Source: Arnold Turner / Getty
Sometimes love is blind and misguided. A white man allegedly got catfished so hard that he sold his house and gave money to African impersonators pretending to be Tommie Lee.
On the week of Valentine’s Day, a group of purported Africans allegedly tricked a man into believing he was in a relationship with the Love & Hip Hop star.
An unnamed man with thick glasses frames who self-identifies as “Papa Bear” personally paid a visit to Tommie Lee’s doorstep with about a dozen roses in hand, according to The Neighborhood Talk.
The man appears to have a slow speech pattern that gives the impression that he might have a disability. The unannounced visit “freaked out” Tommie, who asked the man multiple times how he knew her. The love-struck man could not answer her.
Tommie recorded the man and accepted his flowers and a deflating heart-shaped balloon; however, she rejected the man’s request for entry into her rented Airbnb space, slamming the door with a “Hell nah!”
Tommie, whose real name is Atasha Chizzaah Jefferson Moore, said she received a call for a special delivery and that the unnamed man was nearby her rental.
After making a FaceTime call with a friend named “Tight,” who recognized the mysterious man, Tommie believes the man was scammed overseas and has been getting scammed for the past five years.
Social Media Believes Tommie’s Close Friends May Have Scammed The Man
Instagram comments, however, are not buying the African explanation and believe Tommie’s close friends scammed the man.
“This is probably an obsessed friend in her circle that know where she live and that made a fake profile of her cause he to slow to realize that’s not [Tommie’s] real page and they been in a[n] online relationship for 5 years. BOOM! There it go,” one commenter said.
“How he got her location and number[?]” another comment asked.
“The scary fact she was in a[n] Airbnb[. H]ow did these Africans? [sic] Know where tommie? Was,” another commenter asked.
But Nigerian-based romance scams are very much a real thing, Forbes reported. These scams are sometimes part of an organized money laundering scheme, as reported by CNN. According to the Federal Trade Commission, Americans lost $143 million to romance scams in 2018, and the average victim lost about $2,600 from the crime.
In 2016, the FBI’s special unit Internet Crime Commission (IC3) reported more than 15,000 romance scams. Nigerian trolls have broken hearts and bank accounts in these scams, collecting income or savings from desperate lovers.
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