costing 945 victims more than $50 million. That means each person lost an average of almost $53,000. And that only reflects the fraud that victims reported to authorities.
This is the photo used by a romance scammer pretending to be ‘Bobby Brown.’ In truth, he says, it’s a picture he stole from a German Facebook account. (Name withheld )
Rather than scoff at people who fall prey to romance scams, social psychologist Andre Wang says people should understand what drives that need for connection.
“It’s actually tapping into something that’s quite fundamental about who we are as human beings,” says Wang, assistant professor of psychology at the University of Toronto. “This fundamental need to belong.”
After six weeks of messaging back and forth with Bobby, I finally called him out and asked him to come clean about his life as a romance scammer, how he does it and why he says he can’t stop.
How he wooed me
After Bobby introduced himself as an oil drilling engineer, he explained he was working in Scotland on a short-term contract and had a nine-year-old son in a military boarding school in the U.S.
“Can I have your mobile number?” he asked right away, claiming that his laptop battery was almost dead so he’d need to switch to texting on his phone.
Over the next couple of weeks, Bobby asked for my number repeatedly. I learned later that he was worried that if one of the many other women he was corresponding with reported the phoney account, Instagram would shut it down.
When asked what his favourite meal was, the romance scammer posing as an American oil engineer said he liked ‘macaroni and spaghetti with garlic,’ and sent this picture. (Name withheld)
Within two weeks, he was calling me “dear” and “sweetheart.”
He came on pretty heavy — and his English didn’t always make sense. “Well you are really an interesting woman, I would love to be a part of you,” he wrote.
“I want you to be MINE and I want to love you til the end of the world,” he messaged.
In the meantime, Bobby sent a photo of what he claimed was a street in Edinburgh where he was working — only the cars were parked on the wrong side of the road, as people in Scotland drive on the left.
We made small talk and I asked him about his favourite meal, which he claimed was “macaroni and spaghetti with garlic” and sent a photo of a pasta dish. (Later, he told me he googled “popular American foods” to find an answer — he must have misunderstood the results.)
To prove he was legit, he sent a photo of a staff ID card, bearing the name Bobby Brown and said he was an oil spillage controller for an oil and gas company based in Aberdeen, Scotland. Oddly, the signature below the photo looked nothing like “Bobby Brown.”
The romance scammer sent CBC News reporter Erica Johnson a photo of this ID card, pretending to be employed by a Scottish oil and gas company. (Name withheld )
At the six week mark, the dashing oil engineer proposed.
“Will you be mine?” he asked, adding an emoji of a diamond ring. “I want you to own my heart. I think this love will last forever sweetheart.” Yes, he included a red heart emoji.
Finally, I’ve reached my limit. Though I’ve been waiting to see how he planned to convince me to send him money, now, I’m ready to hear the truth.
“I would just like to have an honest conversation,” I write. “Will you do that?”
Silence. Then, blue dots appear on my phone as he types. They disappear. Reappear. Finally, he responds.
“You are going to hate me.”
To my surprise, he agrees to talk, as long as CBC keeps his identity concealed, because he says speaking out about the shady world of romance scams will put his safety at risk.
What happens when a romance scammer goes after a CBC reporter | Go Public
An online romance scammer tried to catfish CBC Go Public reporter Erica Johnson, who called him out and convinced him to do an interview.
‘Yahoo boys’
The phone line is crackly, his voice barely audible. I’ve dialed a number with the area code for Rochester, New York, but the scammer says he’s rigged the phone so he can talk to women from where he actually lives — Oghara, in southern Nigeria, with a population of about 290,000.
It’s evening there, and he says he’s walked to a deserted field, where no one can hear his conversation.
He says he’s 27, the oldest of several siblings. He tells me that six years ago, his father lost a good job and has struggled to find work. His mother was pregnant and out of work at the time, he says.
“We had to sell our house to survive,” he tells me. His voice cracks. If he’s lying, he’s doing a convincing job.
Poverty is widespread, he says, and getting worse. According to a report by the Nigerian government, inflation hasn’t climbed so high since the mid-90s.
He tried to get odd jobs for a little cash, he says, but most days came home empty handed.
Reluctantly, he says, he decided to become a “Yahoo boy” — a nickname that comes from the email service Yahoo, which became a popular tool for online fraudsters in Nigeria.
He estimates 80 per cent of the people he knows are Yahoo boys, most of them committing romance scams.
Though he says it’s not something people in Nigeria look upon favourably, “they can’t force it to go away” because “families need it to survive.”
