My First Encounter with a Scammer
My First Encounter with a Scammer – And How I Turned the Tables
From the moment the war in Ukraine began in 2014, I was deeply involved in following the news and online discussions. Like so many others, I saw heartbreaking images of cities destroyed, families torn apart, and innocent lives lost. Then, in July that year, MH17 was shot down by Russian militias. After that, social media was flooded with Russian propaganda. I felt compelled to push back, so I started countering many of the lies I saw spreading online.
Fast forward to February 2022: Russia launched its full-scale invasion.
About a year later, in March 2023, I received a message from someone claiming to be a Ukrainian soldier. His name was Fedir, mid-40s, stationed in Bakhmut. He told me his wife had passed away and that he had an eight-year-old daughter living with relatives in Odesa.
At first, we only spoke occasionally, every few weeks or so. Our conversations felt genuine. We talked about his daughter, his life on the frontlines, and the small, everyday things we both liked. He always asked how I was doing, and his tone was never flirty or inappropriate — just warm and friendly.
A Sudden Change
Then, in November, I stopped hearing from him. Concerned, I sent him a message, hoping he was okay. Weeks went by with no reply. By the day before Christmas, my worry had grown so much that I wrote again, asking if he could please let me know he was safe. It wasn’t until the end of January that I finally heard back.
Fedir told me he had been in the hospital for weeks after being badly wounded by gunfire. I was relieved beyond words to hear he had survived.
But the very next day, something changed. He messaged me again. And then the day after that. His sudden eagerness to talk every day already felt unusual, but what shocked me most was how different he sounded. Gone was the friendly, casual tone. Suddenly, he was declaring his love, saying how much he had missed me, and telling me he wanted to spend his life with me.
It felt like I was speaking to a completely different person. Looking back, that was the first red flag.
I was stunned. Where had this come from? He claimed he had always hidden his feelings but wanted to be honest now. I didn’t share those feelings, but I decided to play along for a while to see where this would go.
For about three weeks, our chats were filled with declarations of love and promises of a future together. Fedir said he was arranging with his commander to leave the army and come live with me. But one detail bothered me deeply: he never once mentioned his daughter. Not once. I expected him to at least ask how I felt about her living with us, but he stayed silent. I chose not to bring it up either, curious if he ever would.
The Money Talk
Fedir told me he had resigned from the army and needed €2,500 to complete the paperwork and buy tickets to travel to me. He promised that his military pay was simply “on hold,” and he’d repay me once it was released. When I said I didn’t have that much money, he suggested I take out a loan.
That’s when my alarm bells rang.
Still, I played along. I told him I’d visit the bank the next morning, and that it might take a few days before I knew if the loan would be approved. I kept him waiting for three days before “confirming” I had the money. He was thrilled, saying, “Now we can finally be together.” Then he gave me a PayPal address.
But there was a catch: he insisted I send the money using the “friends and family” option — so he’d get it faster. I refused. €2,500 was far too much to risk without buyer protection. He pushed again, but I held firm, telling him that if he truly cared, it shouldn’t matter how I sent it.
Silence followed.
The Truth Comes Out
Two days later, he came back, claiming he had been called away on a sudden patrol and hadn’t had time to explain. Once again, he asked about the money. By then, I was convinced he was lying, so I told him (I made it up) I had checked the PayPal address and discovered it had been linked to scammers before.
At first, he denied everything, insisting the account wasn’t his but belonged to his “commander.” Then, to my shock, he confessed.
He admitted he wasn’t a soldier at all. He said he lived in Delta State, Nigeria, and that he only asked me for money because he wanted to pay for school. He begged me to help him.
Aftermath
Although I felt sympathy for him, I told him I couldn’t. What he was doing was wrong, and he needed to find an honest way to make a living. That was the last I ever heard from him.
This was my first encounter with a scammer. I walked away without losing any money, though part of me still felt sorry for him. I reported his account, and a few weeks later, it was suspended.
Bohdan: The One Who Got Too Close
While I was still talking to Fedir, in August 2023 I got a message from another “soldier,” Sergeant Bohdan Andrich, who said he was stationed in Kryvyi Rih. Our first chat was short, and I didn’t think much of it.
Months later, in January 2024, Russia launched a missile attack on Kryvyi Rih. Watching the news made me feel sick. I couldn’t wrap my head around how people could commit such terrible acts. That was when I remembered Bohdan. Out of concern, I messaged him, hoping he was safe.
