Welcome to the Victim Support section.

[Mals]

Layla, I've just sent you a PM too, but I'll add also that right now things feel bleak and that you won't recover, but you WILL... it will just take some time. Give yourself that time and take it in stages and gradually you will come back to yourself again. As I said in my PM, to begin to heal the best thing you can do is break all contact with the scammer first. There is no actual positive gain to being in contact, it just makes things worse for you. You have your livelihood to throw yourself into, and that is a good thing. We all ultimately deal with our pain ourselves, but you can have support to help you through it, so you are not totally alone. I agree it's perhaps best to not tell your mum the truth of what's occurred, and just tell her it hasn't worked out after all, as you said. I just think it makes things easier on her and you that way and there's no need for her to know the whole story. I've told a lot of people I know about my situation, but won't tell my mum either for the same reasons, and feel okay with that.

I don't know that it's possible to instantly detach from your feelings and thoughts about the scammer, so I wouldn't give yourself a hard time about that. A certain amount of processing needs to be done, I think, and then when you get sick of churning it all over, you may get to the point of "that's enough of that" and just let it go. And when "real" life in the outside world starts to take over, as long as you're not keeping the contact going (which is like constantly picking at a scab) he will start to fade into the back of your mind again quite naturally.

[Crescentmoon]

Hi Layla,

I am going to chime in my 2 cents here as well. It hurts. It hurts like hell! But as others have posted here, it will get better if you believe it to. Remember that you are a SURVIVOR! You will need to work it through in your own head, in a way that works for you. But as Mals has stated, know you have support here. I think that for the most part, only those of us who have been through it knows how it truely feels.

When I realized what had happened to me, it was like a dream. The warning signs were all there, but ignored. I was stunned! Much like what I think you are feeling right now.

I think at the begining of this thread is a post by Pinky about the stages of grief. That is what you are going through right now. Pound your pillow! Yell at the top of your lungs. Journal your feelings. Do something good for yourself. That doesn't have to cost a lot of money. Talk a walk. Give yourself a manicure. Take a hot bath a buy a bottle of wine and relax. But most important. Know that you are not alone. I think that is the most comfort of all.

[On A Mission]

Layla ask yourself what it is that you are missing, it has never been there with him. It was all lies that gave you false hopes and dreams for his own selfish wants. What I am saying to you is that what your heart fell in love with is not and has never been there and it is like your brain knows this now. It may be hard for you to see now but the knowledge that you have gained from this will help you in many ways one day. As you can see the others here that have been in your shoes do truly understand what you are going through. So one day you can be that understanding person to someone that has fallen to those same false hopes and dreams.

[zetaarnold]

Hello Layla:
We understand how you feel. It is hard, very hard and takes time. But you will see the light at the end, trust me. First, do not feel ashamed. You are a good and caring person who found a bad one. You are welcome to the site whenever you need it (and it will help you, too). Follow the advice, pampering yourself and talk to someone. You are in my prayers. God bless you.

[Pinky]

I have been praying so hard to God and obviously my prayers were ignored by him...

Layla, your prayers have been answered. The angels here are guiding you. God has not abandoned you or ignored you. Look for His answers. This could have been worse and gone on longer had He not helped you discern the evil.

[The Wild Geese]

To you Layla,

Everytime I read about new people who fall down to the trap of the devil, really makes me sad. I was hoping that I was the last victim because I know the pain one has to go through after one discovers that one was being fooled by these leeches. Yes, one can feel that the pain is unbearable at the start but with the passage of time the wounds of being scammed will heal and the pain will subside. You will be able to realize that you have nothing to look back after you realized that you were dealing with a scammer and charge everthing to experience.

Yes, your feelings to the person you communicated with was true and real. But for the scammer who made a fool of you, there was nothing real. He was not the man in the picture. Those lovely words he told you on phone and the nice letters he sent, was just a product of his devilish tactics driven by his greed. All he wanted from you was the $$$$$$$$$ you can give him. There could have been many happy and loved people here on earth if only these people we thought we fall in love with was for real.

Stay strong, you will be able to overcome this crisis I don't know when but it depends on you. WG is sending you her warm hugs. It's cold over here but my hugs are very warm.
Hope you feel better now.

[clh1966]

layla,
Am so happy that you hv finally realised that James Lee is NOTHNG BUT A LIER AND CONSIOUSLESS CRIMINAL who operating from Malaysia. You dont know how much it meant to me...:-)

Am glad that u hv made a local police report too this afternoon. I know is never easy and u did it. Well done.

Thanks for sharing the good news with me just now and i would like to share it with all here at RS.

The msia investigator told you they had caught some romance scammers lask week. They are all Nigerian operating from Malaysia. KEEP UP THE GOOD WORKS, MSIA POLICE! THANK YOU.

take care always
clh

[camelion]

welcome layla and you have a lot of support, love and understanding from the people on this site. we all know the pain you are going through now and understand it will take time but you will survive as that is how we take back our life from the scammers. we do not let them keep us down .

