Victim of photo & identity theft

Generals and senior officers impersonated in fraud

High-rank portraits used to sell fake 'confidential' deals

military

impersonation

advance fee

identity theft

Illustration of how these photos are reused in fake profiles. We never republish a victim's stolen photograph.

Official portraits of generals and senior officers are public domain, high resolution, and perfect for impersonation. Scammers use them for fake gold deals, trunk-box stories and 'private mission' investment pitches.

Where the photos come from

Official government portrait libraries, press releases, Wikipedia entries and conference photography — all high-resolution and freely downloadable.

Personas built from them

A retired commander offering a share of 'recovered funds'
A general running a confidential humanitarian transfer
A senior officer seeking a 'trusted partner' abroad for a consignment

Where they show up

Facebook

Red flags

Any story involving a sealed box, consignment or recovered funds
Secrecy demanded from the first message
An official-looking letter with a scanned signature and a free email address
A rank that would never handle logistics or money personally

How to verify

Senior officers do not recruit strangers online for financial arrangements — ever
Check the email domain: official correspondence never comes from gmail, outlook or a lookalike domain
Call the press office of the named organisation instead of any number supplied in the message
Search the sender's email and phone number in our database first

Search a name, phone, email or wallet

Public portraits, private damage

Official portraits are published so journalists and the public can identify a leader. That same accessibility makes them the cheapest possible costume for an advance-fee fraud. A high-resolution portrait, a copied letterhead and a scanned signature are enough to convince a target that they have been personally selected for something confidential.

The pitch

Senior-officer impersonation is rarely romantic. It is transactional: a consignment to release, funds to move out of a conflict zone, a charity account that needs a foreign signatory, a share of a recovery operation. The victim is told secrecy is a condition of the deal, which conveniently prevents them from asking anyone for a second opinion.

Fees arrive in stages — a clearance charge, then a customs bond, then an anti-money-laundering certificate — each one presented as the last obstacle before a large payout that never exists.

Why it keeps working

The named officer is usually real, decorated, and easy to verify with a quick search. Victims do check the name, find a genuine career history, and mistake that for proof. Verification has to run the other way: confirm that the *message* came from the person, not that the person exists.

If these photos are yours

You are the second victim of this scam. The money goes to strangers, but the face, the name and the reputation are yours — and the angry messages from defrauded people land in your inbox, not the scammer's.

Save everything: profile URLs, screenshots with visible usernames, message threads, and the dates you found them.
Report the fake profile on the platform itself under impersonation, not spam. Impersonation reports are actioned faster and you can usually attach a photo ID.
File a report with your national fraud body (IC3 in the US, Action Fraud in the UK, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, or your local police cyber unit).
Submit the scammer's contact details — the email, phone, wallet or profile handle, never your own — to our database so the next person who searches that identifier finds a warning instead of a fake romance.
If someone contacts you believing they were talking to you, be kind and clear: send them to a search page so they can verify the details for themselves.

If you were talking to one of these profiles

Slow down before you send anything. Ask for a live video call on a platform the other person did not choose. Ask for a photo holding a handwritten note with today's date and an unusual word you pick. Run the phone number, email, username or wallet address through our database. A genuine person will pass all three in minutes; a stolen-photo persona will produce excuses — bad signal, hospital shift, offshore rig, army firewall, "you don't trust me".

Never send money, gift cards, crypto or copies of your own ID to someone you have not met in person, no matter how complete the story sounds.

Important

This profile describes a pattern of photo and identity theft. It does not accuse any person pictured in such photographs of wrongdoing — they are victims. We do not republish stolen photo albums. If a report on scamers.org names you incorrectly, use our I'm Innocent review process and we will investigate.