That same evening, he replied, thanked me for my support, and asked how I was doing. He confirmed he was still in Kryvyi Rih and was okay. From that moment we started texting almost every day.
At first, our conversations were lighthearted: music, food, hobbies, jokes. For nearly two weeks it stayed that way, until suddenly, he told me he loved me.
Normally, I kept strict rules online: never get too close, never let others get too close to me. But Bohdan caught me off guard. His warmth, his tone, his way of making me feel seen — I found myself drawn in. I started checking my phone, hoping for his messages. So when he declared his love, I was overwhelmed but also felt this warm glow in my heart. That night, I told him I loved him too.
Echoing My Feelings
End of January, the day I finally heard back from Fedir — where he told me he’d been shot and hospitalized for weeks. That message broke me; I didn’t know what to say. I tried to write something comforting, but couldn’t find the words.
Later that day, Bohdan noticed I was off and asked what was wrong. I told him about Fedir’s message and how guilty I felt for not knowing what to say. Bohdan responded in a way that made me feel even heavier: he said he understood Fedir’s pain because he himself often went to the frontlines to pick up wounded soldiers. He described the terrible things he had seen.
The way he spoke — the tone, the sorrow — hit me hard. I think in images, not words, so I could vividly picture the things he was describing. But then he reassured me by saying: “I know you, and you will find the right words for your friend.”
He was right… I did.
Looking back, I now see how carefully he mirrored my emotions, how he used my feelings to make his words feel authentic. At the time, I had no doubt he was real. That’s how deeply he played on my emotions.
Aid and Affection
Our relationship grew. We fantasized about life after the war, we joked, we played games, we had serious talks. But in mid-February, things took a turn.
One evening, Bohdan told me that his unit was exhausted, barely ate, with almost no supplies left. There was a store nearby, he said, but they had no money to buy food. My heart broke. He didn’t ask for money, but I felt so sorry for them that I offered to help so they could eat. He was very grateful.
Ten days later, Bohdan did ask me for money. He didn’t say what it was for, and I didn’t ask. Love means helping each other, I thought. I just assumed it was for food again.
Cracks in the Story
Then came March 12. Russia launched another missile attack on Kryvyi Rih: three killed, thirty-eight injured, including ten children. Apartment buildings were destroyed. I followed the news in horror, waiting desperately for Bohdan to appear online.
He finally did, but to my confusion, he was cheerful — almost as if nothing had happened. When I told him how worried I was, his response stunned me. It was as if he had no idea what I was talking about.
“You know I follow the news, right?” I said.
“Yes, sure I do,” he replied.
It didn’t add up. But I brushed it aside, telling myself maybe he just didn’t want to talk about it.
Close to Realization
Weeks passed, and my feelings for Bohdan grew deeper. Then, out of nowhere, I was tagged in a post warning me that I was following a scammer. My stomach dropped — it was about Fewood, a “soldier” I was also talking to.
I stared at the post, remembering how he had once warned me about scammers himself. I was shocked to find out that Fewood was a scammer; I confronted him with a screenshot about his fake account and he immediately blocked me.
I sat there confused, trying to process what had just happened. My mind flashed back: Fedir. Kostyantyn. Another “soldier” I had spoken to briefly in December 2023, who had asked me for money for bizarre things — a jacket, malaria medicine, even booze. When I tested him by sending just €10, he snapped: “What the hell am I supposed to do with ten bucks?”
Later, I found an Instagram account of the real soldier he was impersonating — a man who liked cigars and whiskey. In my ignorance back then, I thought that account belonged to Kostyantyn, so I confronted him with it by saying: So this is where you need the money for? Fancy cigars and whiskey? Of course he denied it, and then I blocked him.
With the Fewood post, and the flashbacks to Fedir and Kostyantyn, I realized some things were very off. I felt overwhelmed with confusion and disbelief. But then it hit me…
Shadows of Bohdan: Between Illusion and Reality
“Wait a minute…”
If all these accounts were fake, what about Bohdan? I started remembering some of the red flags I had brushed aside, and a nauseous feeling rose in my stomach. I decided to search his name on Twitter, and what I found shocked me.
A Web of Faces
There weren’t just one or two profiles. I found multiple accounts under the names Bohdan Andrich and Bohdan Oleksiy, all using photos of the same soldier as “my Bohdan” did. Even stranger, one account in that list wasn’t a “Bohdan” at all but carried the name of Vitali Klitschko.
