How I Got Caught Up In A Facebook Military Romance Scam

Robin Lea Laurain
4 min readApr 11, 2022

Regretfully, I saw 5K vanish in thin air

Photo by Karsten Winegeart on Unsplash

My former husband was in the 82nd Airbourne and we lived at Fort Bragg in North Carolina while he served in the 82nd. I would often have parachutes and other equipment on my living room floor in case the guys had to be called out. I then would start the round-Robin making sure that the military wives were prepared. Let’s just say, I know the military and how it works. My familiarity with soldiers has taught me a lot about their behaviors.

Facebook used to be a hobby of mine. I would spend hours on it. Strange men would send me friend requests. They were usually widowed and in the military. I would delete them.

One day, a general popped on my friend list. Out of curiosity at what his mission was, (as soldiers always have a mission), I said hello to him. The picture was of an extremely attractive man who was a general. He started telling me how beautiful I am and he called me dear a few times. His spelling was a dead giveaway as he spelled with an s instead of z. He typed recognise instead of recognize. Even Grammarly is giving me a hard time trying to type this.

I talked to him a few times and he started to profess his deep love for me. I asked him how that could be since we only chatted a few times. He said that it didn’t matter that…

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Robin Lea Laurain

Retired travel nurse, politician, multi-generational grandmother, Green Party, activist, writer, anti-war, #BDS