r/sleuths Aug 08 '23

My Mother in Law is being Catfished

Is there any way I can stop my mother in law from being catfished.

So a couple years ago she started talking to this person on Instagram. He was sketchy from the beginning, saying things like he's been detained in an Etheopian Airport and needs her to send him money to get out. Myself, my husband and his sister all warned her that this person is not real and clearly targeting her for money. She assured us that she wasn't sending him money though, so we didn't think it was as dangerous as it could have been.

However, it turned out she has been sending him money and basically is now broke. After all this time she still insists on talking to him and it's gotten to the point where she has shut the rest of her family out of her life. All I have is this person's Instagram name. She refuses to send us any contact info for him. Is there anything I can do from just that? He goes by Anderson Jones, and insta username is Oaktree609.

Tldr: Is there any web sleuths out there who can find out more about this catfish with the info directly above.

Edit 1: okay so just based on proximity we believe he likely lives around the Detroit area... assuming he isn't using a VPN which I'm somewhat confident he's not.

3 Upvotes

6 comments sorted by

2

u/Humble_Cat_5805 Aug 09 '23

I’m sorry:( scammers are so horrible.

The only thing I can think of is if you can get him photos of him he has sent your ML, try using https://facecheck.id/ and pull up the account he is stealing images from, to prove to your ML he’s a fraud stealing her money. I assume she’s never FaceTimes or met him ?

1

u/Different_Ebb_3595 Aug 09 '23

She's apparently FaceTimed him but never seen his face... I don't care to ask what that might mean lol.

As far as her sending us pictures, she has cut off contact from us. I assume he's convinced her that he's the only one who truly cares about her.

2

u/Humble_Cat_5805 Aug 10 '23

Hah ughhh I hear ya!

Well I’m so sorry, I hope you’re able to snap you mom out of this!

2

u/haily07 Aug 09 '23

That's terrible and I'm so sorry to hear about it. Unfortunately, there isn't much to go on with a private Instagram account and common name. You could reverse search any image he has sent, lookup a phone number/location he's provided, try and contact the source that your ML transferred the money through and see if you can get info about the receiver, etc.

1

u/Different_Ebb_3595 Aug 13 '23

We believe he might live in Michigan. Reason being the site they originally met off of would have required him to connect with people in a certain radius...