Curious, I scrolled through the replies on that Klitschko account. He was messaging women, calling them beautiful, and asking them to move to private chats. Then I saw something that shocked me — in one of those chats he introduced himself not as Vitali, but as Bohdan Andrich. He even gave a woman an email with that name, pushing her toward Google Chat.
I confronted “Bohdan” with the accounts I’d found. Although I had my suspicions he was behind that account, I left out the Klitschko one because of the different name. He told me he was confused too, claimed he didn’t know those accounts, and insisted other people were impersonating him. Excuses, excuses.
Still uneasy, I decided to check the Verification Unit site I had just learned about. Sure enough, his Twitter was listed there as a scam account — and had been reported around the same time I first started talking to him back in August 2023. When I showed him, he brushed it off as a mistake, telling me it wasn’t him and I should check again.
The Telegram Trail
The next morning, I decided to dig deeper. Since Bohdan and I had been chatting on Telegram since February, I searched his name there too. To my shock, three separate accounts under the name Bohdan Andrich appeared. I saved the links in a folder and took screenshots before confronting him with what I had found.
The following day, after I had confronted Bohdan with the accounts, I checked those same accounts again. Something had changed. The first one I checked — the timestamps that had shown exactly when he was online — was suddenly gone, replaced by “Last seen recently.” That was strange enough, but the next one nearly blew my mind…
One Bohdan with an Identity Crisis
Not only did it not show the timestamp anymore, it had almost a complete makeover. Although the display name still said Bohdan Andrih, the handle and photo had changed into Vitali Klitschko.
WTF? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It took me right back to the Twitter account of that same Vitali Klitschko I hadn’t confronted Bohdan with yet and I thought: Of all the people, he had to change it into this one? Really? I quickly checked the third account; apart from the timestamp switch, it was still the same.
When I confronted Bohdan with both the Telegram changes and the Klitschko Twitter account, the lies and excuses got more ridiculous by the minute. At one point he even said: “Maybe you said something to them that pissed them off and that’s why they changed the setting?” I had never spoken with either of them, so no. Then he tried to prove his innocence by sending me a screenshot of him forwarding the Klitschko account to a “friend,” complete with voice notes, as if those notes somehow would clear him.
I was done. Done with the lies, the contradictions, the circus. In my anger, I blocked him.
The Mask Falls: From Frontline to Fraudline
The turning point.
For three days my emotions were all over the place: anger, sadness, disbelief. I wasn’t only angry at Bohdan, but also at myself. How could I have been so naïve? Why did I ignore all the signs? My heart felt broken because, despite everything, I had truly believed there was something real between us.
In the end, curiosity and the need for answers won. I unblocked him, not knowing what I would even say yet. Then the next morning I got a message. It was Bohdan.
He asked why I had unblocked him and apologized for how things had ended. I told him I wasn’t sure about that myself — that I missed him, but also needed to understand why he had done this to me. He told me he missed me too, and then the lies went on. For a while, he clung to his story, insisting he was who he said he was. But I wasn’t buying it anymore. Again I confronted him with the accounts I had uncovered — the contradictions that didn’t add up.
Frustrated and exhausted by his excuses, I realized something had to change. So instead of being a potential victim of scammers, I chose to go after them and expose them.
The Confession
I began with a few scammers I already suspected, just to practice and test the waters. But while I was still tangled up in conversations with Bohdan, something completely unexpected happened: to my surprise and out of nowhere, he finally decided to open up and reveal who he really was.
And there it was — a photo of the real face behind the stolen one. This is me, he said. My first impression was: okay, he is a good-looking guy, well dressed, with a certain sweetness in his face. Not the kind of man I had expected. Then he told me his real name. (Out of respect, I won’t write it here, so from now on, I’ll call “Bohdan” by his nickname: Shady.)
He claimed he was from Cameroon, but for some reason I doubted that. Later, he admitted he was actually from Nigeria. I believe he used Cameroon as a cover because of the reputation attached to Nigerians and the scamming world.
At first I wasn’t sure what to do with him. Should I stay or just leave? Yes, he had completely deceived me, but there were also feelings that don’t disappear overnight. So I chose to stay — my curiosity to get to know more about him won.
Turning the Tables
Shady and I were getting to know each other all over again. We had lots of talks, lots of arguments — but also a lot of fun. The difference was that now I had my eyes wide open. I was alert but also open-minded. Still, I kept catching him telling lies, like trying to convince me he had stopped scamming. My gut told me otherwise.
