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The next day she got a text from Andre. He was just a short drive away, he said, as if the whole thing was a happy coincidence—maybe they should get together for a coffee? They met at a Starbucks in the lobby of the Sheraton where he said he was staying. Rosey was going through a rough patch in her marriage at the time. She was also in the middle of a career change and had travelled to Ontario to visit her aunt and uncle after her cousin had died tragically. Andre had his own sob story about how his parents were addicts, how he lived on his own as a teenager. Later, as he was getting out of her car, he started slapping at his pockets.
His ID, credit cards and thousands in cash were gone, he said. This was a big problem, because the rest of his money was in Vietnam. He would have to cancel his cards, file a report with the police and figure out where he was going to stay for the night. Over the next few days, Andre made a big production of talking on the phone with the police. He said he would have to go back to Toronto to sort things out with his bank; Rosey lent him money for the bus.
Andre called shortly after and she told him about her winnings. He was calling, he said, because he had decided to come back to see her. He told her that he had never met anyone like her before. He loved the way her mind worked. He understood that she was going through a tough time, but what if he could make her troubles disappear? He offered to pay off her half of the mortgage so that they could get away.
He had a boat that was just sitting in the Caribbean. She could work from her laptop while they lived like one of those couples in a Freedom 55 commercial. As they toasted her windfall, Rosey allowed herself to imagine the life Andre was describing—even if she was the one paying for their drinks.
Rosey and Andre spent three days and two nights together in southern Ontario, all on her dime. When she returned to B. He would come to see her soon, but first he needed to fly to Singapore to meet with his accountant and then to Vietnam to get his gold. She wired him funds to pay for his travel visa. She paid for his bus fare from Toronto to Montreal—he had to fly out of Montreal, he explained, because the flights out of Toronto went through the U. He always had a detailed story and the receipts to back it up. He had her money and would be home soon.
She gets that this all sounds crazy. I was confused, but I was intrigued. Rosey was dealing with all three. It was only once she was back in B. One night she had a dream and woke up with a very strong sense of what was going on. Along with any other traces of the man she thought she knew. So who is Marcel Andre Vautour? He has at least three siblings, none of whom responded to messages I sent them. Between and , he was in a common-law relationship with a woman with whom he has three kids; she claims Vautour destroyed her credit by making purchases on her cards and opening cellphone accounts in her name.
According to a friend who knew Vautour in grade school, he grew up with a pool in his backyard. Police records on Vautour go back at least 24 years.
In , he served a six-month conditional sentence in Victoria, followed by two and a half years of probation, for fraud. The fact that romance fraud is almost never handled federally plays a key role in how scammers like Vautour are able to evade capture by skipping from one jurisdiction to another.
A close friend discreetly drew the line for us by calling it a “deep friendship.” With Allen, she's found someone who shares her passion for. Woody Allen is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more His family is Jewish; his grandparents were immigrants to the U.S. from Austria and In a interview Keaton said that she "fell in love with him right away," adding, "I wanted to be his girlfriend so I did something about it.
Explaining why they do what they do is a little more difficult. His victims say he has faked illness just to stay overnight at a hospital. They also say he is extremely good at fixing things, including cars and electrical systems. Which begs the question: Why not earn a good living as a mechanic or an electrician? In general, he says such individuals exhibit traits like remorselessness, social deviance and an unwarranted sense of superiority from an early age. According to the CAFC and the RCMP, the majority of the complaints they hear relate to mass-market romance scams: fraudsters who play a numbers game, sending out thousands of messages a day on social media and dating sites—to see who bites.
In most cases, the relationship will escalate quickly and then suddenly there is an emergency: your guy is stuck at the border, his sister needs surgery. The CAFC gets reports all the time from women who head to the airport to meet the love of their life, only to return home humiliated—and cleaned out. For Jodi and Rosey, finding each other was an important step in breaking the spell. The two women met on Facebook after Rosey came across an account Vautour had created while he was with Jodi. After exchanging messages, they started talking on the phone and found that the similarities in their stories were glaring.
Both had heard tall tales about gold bars and fancy homes, both had seen the same photo of the bed covered in American cash. It was surreal and also therapeutic, says Jodi. They would check in every few days, giving each other assignments: Jodi traced the phony cheque that he had deposited into her account. They learned a lot about their scammer, but nothing about his whereabouts.
He mentioned that he was a big outdoors guy and had recently bought acres nearby but not too nearby in Digby, where he was building a facility for at-risk youth.
They ran into each other a few days later at a local park and campground—a community hangout where Vautour was living. He showed her his fancy trailer which was not actually his fancy trailer , and said he was staying there to help out his stepmom who was not actually his stepmom.
He was extremely attentive and an amazing listener. About a month in, he asked her if they were boyfriend and girlfriend. They both worked a lot. Most days Vautour would text photos to demonstrate the progress he was making in Digby.
They would have dinner at her place and he would constantly be taking calls from contractors. During their relationship, she took Vautour to a number of work events and parties. Everyone seemed to really like him.
Their relationship lasted for just over five months. The last time she saw him, he was going to Toronto to pick up his dog, Cowboy, from his ex. The number of calls she gets about romance scams has tripled over the last few years, both in terms of inquiries and actual cases she takes on.
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Facebook Twitter. She must have been feeling sorry for me, because she took my phone and she set them up for me! I guess it was time to " get busy living, or get busy dying " as Red would say. Dating apps like Tinder and Bumble make it extremely easy for singles to chat and then connect. Both men and women become very uninhibited behind the safety of a keyboard or phone. It was easy and common for me to have up to 4 or 5 dates lined up in one week when I was dating.
Sometimes two in one night. It's an expensive, tiring, and unfulfilling way to live.
And I found that over time, the more dates I went on that led to nowhere, the lonelier I would feel. At the end of , I had been on too many ho-hum dates and in a few short flameout-type relationships. I had seen the good, the bad, the ugly and the sloppy. I had been dumped, ghosted, or just plain stood up a few times.
I had given up dating, but, as the year came to a close, I was really in a good place emotionally, being alone, and being a single dad. I had learned to love my new life. She's pretty and fair skinned.