‘The boss’
After his dad lost his job, he says he moved into an apartment where an older man — “the boss” — provided a bed and one meal a day.
In exchange, he says he and two other Yahoo boys who lived there were required to catfish — pretend to be other people online, seduce foreign women, win their trust and eventually convince them to send money.
The boss would take half their earnings, he says.
Late in the evening — when women in North America were just waking up — he says his boss would call his three recruits to the living room.
“Get your social media accounts ready,” he says the boss would tell them. “Start hustling.”
The boss provided photos of attractive Caucasian men to use as their catfishing profile pictures — stolen from social media accounts, he says.
He also gave them scripts for various scenarios, explaining what to say as an oil engineer, a doctor or someone in the military, as well as how to use flattery, and excuses for when the targeted women would ask to meet in person or talk on the phone.
The scammer says he was told to claim he had a son, because women generally like young children. “It helps build trust,” he says. A child also figures prominently in his scams.
‘The Method’
During his time with the boss, the scammer says he learned how to pull off what was called “The Method” — a scam that involves asking women for photos of Apple or iTunes gift cards. He then trades the codes on those cards on the black market for cash.
He says he’d sometimes tell his marks that he needed gift cards to buy data for his phone. He’d claim he was having trouble accessing his bank account from another country but desperately wanted to stay in touch.
The young son he mentions when he first connects with them comes in handy, too.
The romance scammer sent this photo of gift cards he said a Canadian woman bought for him after he claimed his bank account was frozen and he needed to buy games and data for his son’s smartphone. (Name withheld )
“I’m just going to tell [her] that my son needs the gift card for his subscription on his mobile phone. And games,” he says. “Keep sending them every three days.”
He says he tells her that he’s going to pay her back and that when he’s done his overseas contract, she’ll benefit from a loving relationship with a handsome and financially secure man.
“The woman won’t want to miss out,” he says.
While people might question why women might provide emotional or financial support, Wang, the psychologist, says it’s normal human behaviour for someone who believes they’re in a relationship.
How not to fall for an online romance scam
Social psychologist Andre Wang explains how ‘motivated reasoning’ can affect our behaviour in romantic relationships — and shares a tip for how to avoid online romance scammers.
“We’re supposed to support people with whom we have romantic bonds,” says Wang.
“Romance scammers can definitely tap into that sense of obligation that people feel when they are intimately connected with another person,” he says. “Even a simple request that might seem outlandish from an observer’s point of view might feel different when you are the one being asked.”
The scammer says they were coached to never ask women to wire money, because “they might be told the whole truth at the bank” and months of effort could be lost.
When “The Method” didn’t work on a woman, he says the boss beat him. He claims that when he didn’t earn enough, the boss would sometimes purposely serve him food that would make him sick.
After two years, he says he fled and moved back home, where he now mostly runs online romance scams on his own.
He’s tight-lipped about how many women he’s tricked and how much money he’s bilked out of them over the past six years, saying only that most victims have been in Canada or the United States.
Some of the bigger windfalls — $2,000 or $3,000 US — are the result of a fraud that pulls on the heartstrings of the women who fall for it: “Billing.”
Billing
In this scam, he sends a frantic text to the woman he’s courting, telling her his young son living in the U.S. has been rushed to an emergency room. He urgently needs to send the hospital a $3,000 deposit, he says, but can’t access his bank account from Scotland.
He tells me that because it’s such a big ask, he texts the woman a photo of his son in a hospital bed, with doctors at his bedside.
In reality, he says it’s all been Photoshopped.
“You get the proof to make the client trust,” he says. “Whatever I ask of her, she gives to me.”
He says he knows that preying on the generosity of women he’s misled for months is wrong, but poverty and desperation to feed his family trump feeling bad about the manipulation.
Though a request for such a large amount of money may seem like an obvious scam, Wang says some women follow through because of a psychological process called “motivated reasoning.”
“We tend to put more weight into evidence that supports our sense of reality, and we’re more likely to disregard evidence pointing to the contrary,” he says. “We are confirming what we want to believe.”
The scammer says he studied my Instagram account, and would definitely have asked me for gift cards for his non-existent son. He says he might have tried “The Billing” scam, too.
Our phone call has stretched past midnight in Nigeria, where it’s started to rain. He’s shivering and says he has to end the interview.
He’s hoping I’ll mention how sorry he is for ripping women off, for breaking their trust and their hearts. He says he understands why they might be angry with him.
“I know the kind of life I’m living,” he says. “I don’t have money.”
