Handsome Marine shocked to learn he’s implicated in sinister $3.8bn scam
A handsome 37-year-old Marine finds himself at the center of a multi-billion dollar romance scam.
Kagan Dunlap, from North Carolina, made a shocking discovery about a decade ago when he discovered that his photos were being used to cheat hundreds of women out of their money.
The Marine received unusual messages around 2016 stating that his photos were being used to catch others on dating sites around the world.
Dunlap, who has been married to his wife Reilly, 36, of four years, has more than two million followers between them on social media. This hasn’t stopped scammers. In fact, all his photos and videos have given them more fuel.
One scammer even made a deepfake video asking for money while in uniform.
“One time I was walking and I got a call from a random person in Philadelphia saying they were talking to someone on Tinder claiming to be me and asking them for money,” Dunlap said.
“I have no idea how they got my phone number.”
The Marine first discovered the impersonation after posting a photo of himself in a HUMVEE during a field operation.
Kagan Dunlap of North Carolina made a shocking discovery about a decade ago when he discovered that his photos were being used to cheat hundreds of women out of their money.
Dunlap, who has been married to his wife Reilly, 36, of four years, has more than two million followers between them on social media. This hasn’t stopped scammers. In fact, all his photos and videos have given them more fuel
He did not realize that the photo contained a travel ticket with telephone numbers on it.
A woman called one of the numbers – and it turned out to be a sergeant.
“She called him and said, ‘Do you know this guy?’ I’ve been talking to him for a year and he hasn’t responded to my messages,” Dunlap said.
“The sergeant called me and said, ‘do you know this lady,’ and then I was like, ‘Oh. This is what’s going on.’
Since then, hundreds of women have contacted Dunlap. At one point he was receiving dozens of phone calls every day.
‘I honestly couldn’t tell you how many women there were, but easily hundreds. Easy,” he said. “It’s just gross.”
Women also began tracking down his wife and mother.
Some reached out to warn Reilly that her husband was up to no good. And even if he or his wife assured the women that they weren’t really talking to him, some won’t let it go.
Women who fell for the scam contacted Dunlap’s wife (left) to tell her about the communication. Other people have contacted Dunlap (right) to let him know that scammers are impersonating him
‘[They] I couldn’t accept that this isn’t really happening. There was nothing anyone could say to change their mind or dissuade them,” Dunlap said.
Luckily, he and his wife have a pretty strong level of trust. “She understands this is something that happens,” the Marine explained.
Some women have even attacked Kagan, thinking he was the one who cheated them out of money. He tried to stop it, but without success.
“I worked with an organization that had contact with someone in Facebook’s fraud department who was able to take down fake accounts,” Dunlap says.
“But he left, so they haven’t been able to do much since.”
The fake profiles are not exclusive to Kagan
“I’ve had dozens of friends have this happen to me,” he said. “Everyone I know who has ever posted pictures of themselves in uniform on the internet has been affected by this in some way.”
Scammers find it particularly easy to keep up a military facade with all the built-in excuses.
Dunlap has been approached by hundreds of women. At one point he was receiving dozens of phone calls every day
They claim they can’t visit the victim because they’re “on tour,” or they can’t video chat because there’s “no internet” in the field.
They ask for money for ‘airline tickets’ or a ‘secure telephone line’. These are all lies, of course.
“It’s always a disaster that happens to them or their family: they can’t travel, the military doesn’t pay them, or there’s some other nonsense that isn’t true,” Kagan says. “They feed off people’s emotions.”
They also know that victims romanticize a photo of someone in uniform and assume it is trustworthy.
Dunlap also warned, “If the person doesn’t want to video chat with you and they say, ‘I can’t do that because I don’t have internet here,’ that’s your first red flag.”
Before internet services like Starlink, there was no mobile connection in remote environments. “But now you can get internet in places like Syria and Iraq, it doesn’t matter,” he said.
Scammers conduct extensive research on victims, looking for information about their lives.
People who readily share personal information online are bigger targets. Scammers also target the elderly and people who are likely to be lonely.
Alicia Bultez, 81, met her scammer on Facebook. The profile was an army officer stationed abroad, and Alicia, who had been single for seven years, quickly fell for him.
She sent him more than $6,500 from her savings and was almost forced to send another $40,000. Luckily the bank noticed and warned her it was a scam.
Although people between the ages of 30 and 39 reported the most fraud in 2022, people aged 60 and over lost the largest amount of money to these scams.
“They feed off their emotions and use love as a way to scam money,” Dunlap said. “It’s really creepy and treacherous.”
Of the 70,000 reported romance scams in 2022, 18 percent were military scams.
Another 40 percent of scams started on social media, with the scammer quickly moving to apps like WhatsApp or Telegram.
Now Dunlap is making it his mission to get the word out in any way he can.
“Honestly, one person makes a difference,” he said.