Minnesota guardsmen vexed by endless Facebook romance scam

Pictures of a smiling Minnesota soldier posing in uniform with his young son convinced a woman from Finland to respond to a Facebook friend request.

But the photos were stolen, lifted from the guardsman's real Facebook page and pasted onto another. The woman who believed she was meeting an engaging Minnesotan was unknowingly being lured into a scam.

The Facebook friend request turned into a conversation with the "soldier" who said he was deployed in Afghanistan and lonely. He flattered her and the relationship quickly grew.

"Of course, it was stupid of me," said Liisa, who asked MPR News not to use her last name because she fears more scammers will target her. "We got in kind of a connection that was, I don't know, just leading to more deep feelings ... he even asked me to marry him."

She uncovered the scam after the man asked for her personal information, saying he needed it to get a military leave to visit her in Finland. Then he asked for $3,000.

Liisa was able to find out the truth in time, but stories like hers are increasingly alarming to the Minnesota National Guard, so much so that the guard now has a public affairs staffer regularly scanning social media looking for stolen identities of its leaders.

It's a growing frustration for units in Minnesota and across the U.S. Army, which receives hundreds of reports a month from people victimized by criminals using a soldier's identity.

"Usually they're romance scams," said Minnesota National Guard Master Sgt. Blair Heusdens. "They're trying to befriend people online and then once they gain their trust they are asking for money."

That was the tack taken by the scammer who pursued Liisa, a nursing instructor who lives near Helsinki and was once married to a Finnish naval officer.

"I pledge my life and my love to you and I promise to keep investing my time and energy into the wonderful relationship that we have together," read one part of an email to her. "Every day I learn something new about you and I am always reminded of how amazing you are. Together, we can have the greatest adventure of all time."

The scammers often play on the widespread public support for military personnel.

"They say that the military members need money for transportation, for food, for medical bills and these are things that are covered by the military so they're using the support the public has for us to ask for things soldiers wouldn't need money for in the first place," said Heusdens.

"I think it's easy for us to just say; 'Gosh, you have to be really dumb to fall for this,'" said Heusdens. "But they're really good, these impersonators, and so people are falling for this. They are sending money."

Facebook scams using pictures of the Minnesota soldier Liisa fell for, Jeff Anderson, are prolific. A partial search of Facebook profiles found some two dozen variations of his name using his photos.

Anderson, who retired from the Guard in 2014 after 21 years of service, said the identity theft is so common, he no longer bothers to report the fake pages to Facebook. The alleged scammer didn't respond to a reporter's message.

Heusdens now scans Facebook for stolen identities of Minnesota National Guard leaders as part of her job. It's a bit like Whack-a-Mole.

"These people are generally located in Africa, and so it makes it harder to investigate, harder to keep those individuals accountable, and when Facebook does remove those profiles they just put more up the next day," said Heusdens.

That's been the experience of Command Sgt. Major Douglas Wortham, the senior enlisted member of the Minnesota Guard. Scammers started using his military persona a couple of years ago.

Public affairs staff regularly look for scams using his photos. He's personally reported more than 20 apparent scams to Facebook. On the day he spoke to MPR News, he'd found three new fake pages.

"Early on, very few were ever removed and recently they've been removing the majority of the ones that I've been submitting so you know they probably have changed along the way as well," said Wortham.

In an emailed statement, Facebook said the company has a dedicated team and automated systems to help detect and block these kinds of scams.

The military warns these romance scams are also found on dating sites and other social media platforms.

For Wortham, patrolling Facebook regularly is frustrating and time consuming, but he feels a responsibility to get the scam pages taken down.

"I feel bad, not about me personally, because it doesn't impact me personally," he said. "But what it does impact is somebody who is maybe vulnerable and you know feels a sense of an obligation to help this poor soldier and all of a sudden they're hooked and they're helping somebody out who is just scamming them."