BLOOMFIELD HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Lions coach Dan Campbell is selling his suburban Detroit home to get more privacy.
“There’s plenty of space, it’s on two acres, the home is beautiful,” Campbell told Crain’s Detroit Business. “It’s just that people figured out where we lived when we lost.”
He didn’t elaborate.
Campbell and wife Holly listed the 7,800-square-foot house in Bloomfield Hills for $4.5 million this week. A deal was pending within 24 hours, Crain’s reported.
Campbell was hired by the Lions in 2021. After a 3-13-1 record that season, the team has become one of the best in the NFL, reaching the NFC championship game last January.
Campbell’s home was built in 2013 for Igor Larionov, a Hockey Hall of Fame member who played for the Detroit Red Wings.
The likely buyers are “huge” Lions fans, said Ashley Crain, who is representing Campbell and the buyers in the sale.
Ariella Kimmel and Mandi Johnson were grabbing a bite to eat in Vienna, when their August trip to the Austrian capital was upended.
The Canadian duo had travelled to the city to see Taylor Swift in concert only to learn her shows would be cancelled because of two men plotting to launch an attack on fans outside the venue, Ernst Happel Stadium.
While Kimmel and Johnson were disappointed they weren’t going to be able to see Swift perform, they made the most of the remainder of their trip. However, the experience serves as a buyer’s beware for Canadians considering jet setting to see their favourite artists or teams.
“If you’re travelling to these concerts, it’s really hard to protect yourself,” said Kimmel, a Toronto-based vice-president at a public affairs firm who had previously travelled with Johnson to see Swift in Las Vegas, Nashville and Stockholm.
Such trips can make lifelong memories when they go off without a hitch, but cancellations and rescheduled events are common because of artist illnesses, poor ticket sales, security threats, unruly weather and natural disasters.
In the last year alone, Jennifer Lopez and the Black Keys scuttled touring plans after tickets had been sold, while Bruce Springsteen, Usher and Pink had to tell fans they couldn’t take the stage mere hoursbefore show time.
Between airfares, hotels, travel expenses and tickets, last-minute cancellations can leave globe-trotting eventgoers out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.
“Regrettably, unpredictability has always been a reality of the industry but it’s increasingly common that there might be things that are going to interrupt your plans, especially plans that you’re really excited about,” said Jenny Kost, the Calgary-based global director of strategic sales initiatives at Corporate Traveller Canada.
“It’s a tricky one because the airline or hotel understands the reason behind your travel but its likelihood of happening or not happening is a little bit outside of their purview.”
Because Swift is known to power through shows even when sick, Kimmel never imagined a concert she was headed to would ever be cancelled, but she always booked plane tickets and hotels that could be rescheduled or refunded — a move she recommends to others travelling for events.
“It’s like common sense, you never know what’s going to happen,” Kimmel said.
However, making use of the rescheduling and refund options her hotel booking and airline tickets had weren’t an option for Kimmel this time because she had already been in Austria for a few days and had very little of her stay left when Swift cancelled.
Had the show been nixed before Kimmel left home, the flexibility baked into the bookings would have been useful, though Kost said such arrangements aren’t cheap.
“There is a cost associated with that that’s not insignificant,” she warned, estimating these kinds of bookings can add hundreds of dollars to your bill and have lots of quirks in the fine print.
The better bet is travel insurance, Kost said. It’s often cheaper than flexible fares and hotel bookings and can reimburse customers for accommodations and flights they have to drop or swap when an event gets cancel or an emergency strikes.
Kost opted for such insurance when she journeyed to Paris to see Swift over the summer and bought it again in a cab on her way to Mexico for a wedding. The insurance cost her about $150 for a week, but when she had to extend her stay because she fell ill, it covered the cost of all of her accommodations.
She doesn’t encourage people to wait until the last minute to buy the insurance like she did because buying it early can provide some reprieve when an event you’re travelling to is cancelled well in advance.
Travel costs aside, people heading out-of-town for events that wind up cancelled also have to consider whether they will get the money they spent on entry fees and tickets back.
In Kimmel and Johnson’s case, they paid Ticketmaster about $300 per seat. They learned just after the cancellation that they would be refunded — but not for an $85 transaction fee they were charged when purchasing the tickets.
“We paid $85 to not see her but I guess that in the grand scheme of what we were going to pay, it’s not a lot at all,” Kimmel said.
They did not opt to buy insurance on their tickets, which Ticketmaster offers through Allianz Global Assistance for $8, plus tax. Allianz’s vice-president of marketing and insights Dan Keon said the insurance offers coverage up to $1,000 per ticket.
