Thursday 25 July 2013

Update on Hurricane Wes Devries


 So much has happened since the articles in The Province Newspaper;

http://www.theprovince.com/news/could+talk+fleas+messed+with+wrong+girl/8612967/story.html

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Police+mount+investigation+against+alleged+scammer/8618362/story.html

Just found this and thought I would share:

 http://bb.nsmb.com/showthread.php?p=2768370

Apparently since we have put a dent in the potential victim pool for his 'dating' scams he had to move on to other things.  Here are a few more things to keep in mind, not necessarily about Wes but in general;

- Be very careful who you allow to access your house, anyone from a new friend or potential love interest to a handyman or possible buyer of your goods from craigslist.  Once someone has access to your place they can easily assess what is valuable and where it is kept.
- Secure all bikes when leaving them unattended, even if it is for a short period of time.  I would suggest that you even lock them up when inside a secure area such as a garage
- It is ALWAYS a bad idea to do any financial favors for any reason for someone you don't know very well.  But if you happen to be so 'stupid' to do this, as I was, be aware of what your bank's policies are. Because of my ignorance in banking lingo and no clarification given by 2 different RBC reps I was scammed for $2700.


I have decided that since I have done more towards warning people about Wes Devries than I ever thought I could that it is now up to the universe to balance out all the wrongs he has done.  For awhile I felt like this whole situation was taking over my life...  and while I realize that it is going to be a super long and frustrating process until this is all concluded, my head is in such a better place than it was even a month ago.  It's hard to admit that I misjudged someone.  It was definitely hard to put my giant, costly mistake on display for everyone to judge me on.  It was hard to read the comments about how 'stupid' I am.  It was hard to forgive myself for making the mistakes I made in this whole situation.  And I will fully own those mistakes.  But I have also learned from those and in the process I have also learned a lot about myself and how strong and persevering I am.   And how many more other strong women are out there too.


Wednesday 3 July 2013

My experience with Wes De Vries

Thank-you for taking the time to read this.  If you or someone you know was scammed by this man please email me at wesscammedmetoo@hotmail.com.  A big thank-you to Dan Fumano at The Province for all his effort and help getting this story out there.  you can also contact dan @ dfumano@theprovince.com



If I needed someone to vouch for my character I would have about a hundred volunteers for that in no time at all.  And as far as I can tell the rest of his victims are also lovely women with big hearts, compassionate and giving of themselves, trusting and selfless.  Are these the type of women that someone should be exploiting for their kindness?  If Wes needed character witnesses, who would stand up beside him and swear that he was a good person with good intentions? Is there anyone in his life that would?


 Reposted and amended from an earlier blog post;

What follows is a story of a smart woman who made a very stupid mistake.... yup - that's me!  But please don't judge me by this one bad decision I made.  I promise you that I am not usually such an idiot... talking with others I have decided that he uses his magical charms and makes people act like complete fools for short periods of time.  I will never fall under that spell again and I am using this forum to warn other women not to fall victim to him either.  So... here goes....

I met him online.  I wrote to him (ya - that's right, I picked him).  His profile was funny and he sounded great.  He responded right away.  He wanted to meet me that night.  I talked with him for over an hour and then decided that I would meet him for a coffee the next day.

When I met him he was charming and funny, and at the same time very average and normal.  Only thing I didn't like was his hipster doofus hat askew on his head but I could look past that.  He wanted to spend more time with me.  I was flattered. He seemed genuinely interested in me.  For days we hung out together and I immediately felt comfortable with him.  He did little things that built trust.  He bought my coffee.  He was on the phone with his mortgage broker.  We talked about mutual friends we had.  I felt at ease.  I enjoyed spending time with him.  I googled him and basically just found an inactive twitter account - nothing unusual at all.  We went for lunch one Friday and he asked me if I could help him with cashing a cheque.  I hadn't even agreed to do this transaction and all of a sudden we were at the bank and I was depositing a cheque into the atm.  Somewhere in that silly head of mine I knew it wasn't the smartest thing to do but I felt like I would insult him if I questioned the cheque so I did it.  MY BAD!  I have no excuses or explanations as to why I had this lapse of judgement.  I will restate here that I am not usually an idiot but I can see why people might think otherwise right about now.  He did seem like a great guy and everyone around us seemed to know and like him.  What's the worst thing that could happen?  (It's like when you're watching a horror movie and you feel like the next victim should know that the killer is just around that next corner - why are you going that way?  Turn around!  Turn around!)  The cheque was for $2700.  Then he asked me to take out $1000 to give as a down payment for a guy selling a car.  I could only take out $200 so I took that out and gave it to him.  I called my bank to ask when the cheque would clear and was told it would clear the next day (what I found out later was that they meant that the hold would be off and because I was a good customer I could access the money).  This is not a transaction I had ever done before so I trusted the bank when they told me the next day.  The next morning I went into the RBC and again asked if the cheque had cleared and was again told that it had.  The only question asked by the cashier was what bills I wanted the cash in.  Having twice been assured by bank representatives that the cheque had cleared I withdrew the funds and gave them to Wes.  He took the money and then we made a plan to hang out later that night.  He dropped by my place in the late afternoon and we hung out for a bit.  The next day we hung out again.  And the next...

