Former romance scammer reveals his secrets, showing how he conned thousands of dollars


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Estimated read time: 4-5 minutes

KEY TAKEAWAYS
  • Christopher Maxwell, a former romance scammer, reveals his tactics to prevent future scams.
  • He targeted lonely women on Facebook, posing as an American soldier, and earned $70,000 over five years.
  • Maxwell now seeks to help others avoid scams, despite facing threats for exposing his methods.

SALT LAKE CITY — A man in Africa says he made his living as a romance scammer, targeting people in the United States.

He recently contacted KSL to share his story in the hopes it will help others avoid being conned by romance scammers.

In my 25 years as a journalist, his conversation with me was unlike any interview I've done before.

"How did you get into scamming Americans?" I asked.

"I just wanted to make money," said the man who identified himself as Christopher Maxwell.

Talking with me from a bathroom in Nigeria, he said he learned his craft while attending college. Not from the school, rather from his friends at university who were all ripping off Americans.

"I just started to make money because of other kids," Maxwell said.

His scheme was a common one: getting women to fall in love with him.

I asked whether he found it easy to do, or difficult.

"It's easy," he answered.

The hardest part, Maxwell says, was the sleep deprivation. From Nigeria, you had to be awake all night to catch Americans awake.

Christopher Maxwell tells KSL’s Matt Gephardt an experience with a particular victim who became severely depressed persuaded him to quit romance scamming.
Christopher Maxwell tells KSL’s Matt Gephardt an experience with a particular victim who became severely depressed persuaded him to quit romance scamming. (Photo: John Wilson, KSL-TV)

Choosing his targets

As for his targets, Maxwell said he would mostly use Facebook — looking for certain characteristics in users that would suggest they could be lonely. Specifically, he says he looked at photos, zeroing in on women who post a lot of pictures of themselves with their kids but with no men. Then using a fake profile, he would pretend to be an American soldier on deployment to start up a conversation.

"Before I ask for money, I would make sure I am in the relationship with that particular person," Maxwell told me.

He said he often spent months wooing a woman before he would strike.

"When I realized this victim actually loves me lots," Maxwell said, "I'll take advantage of that."

He'd lie. He'd tell his target he needed money for some sort of emergency, or somehow his bank account got frozen. But he assured her that she would get her money back.

"I made over $70,000," he told me.

"Over how long?" I asked. "Over a couple of years?"

"Uhm, five years," Maxwell responded.

Alarming rise of romance scammers

Social Catfish, a company that uses reverse search tech to verify online identities, told me the rise of romance scammers is alarming. Americans lost $1.14 billion to romance scams in 2023 according to data from the Federal Trade Commission. That doubles the $547 million lost in 2021, just two years before.

According to the FBI, 207 Utahns lost $5.4 million in 2023, making Utah 29th in the nation when it comes to losses to romance scammers.

"Did you ever scam anybody in Utah?" I asked Maxwell. "Do you know?"

"I would say yes," he answered.

Exposing his scheme

Maxwell claims he is now reformed. Not because he was busted. He says the deep hurt he was causing his victims finally smacked him hard in the face.

"I scammed a woman," he recounted. "She was 62 years old. She gave me about $20,000."

Maxwell says when she realized she'd been conned, she became severely depressed.

"So, she was really going through a lot just because of me. And I felt really bad," he said.


She cried. I thought she was gonna block me, but she did not block me. She forgave me.

–Christopher Maxwell


So, Maxwell said he broke one of the chief rules of confidence men: He called her, revealed his true face and confessed his sins.

"She cried," he said. "I thought she was gonna block me, but she did not block me. She forgave me."

The experience moved him, he says, to quit the con man business and help others avoid falling prey to a romance scammer.

"Chris, when you were scamming people, did you ever worry about getting in trouble?" I asked.

"Yes, yes. That's a major worry," he said.

His new crusade

Maxwell says he's not really worried about law enforcement but ever since he started sharing his story, he says he has received threats.

"I was getting a lot of threats from Nigerians like me telling me I have exposed everything. I have said everything. I am a fool. They're going to kill me," he said.

Death threats have not deterred him from his new crusade.

"I'm not worried because I feel like I'm doing the right thing now."

When my conversation with Christopher Maxwell ended after about 30 minutes, I was left with two big takeaways. One, he spoke of how nonchalantly some of his countrymen and countrywomen regarded their job of conning Americans, as though it was some side gig or after school job. And two, how dangerous social media can be. A simple, innocent post or picture is all a con man needs to break the ice with a victim.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.

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KSL InvestigatesUtahPolice & Courts
Matt Gephardt, KSL-TVMatt Gephardt
Matt Gephardt has worked in television news for more than 20 years, and as a reporter since 2010. He is now a consumer investigative reporter for KSL TV. You can find Matt on Twitter at @KSLmatt or email him at matt@ksl.com.

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