Romance scam: Pinellas deputy's photos, information used thousands of times by social media scammers
LARGO, Fla. - Eight years ago, Deputy Luis Hernandez with the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office got a message from a woman he’d never met.
"She was saying, ‘hey, you know, I was talking to you for a long time,’" he said. "I think she said, ‘we were engaged,’ and so she's like, ‘I sent money,’" Hernandez said.
"It was kind of like funny in the beginning. I was like, ‘oh, wow, you know, like, I don't know, maybe this is a friend or like an ex that got mad’ at first when I saw it," he said.
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It was a romance scammer that had used Hernandez’s pictures and information to make a fake account to message the woman for money, though, and it was only the beginning.
"When I say almost every day I get messages from women, almost every single day," he said. "It is so difficult to get up every day and then want to say and explain the exact same story over and over and over again."
He said he has had two women from Europe message him, saying he was talking to their 12-year-old daughters.
"That doesn’t feel good to me when I know that it’s not me," Hernandez said.
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Hernandez has reported 794 fake accounts using his pictures, videos and personal information just in the past year.
"Within a couple of months, it was just kind of like flooding in… There were just like dozens to hundreds [of accounts] that just started popping up, and I started realizing that this is something that’s a lot bigger than just a couple of people," he said.
Hernandez said he started looking at who followed him on social media and who views his pages and realized several of them are spam accounts using his pictures.
"It’s also just been very difficult at times, because a lot of these women don't want to believe that it's not me even if I tell them," Hernandez said. "I've had, to the point of harassing, where they are contacting my family, past jobs, continuously making fake profiles to then still reach out to me, somehow getting a hold of my phone number, my emails and constantly messaging me on everything where they just won't give up."
He said scammers are using his information for other social media profiles too. He has found more than 2,000 accounts using his pictures, videos and information. Hernandez has reported the accounts to the social media platforms and blocked them. Some – but not all – have been removed.
"Now, every time that I report them, I get a message that will come in a couple of hours later, like a day later, and it says ‘this profile doesn’t meet our requirements. We can’t take it down’ when they’re literally photos of me, and I watermark my photos now," he said.
Hernandez said the social media platforms said the best thing he can do is block the pages.
"It’s a pain, because a lot of times these people think that I am in on the scam with it, and then, you know, I don't want people thinking, or especially a job, that like I might be involved in it," he said.
"It gets to the point where I want this to get out there so, one, other people are aware, but also other people who either find me and stuff don't reach out to me, don't message me," Hernandez said. "I know they're trying to be nice, but it's very annoying and it's very difficult to get that every single day."
The sheriff’s office said several scammers will create fake accounts posing as members of the military to give the perception of respectability. They also do this as an excuse for the victim to handle money matters while they’re out of the country. Hernandez is a former Marine.
"They're definitely targeting a specific group, and it's just unfortunate that I ended up getting stuck in that a long time ago, and they just keep going with it," Hernandez said.
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Hernandez said if you haven’t met someone in person, don’t send them money. Be wary of anyone who messages you out of the blue, and if their profile is new or all of the pictures are uploaded on the same day, those are red flags.
"I used to say, don't video chat with them, but I have talked to a few people who actually have video chatted in the last couple of years, and because of the whole AI, they can actually take a video of me and then put some words in there," he said. "It'll be very short, but then they actually think that they're talking to me. And then what they utilize is the excuse of being overseas, so connection doesn't really work."
Hernandez said scammers are hard to stop, because they’re continuing to find different ways to trick people.
Law enforcement warns that scammers will build expectations about a life together, go to great lengths to make the victim think they love them, including sending them gifts, create trust, then ask for money.
They said you can reverse image search a profile picture on Google by going to the search by image icon and uploading the picture. It will then show you where else on the Internet that picture has been used.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, about 70,000 people reported romance scams in 2022, losing $1.3 billion. The FTC said the top lie scammers told for why they needed money in 2022 was because a family member or friend was sick, hurt or in jail.