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Marine Online

January 13, 2011 by · Comments Off on Marine Online 

Marine Online, Imagine fighting for your country in a war zone. It’s lonely and dangerous and that your computer is your only link with the outside world. The KING 5 Investigators have found that computer Lifeline makes U.S. troops vulnerable to online scammers. We’re going inside of a scam that targets members of the military services and to find a novel Internet that reaches all the way from Western Washington in Afghanistan.

You cannot imagine life in a war zone unless you’ve been there.

“Afghan people, the Taliban. You do not really know who the Taliban because they hide among the population.”

“You work seven days a week, there is no day off. There are no breaks”

“Just the stress of being there. Working all the time, busy, worn body. ”

U.S. Marine Brandon Paine describes his seven months in Afghanistan struck down.

“Just the stress of being in a combat zone: Stress fight against boredom, you miss your family, your friends … You are alone, you need someone to talk to, “said Paine.

By day, he trained Afghan police. At night, he turned to his computer, desperate for a link with the world at home.

“Anything that comes along that might be the slightest little bit of happiness, or morale, certainly something you’ll jump on right away,” said Paine.

For Paine it was a friend request from a beautiful woman on the social networking site MySpace.

“She said she thought I was beautiful, wanted to talk to me, whole thing was, it was a great supporter of the troops,” said Paine.

Paine did not hesitate.

“I was like wow … this girl is beautiful and I’ll talk to him if she wants to talk to me … why not. She said her name was Katie; she was a model 22 years from Germany. ”

Germany, but living in Spanaway. Washington. His pictures were amazing, intense messages. The friendship grew at a cyber love story. Paine then came home.

He was finally returned from his tour of duty and now stationed in southern California. Paine continued to try to meet the mysterious Katie, but the days turned into weeks and months and it never happened.

“There was always an excuse, something happens, this thing goes wrong, that’s going bad,” said Paine. From a family death, surgery, fate seemed to separate them, but Katie’s devotion never wavered.

Paine said he had doubts, but removes them because no one had ever shown such love him.

Katie gifts engraved dog tags and letters Paine has hope.

“They were like a promise ring, so that people know I’m taken,” said Paine.

And he gave him money.

“The first was in favor and 500 and the second was for a thousand. She had put in me is the name of his mother and told her she could go pick it up because she lost her identity card “said Paine.

Katie has promised to reimburse him for saying it was worth millions. She said fraudsters had frozen its funds.

Paine bought it all. But his parents were suspicious.

22-year-old Katie is actually a much older woman who is married and grandchildren deeply in debt outstanding and its third bankruptcy.

“Katie is a 5-7-inch foot beautiful blonde girl and a woman is very unattractive corpulent elderly,” said Paine.

As for the pictures? They are photos of models and other beautiful women circulated widely on the Internet. The question is – why was Paine so easily convinced by the scheme?

“They are vulnerable. They feel so many emotions at the height that we will never know what they go through, but their emotions are extreme,” said Cantrell.

Paine said he has changed. That’s what Marines are trained. But he wishes his combat training had included warnings about scams of this kind, a danger as real as enemy bullets and IEDs.

“I am not a person easily deceived. I am trained to see through the lies of the people. So, not see through it, I had my own want something good in my life,” Paine said.

Paine said he reported the fraud to the police here in Washington and California, but said the case was not likely to go anywhere.

When we confronted the woman about the plan, she admitted this and has vowed never again.

As to military investigators, they say this type of scam is the opposite of what they usually see. Often, the scammer pretends to be a soldier at war that needs money and patriotic citizens to open their wallets.

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