GO Phish! You Gotta Get Up Pretty Early in the Morning to Catch this Mermaid!

And here is an example of why you don't accept random friend requests on Facebook or you shouldn't........

 I opened my friend requests this morning to see a request from this guy, or someone pretending to be this guy. Who knows where he got the photo. It was accompanied by another face obscurred photo of a guy that looks like he's in the military. For all I know, the fatigues are a costume. But most likely, these photos were stolen from a service member. There is absolutely nothing identifying. It is always a giant red flag when I receive a friend request from someone I don't know presenting themselves as a soldier. It is a common scam.

It's a brand spankin' new profile, clearly. We have no friends in common. The photos are unidentifiable and generic. Can we say, phishing scam? I knew that you could.

So I reported the profile and blocked it. I also did a search using the photo. Sometimes you get a hit for stock photo. for Kenny Morris, Jr.  I only got a few hits, none for that name. I did find a Google Plus profile that was pretty much empty under the name, "Lt. Morris Anderson, Jared" with a whopping 7 followers. There is also a Google Plus Profile with this photo under the name, Kelsie Rook!

He has a MySpace page under the name, "Kelvin Morris."  Which has a huge photo of several US Marines in what looks like a classroom scene of some sort. He lists his location as Kabul, Afghanistan Kelvin says, "am a simple guy who is here to meet really nice people if they are on here. am a lover of country music and r&b." Kelvin is connected to 151 people but only 17 are connected to him. His elaborate bio, "am just me. i live to serve and protect."

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Is there a Kelvin Morris? Probably not. This guy sure has a lot of aliases! Are these pictures him? Nope.

Whoever these photos belonged to originally, probably has no clue they are out there being used to scam people. He may not know his photos were stolen from his social media, that an account got spoofed, his phine was stolen or his computer hacked​.

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The person or persons making these profiles are probably in Africa or Asia typing out earnest messages full of typos and linguistic tells that spell out what they think gullible Americans want to hear. 

Then I found a link to this page, a repository for scammers who use romance/dating sites:
Safan Morris Cole, [email protected]
It's rather fascinating reading. The thread gives other aliases and also an example of the kind of bullshit filled letters he has written on sites like match.com

A little bit of a stomach turner is that searching using one of the images linked to a list of names of soldiers who had died in Afghanistan. 

And THIS LINK, specifically warning about Nigerian scammers posing as military.

Please actual friends of mine, be smart!

• Be wary of friend requests from people you are in fact, actually friends with. Check it out first. It may be a spoof account.
  
• If you don't know the person or have friends in common that verify they actually do know the person, delete the request.
  
• Friending anyone that sends you a request makes it easier for scammers to look legit when the friend you and then send requests to all of your friends.
  
• Foreign accounts and military accounts which may be hard to verify are popular devices for scammers, as are the "hot chick" accounts.

**I know this is more difficult for artists and public figures because accepting friend requests is how you build a fan base.