An Opportunity Too Good To Be True

Reflection-water-canal-mirroring

My advice

If it’s too good to be true it probably is!

My recommendations


My story

This is the story of how I almost got human trafficked or worse along with my boyfriend. Me and my boyfriend planned to move abroad to Spain in the future. My boyfriend was offered a job by a convincing stranger and we trusted his every word.

This job was to go to Spain and make a new life with a vape company. His future boss took us out for food. We welcomed him in our home. The first signs of something not being right was his drug use. He was also driving under the influence when taking us for a meal. We tried to get to know him but it was scary how little we actually knew about this guy!

The date of moving to Spain was due 4 weeks after finding out my boyfriend got the job and I decided to move because honestly we’ve been dating a year and I didn’t want us to break up over it. I had my concerns, but my boyfriend insisted everything they were doing was legal. The boss convinced us of this amazing life we were going to have.

The first scary noticeable thing was that the boss’s name on WhatsApp was different to what he told us. We ignored it and believed it was just his friends old phone. He sent us pictures off the “villa” he had in mind. He said he needed the deposit by Friday. We sent the cash. We asked him for 2 weeks for the post code and when we finally got it, we felt sick. He’d sent a fake postcode. We reverse searched the images and seen he’d sent pictures of a b&b. We thought it was odd that he was going away to Lanzarote the week we gave him the money. He said it was for paperwork both of which we had never seen. This guy lied about everything; this new life wasn’t real.

He had planned we meet first in France before travelling to Spain, but we don’t believe we would of made it that far. He had said he’d booked us a meeting to get Spanish residency and now this really worried us because we would have brought all our documentation. He also scared us a few times in conversation about how he knows hackers and shady people. He also said on the phone to my boyfriend he was planning on making money scamming people while out in Spain over fake holidays. This is where it gets weird. We investigated him. The Instagram he had was taken down. He called and would only give the postcode on the phone on a Spanish number. He wouldn’t discuss anything incriminating in message. His phone wasn’t attached to any social media. It seemed to be a burner phone. He talked about how he wanted to throw his phone in the sea.

Things got worse. We realised we didn’t have his Facebook, when asked he said he didn’t use it but we saw him using it in his car one time. He would take his phone off Bluetooth to answer calls. He knows we’re we live. He knows information we don’t want him to know and we know nothing about him. It could all be a lie. He showed us ID and we have his bank details but they could be someone else’s. What was he planning to do with us in the car and our documents and possessions?

Now we are £600 down and fear our lives. How could it get to this? My boyfriend has lost his job. He is looking for jobs out the country. I’m not moving this time. I have learnt my lesson. After this whole trauma it could split us up. All of this for nothing.