Tuesday morning I knew the cheque was not going to go through.  I can't say here how I found that out but I did - the cheque came back NSF on Friday.  Tuesday morning Wes called me.  I didn't want him to know that I knew about the cheque yet.  He dropped by my house and I said I had to leave to go to the states.  I think he must have felt my energy shift and I saw a new attitude from him.  He looked around my place and said to me, 'You really shouldn't leave all your valuables out.  Someone could easily kick in your door and steal them'.  I walked him out so I could get his license plate number.  As soon as he left I went back to my house and checked my door again.  I went to my car and got in.  As I looked in my rear view mirror I could see that he had just driven up to the next block and pulled in front of another car.  I wasn't going to the states but I left and went and got a coffee.  I called my police officer friend and asked her what I should do.  She told me to call the non-emergency line and report what had happened. I went home and was not even home 2 minutes when Wes texted me 'not impressed'.  Had he been watching my house?  I still did not want him to know that I knew about the cheque so I called him and said I had decided to not go to the states and we could hang out earlier if he wanted.  He seemed satisfied with that.  I hung up and called the police.

Wednesday morning I texted him and told him I knew the cheque wasn't going through.  He wanted to know how I knew anything at 7:30 in the morning.  I told him he could read about how I knew in the police report.  I was not about to give him any information that he could use to better his scam the next time.  He told me he would look into the issue with his bank.  He called me later and told me that a client of his had bounced a cheque and that he would fix it as soon as possible.  I started researching him.  I found an article about him doing something similar in Kamloops and going to jail for it.  I searched his court records (see how to do this in previous blog posts) and saw pages of fraud charges.  I realized what type of individual I was dealing with.  He called me and said he would sell one of his vehicles to pay me back.  I knew it was a lie but I told him I appreciated him keeping in touch.  Then he asked me if we could still have fun together.  Really?  No, really?  I told him he was the most interesting person I had ever met - he took that as a compliment but that is not how I meant it.  At all.

Friday when the cheque came back NSF I sent him a demand for payment letter from my lawyer.  For days he kept in contact saying he was working on paying me. I would text and ask about a payment and was met with responses such as 'want some dick?' - Ummm.... no thanks!  He had a lot of comments along that nature. Then he said he had a payment for me.  I told him to come by my place while I was working and I would come out to get the money.  I didn't expect him to actually show up.  He stalled for hours and finally at almost midnight he showed up at my house.  At that point I didn't feel too threatened by him so I let him in.  He admitted that he had scammed me for money saying that he had got in trouble with his bank and he was sorry that he had thrown me under the bus to fix his problem.  He held my hand and asked if he could just have one hug or one kiss.  I asked him to leave and he did.  He called saying he missed me and wanted to spend time with me again.  I asked him to fix the money problem he had caused me and we'd talk about it, but I definitely had no intentions of ever having any contact with him again after he paid me back.

Days on end of promises to pay, rude sexual messages and getting the run-around.  He would text me late at night asking if I was home and if he could see me.  Finally I decided to completely cut off contact with him.  I sent him a message saying that I wanted zero further contact and it would be my pleasure to let everyone I could know exactly the type of person he is.  (And that's when I started this blog) I got calls from the casino.  I got random texts from weird numbers. Then he texted asking why I was ignoring him.  My last contact with him was 'contact my lawyer if you have money for me'.  That was about 4 weeks ago.  I haven't heard from him since.  While spreading the word about him I found a friends ex-wife had been scammed by him almost 20 years ago.  I found a friend of a friend who was scammed by him at a party a few years ago.  I started to get very angry that he had been getting away with this for so long.  Then I really started doing some investigating and have posted my findings in previous blog posts here.  And now I feel like my efforts are paying off.  I have heard from numerous past victims of Wes De Vries and have heard how he has negatively affected their lives.  If they can find this information I am putting out there on him then hopefully new potential victims are googling him and finding this information too.

It's not easy to admit that I was scammed.  I definitely feel like a fool.  But I am happy to put my embarrassment and stupidity on display if it will help save even one more woman from falling victim to him.  If more people had done this before maybe I would've found some information that would have saved me from being scammed.  So I will do my best to make sure that when someone is looking up Wes De Vries they can find out my experience with him and use the tools I have shown here in this blog to discover more about him and hopefully make the decision to avoid him.  And hopefully those of you who read this will pass on this information as well.

All this will make a great chapter in my book one day...

And a special message to Hurricane Wes - you obviously thought I was as stupid as the one dumb decision I made to cash a cheque for you... guess now you have found out that I am not.  I can't make you pay me back the money you stole from me... I can't make the police make you a priority.... But what I can do.. what I've done already... is make a small dent in your persona that you put out into the world.  And hope that it makes a difference... hope that people heed the warning about you.  It's been my pleasure.  Lisa



For more information on him please see the attached links:

http://canlii.ca/t/1hm8f

http://www.kamloopsnews.ca/article/20090814/KAMLOOPS0101/308159996/-1/KAMLOOPS/con-man-couldn-146-t-talk-his-way-out-of-jail