On Mon, Dec 6, 11:46 PM Paulie wrote:
My dear Sweet Alice,
Again it has taken me some time to reply to your message, i deeply apologize for this .. My work here has not been easy and the connection at my lodge has been faulty for some time( the wifi is so messed up). Well compliment of the day my dear and God bless you , the season is here again .. How are you preparing for christmas? What’s your favorite activity at christmas. I am doing just fine with my work, and sincerely hope that you are doing pretty good.! I’m sure i was the one who rescued you , that night, so with a few of my pictures i trust you would confirm ..lol
I am aware the energy of the Soul is LOVE. Therefore the highest current, the highest energy current is LOVE. It produces buoyancy, Radiance, Light and Joy. I have been deeply seeking Companionship and warmth from you since the day you came into my life, and I can’t wait to meet you soon. I can’t wait to share that harmony and Love with you. Love heals everything. Love is all there is.Love is the Energy of the Soul, therefore when i seek it, i do with all my heart fully honest about it… I don’t mind having friendship with people as long as they are honest and appreciate the true meaning of friendship most of the notes I got from guys out there, they were looking for fun and sex… I am looking for a woman who need a true friend and could share opinions and problems, I could feel your honesty that was why I replied and gave you all attention
Each day I pray to the Universe to find us where he knows we need to be. Beside Prayers, I align my Personality with my Soul above, forward to becoming a being of the light fully. Humbleness, forgiveness, clarity and Love the gifts of the spirit, Let’s take root and bloom and draw to ourselves the Universe, the greatest gifts- human with open hearts towards one another.
I understand that there is a huge distance in between us in terms of location, time etc. However, I hope with time we can get to be together. I look at it this way,even if for whatever reasons things/situations don’t favour either one of us, at least friendship will remain… But my ultimate wish and desire is to fall in love and stay in love with you for the rest of our lives until death do us part.
Analysis
My heart is still racing from receiving Paulie’s pictures. It was like Christmas and Santa left me a pile of clues under the tree.
My first instinct was to check reverse image search all three photos (plus his Gmail profile picture again, just in case). I got nothing. Just a bunch of middle-aged white dudes. I am very faceblind so it was a challenge, like playing a spot the difference with a hundred copies of the same image, but I’m pretty sure they weren’t there. Clever work, Scammy McScamface.
My next go-to was to look at the image files themselves. They were sent as JPGs attached to the email, with the filenames “1q”, “2q” and “5r”. Probably scammer filing system code for “beach smile”, “hotel lobby selfie” and “golfing” respectively. The metadata/properties on the images were blank. I even downloaded some fancy software to look extra super hard for metadata, but still nothing. If you look EXTRA hard at the photos, there’s some dodgy cropping on the top and bottom of some pictures (a pixel or two wide). This tells me that Scammy McScamface swiped these photos from some unfortunate man’s socials.
I googled how to reverse image search Tinder or Facebook and that just sent me in circles. I looked further for more clues: the logos on his shirt, the hotel lobby, the shirts themselves! It got to the point where it was googling “most attractive golfers”, “pink white navy polo shirt hippo” and simply “Spanish man” when I realised maybe I’ve run out of clues for now. You win this round Scammy McScamface.
However… I searched for a few key phrases and found lots of posted scam letters (like here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). This one is particularly juicy because there’s discussion from lots of people who got sucked in by the very same story.