the essential
Invited, this April 27, to the meetings of critical thinking in Labège near Toulouse, David, alias “Métabrouteur” tracks down crooks of the heart on social networks. He describes the difficulty for victims to free themselves from their psychological influence.
This story chills the blood. It is narrated by David aka “Métabrouteur”, a tireless hunter of sentiment scammers on social networks. “She is a woman who lives in the south of France. She is a former journalist of great erudition, seasoned in critical analysis. She was trapped on a Scrabble application. The grazer who promised her true love stripped her of all her money Today, she lives in great destitution but she still believes in it and still finds reason to maintain hope that this virtual partner is honest. This perfectly illustrates the phenomenon of psychological control. No one is safe,” laments this resident of Île-de-France who came to participate this April 27 in the Critical Mind Meetings at Diagora, the Labège conference center to do prevention.
It traps grazers
at their own game
He spends a good part of his free time flushing out scammers (scammers operating on the Internet) and trapping them at their own game, handling absurd humor with remarkable skill. When one of them, most of the time located in West Africa, tries to obtain her favors while posing as a woman on the networks, he sends her photos of Éric Zemmour or of Igor Bogdanoff disguised as a woman using Photoshop. Invariably, these ‘big fish’ take the bait and are full of praise for the plastic beauty of their interlocutor, praising the delicacy of her features or the radiance of her smile.
The patience of the fine sleuth
For months, even years, David can fool these virtual suitors. “When I was younger, I was passionate about role-playing games. He transposed the strategies acquired during these games into his interactions with the crooks. With patience, he weaves a play that has all the appearance of reality. The grazer thinks that he is going to hit the jackpot and continues with the ardor of a Stakhanovist the conversation with the lady he wishes to fleece.”
“Most of them use more or less the same fake profile photos, I often say to them: Oh no, not you again, you’ve already taken 15,000 euros from me! This triggers such strong greed in them that “They continue the conversation even more, in a way, they in turn become victims of a form of control,” quips the Ile-de-France resident.
Misery on both sides
He is also not in a binary approach to these virtual games of seduction: “Obviously, there are on one side the victims and on the other side the scammers; if some have been able to build fortunes in Côte-d ‘Ivory, the vast majority live in poverty Some of them are young adolescents, aged only 12 or 13. We can quickly identify them, particularly in the approximate use of syntax and vocabulary. the potential victim is willing to believe because she feels the need, often due to emotional deficiency, she can quickly fall into the trap.”
In addition to the very poor quality of the browsers’ writings, David advises stopping the conversation directly with any suitor if he asks to buy PCS, Transcash, Neosurf top-ups.
To reduce its harmful capacity, it is also desirable to alert the moderators of the platform on which the exchanges took place so that it can be banned.