In addition to offering refunds if an event is cancelled by a venue or promoter, the coverage can provide a reimbursement for a variety of situations. Those include if you are facing a serious medical issue or death, have a family member in life-threatening condition, are summoned by the military or are delayed in arriving at the venue because of a common transportation carrier.
If you’re going to opt into the insurance, Keon said review the terms ahead of time, so you understand exactly what scenarios you will be covered in.
The insurance, for example, can’t be used in the event of a pandemic, war or natural disaster.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 19, 2024.
Losing a loved one is never easy, and the legal steps that follow can add even more stress to an already difficult time.
For years, families in Vancouver (and Canada in general) have struggled with a complex probate process—filled with paperwork and legal challenges.
Thankfully, recent changes to Canada’s probate laws aim to make this process simpler and easier to navigate.
Let’s unearth how these updates can simplify the process for you and your family.
What is probate?
Probate might sound complicated, but it’s simply the legal process of settling someone’s estate after death.
Here’s how it works.
Validating the will. The court checks if the will is legal and valid.
Appointing an executor. If named in the will, the executor manages the estate. If not, the court appoints someone.
Settling debts and taxes. The executor (and you) pays debts and taxes before anything can be given.
Distributing the estate. Once everything is settled, the executor distributes the remaining assets according to the will or legal rules.
Probate ensures everything is done by the book, giving you peace of mind during a difficult time.
Recent Changes in Canadian Probate Laws
Several updates to probate law in the country are making the process smoother for you and your family.
Here’s a closer look at the fundamental changes that are making a real difference.
1) Virtual witnessing of wills
Now permanent in many provinces, including British Columbia, wills can be signed and witnessed remotely through video calls.
Such a change makes estate planning more accessible, especially for those in remote areas or with limited mobility.
2) Simplified process for small estates
Smaller estates, like those under 25,000 CAD in BC, now have a faster, simplified probate process.
Fewer forms and legal steps mean less hassle for families handling modest estates.
3) Substantial compliance for wills
Courts can now approve wills with minor errors if they reflect the person’s true intentions.
This update prevents unnecessary legal challenges and ensures the deceased’s wishes are respected.
These changes help make probate less stressful and more efficient for you and other families across Canada.
The Probate Process and You: The Role of a Probate Lawyer
(Image: Freepik.com)
Working with a probate lawyer in Vancouver can significantly simplify the probate process, especially given the city’s complex legal landscape.
Here’s how they can help.
Navigating the legal process
Probate lawyers ensure all legal steps are followed, preventing costly mistakes and ensuring the estate is managed properly.
Handling paperwork and deadlines
They manage all the paperwork and court deadlines, taking the burden off of you during this difficult time.
Resolving disputes
If conflicts arise, probate lawyers resolve them, avoiding legal battles.
Providing you peace of mind
With a probate lawyer’s expertise, you can trust that the estate is being handled efficiently and according to the law.
With a skilled probate lawyer, you can ensure the entire process is smooth and stress-free.
Why These Changes Matter
The updates to probate law make a big difference for Canadian families. Here’s why.
Less stress for you. Simplified processes mean you can focus on grieving, not paperwork.
Faster estate settlements. Estates are settled more quickly, so beneficiaries don’t face long delays.
Fewer disputes. Courts can now honor will with minor errors, reducing family conflicts.
Accessible for everyone. Virtual witnessing and easier rules for small estates make probate more accessible for everyone, no matter where you live.
With these changes, probate becomes smoother and more manageable for you and your family.
How to Prepare for the Probate Process
Even with the recent changes, being prepared makes probate smoother. Here are a few steps to help you prepare.
Create a will. Ensure a valid will is in place to avoid complications.
Choose an executor. Pick someone responsible for managing the estate and discuss their role with them.
Organize documents. Keep key financial and legal documents in one place for easy access.
Talk to your family. Have open conversations with your family to prevent future misunderstandings.
Get legal advice. Consult with a probate lawyer to ensure everything is legally sound and up-to-date.
These simple steps make the probate process easier for everyone involved.
Wrapping Up: Making Probate Easier in Vancouver
Recent updates in probate law are simplifying the process for families, from virtual witnessing to easier estate rules. These reforms are designed to ease the burden, helping you focus on what matters—grieving and respecting your dead loved ones’ final wishes.
Despite these changes, it’s best to consult a probate lawyer to ensure you can manage everything properly. Remember, they’re here to help you during this difficult time.
