As a 52-year-old fat guy, my litmus test is this: If an attractive young woman comes on to me, it’s either because she is a romance scammer or a Russian spy. Remi's comeback asking if I was married and had kids convinced me I was dealing with a romance scammer. I also did research on Remi’s claimed university, and even though it offers over 49 degrees, none are fashion related. Remi replied that she was a buckeye (see below). People from other universities would not. If you are familiar with Ohio State University, you know that its students call themselves buckeyes. It was frustrating that I couldn’t find the same photo because it meant I did not know for sure if Remi was a scammer. The LinkedIn profile image is heavily retouched, but looking at the eyes, eyebrows, nose, lips, and, in particular, her smile lines, I was pretty sure I had found the real person.
Although I didn’t find the exact photo, both Bing and Google returned a lot of images of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) star Stacy Keibler. I take a screenshot of it and search for it on Bing and Google.
So, I did what I normally do when I get a likely romance scam photo. My scam warning bells finally went off … at least enough to check. So, it's possible.īut Remi’s picture was just too fashion perfect. As it happens, one of my co-workers, Jessica Shelton, is a super smart computer security person who happens to be a long-time international fashion runway model. I just wondered why a “fashion person” would be interested in computer security. Her response struck me as strange, but the scam warning bells weren't yet going off in my head. So, I asked her a question to make sure that she really intended to join my LinkedIn network: Roger Grimes Warning bells But when I researched her profile, I couldn't find any interest in computer topics, much less computer security, and so I (naively) think that maybe she accidentally joined my network. I had never heard of a romance scam on LinkedIn, and so I figured she is just one of the many college students that are interested in following me about computer security. In this instance, the person sending me the connection request claimed she was a college student named Remi Collins at Ohio Dominican University, as this image from her LinkedIn profile shows: Roger GrimesĪt this point, I wasn't suspicious of the account at all. I weed out non-computer security professionals, with a few exceptions for accountants, auditors and risk managers (since I was once an accountant and I believe that all computer security is about risk management). This is not unusual I get dozens of requests a day. My LinkedIn romance scam scenario started with a connection request from an unknown person.
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