That’s when I decided to get a new SIM card to create a new Telegram account. I followed him with another Twitter account and he took the bait. Within a week we moved to the same Telegram account I was already using as myself. Turns out, my instincts were right. Not only did he send the exact same sweet messages, he also said he loved her (me) and how much he wanted to be with her. I didn’t confront him with it at that moment; instead, I started to play his own game against him.
Lessons and Manipulations
After I outed Shady, I continued talking to him for almost six months. During that time, he taught me how scammers operate: tactics, lies, and even some Pidgin. He also sent me lots of photos and videos of his hometown, his friends, and family — all to build trust again.
It was emotional. Frustrating because he was still scamming. Saddening for the harm I knew he caused others. Disappointing because he chose deceit over honesty. But it was also instructive: I learned to spot signs, protect myself, and even how to play their own game against them. (There was too much going on to write down here, so maybe I’ll write about those stories another time.)
After these six months I finally blocked him for good. I was exhausted by the lies and games. At times, I felt like I was losing my own identity because I had been playing him too, to gather information. Although I missed him initially (he had been a big part of my life for over a year), I’ve come to terms with it and I am okay now.
My Take on Shady
Looking back, I honestly believe that Shady wanted to outsmart me, and he tried very hard to scam me again by building a bond and trying to gain my trust. I’m also sure that he used me to learn from me. Spending time with me allowed him to practice, refine, and learn from my reactions. By seeing how I responded, he could improve his tactics with others. It had nothing to do with me personally — it was about control, challenge, and the game that became interesting for him.
Inside the Scammer Mindset: A Behavioral Analysis
While most scammers are opportunistic and quick, some — like Shady — invest months into building trust, testing intelligence, and manipulating emotions. Understanding their psychology can help others recognize patterns and protect themselves.
Target Selection
They identify empathetic, attentive, and emotionally expressive people. These traits are not weaknesses — they make potential targets engage deeply, providing attention and emotional feedback the scammer can exploit.
Bonding Through Mirroring
They reflect your interests, humor, and tone, creating an illusion of intimacy. Even challenges or pushback from you can deepen the connection; friction can intensify perceived closeness.
The Teacher–Student Dynamic
If they recognize intelligence or awareness in a target, they frame the interaction as “learning together.” Complimenting your intelligence builds trust while letting them observe your reasoning, reactions, and limits.
Proof and Partial Confession
They mix real elements (photos, names, locations) with fiction. Each glimpse of “truth” is designed to strengthen credibility and encourage continued engagement.
Emotional Investment
Long-term attention signals authenticity. By spending weeks or months, they create a psychological bond that makes the target more invested — even if money is never sent.
Control Through Cognitive Dissonance
Contradictions are met with apologies, explanations, or gentle confrontation. This exploits the human need to resolve tension, keeping the target engaged and emotionally involved.
The “Redeemable Villain”
Once confronted, they may rebrand themselves as repentant or misunderstood. This gives the illusion of remorse and invites the target to continue interacting — often for validation rather than money.
Data Harvesting
Time and attention allow them to gather insights: emotional triggers, reaction times, and persuasive tactics. Targets become inadvertent teachers, shaping future scams.
Exit or Fade-Out
Once the target becomes too aware or no longer serves their purpose, they may disappear or reappear later under a new identity to test whether the connection remains open.
Takeaway: Even highly intelligent and cautious individuals can be engaged by these long-term manipulators. Understanding the psychology behind the scam is empowering — it reframes the experience as insight rather than failure. There is no shame in caring, in trusting, or in being targeted. Awareness, reflection, and education make people powerful.
Epilogue: What I Learned About Myself
Through the months of deception, manipulation, and emotional turmoil, I discovered more about myself than I expected. I realized that curiosity, empathy, and intelligence are a powerful combination when guided by awareness. I learned to trust my instincts, recognize red flags, and protect myself while still remaining open-minded.
What I thought was just a messy, emotional experience turned into an opportunity for growth. I became more analytical, resilient, and capable of seeing manipulation for what it is, without losing my humanity. Most importantly, I learned that being scammed doesn’t make you weak. Caring about others, wanting to help, and being willing to trust are strengths, not vulnerabilities.
Now, I use this knowledge to educate others, turning my story into a tool for awareness and protection. If anything, I hope it shows that even in the shadow of deception, you can emerge stronger, wiser, and empowered.
This story was shared with the Verification Unit to raise awareness about soldier impersonation scams. Names and identifying details have been adjusted for privacy.
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