[layla]

To everyone who wrote to me,

Thank you so much!
My close friend strongly encouraged me to make a police report for my own safety reason. I don't feel particularly happy after doing so... I supposed i'm not so much into combating/fighting against these scammers at this moment. I'm just not well now.. Everything has fallen apart. I can't emote anymore.. it's numb, my feelings after crying so much.

Life will still go on and people is progressing too..eventhough I'm vulnerable to cope with all thes. I hav to start to re-organise my thoughts and re-gain my perspectives of life.

I thank again for all your kind words.

[Mals]

You've made your police report, and there is nothing else you need to do to try and fight against him/them. Most people don't even do that, they just break the contact and get on with their lives and healing themselves. At some stage, when feeling strong enough, they may decide to become a scambaiter and attempt to make a difference by annoying the hell out of the devils and wasting their time, but now is definitely not a time to be thinking about that. It's a time to concentrate on building your own strength back up and finding more joy in your life again, through all the things in life that brought you joy before "he" came along. Yes, finding a new perspective and reorganising your thoughts, and that will start to happen soon, I'm sure. You're allowing yourself to experience the pain and not bottling it up, then you'll get sick of feeling that way and want to feel good again and re-join life with all the great things it has to offer. You will continue to get support here (well, certainly from me, and I'm sure others too), and you will gradually claw your way back to happiness...

[rainbow]

hello to everybody, here I am, another scammed who discovered everything just yesterday...
as I could understand till now, scammers who were in contact with me work in uk and in nigeria...
will not talk about my feelings now, maybe you all know how I can feel at the moment, but I have these questions for anyone can answer to me:
- How can I post the pictures this / these persons sent to me, as they aren't yet on this site...
- I'm trying also to find the way to have some more informations about these people, even I have some mobile phone numbers from them british and nigerian I'd like to post somewhere because as I know they are still active, so I think they are gong to use there with others...
- Is there any possibility to obtain from western union any information about people that kept money so I can report to the police as well
- where can I write the name of the date site were they came in contact with me, and where as I know, this person still figures, even if he's not active since november, but maybe they could decide to re-use it, such as they do with sim cards...
I'd also tell this:
yesterday I was so ashamed, that even I was thinking not to tell anybody anything, you know, I felt so stupid...
but I pray you all to tell as many persons as possible about our experience, so that we can help others not to be victims of these disgusting people...
so I decided and that's the reason why I found this site
thank you for being here, I'm not feeling alone anymore...
marisa

[FrumpyBB]

Hi and welcome here

Do not feel ashamed. No one should feel ashamed because they were at the wrong place at the wrong time not shielded by knowledge about this kind of crime and how it works. It´s great that you have decided to come forward, having accepted that it was all a professional liar and nothing he ever said was real.

The questions you put above are all answered in your Welcome PM. Try to find, by reading what other people have had to learn the same way, how to help us spreading the word about romance scammers to other people via using Google´s service.

This means, go use scamdigger.com, upload a photo and see if he is alrteady here. If so, then add up all the scammer´s personal fake info you have, everything. This way all the big threads here have grown to what they are now.
And if any question arises, feel free to ask. No worries about being "ashamed" asking for the so-called FAQ - we are glad to help. It´s much more important that you have let your scammer go and do no more believe in them.

[Pinky]

Welcome. You will find there are many here who have been in your shoes. We all understand. It will take time to fully understand but know one thing right now. You are not stupid and you did nothing wrong. You were robbed by a criminal.

Unfortunately you won't find much help from Western Union.

[rainbow]

hello again
I've seen my scammer is still using the same yahoo msg account, and that he's in contact with another one...
is there any possibility to advice her?
how is possible to send a message to her?

[Starlite]

Hi guess this is directed to Wayne, I don't know. I'm afraid I don't find this site user friendly and I consider myself to be computer literate. I need to do a private message and can't for the life of me find a way to do so. You have a very active preditor and it shouldn't be this difficult to reach someone for help. Although there has been no money interactions at this time with the preditor involving me, I do have a very intensive on-line interaction with him. I'm to the point of where I rejected sending any money to him, having him dismiss me and just now picking him back up again. I don't want to loose the contact with him mainly because he feels at the monent I could give in. If I can be of help in someone being able to track him down, I will do so. Please if any can help me or if they have the authority to care about putting an end to this, contact me via my email. I will give you the following email address instead of the yahoo one because I don't want him to interfere via his yahoo contact with me.
***EDIT*** Starlite, we don't allow any email addresses but the scammers here. You wouldn't want the kind of attention that would bring you. ~Pinky

Regards Starlite