Sharing this little episode in case it's of interest. This kind of thing can also be called "catfishing," but usually that term seems saved for online connections of a more tawdry nature. Anyway, I am not easily taken, but this person had me quite confused for a week, or so. Don't get me wrong, I always enjoy a good mystery. (Heck, I'm a mystery writer.). This person who connected with me on Facebook seemed to share an interest in desalination. Being from Singapore, it seemed an interesting thing to text about from time to time. When the texts started to occur nightly, though, the ol' alarm bells began to sound.
Having worked in the compliance enforcement field for almost a quarter century, I'm usually pretty good at looking people up and deep diving into their particulars in my free time. In her case, however, the slate was entirely blank. I'm not going to detail all the steps I explored here, except that they included BeenVerified, which usually is somewhat helpful in returning information on people being reviewed--just not in this case. Nada. Zilch. Neither her e-mail address nor her cell phone number returned any reverse information either. Her Facebook account showed check-ins in both Singapore and China. The latter check-ins made me a bit uneasy, particularly as she seemed really interested in using my connection to launch connections to my friends (some of whom are also in government).
As she repeatedly referred to herself as a business owner of two different companies, I finally decided to reach out to the leadership of both. Whether she was legitimate, or not, there was something disturbing about her behavior, and I was curious to learn what her game was. I received a response back pretty quickly from the media company situated in Singapore of which she claimed to be a president.
Hi Karl, interesting. No she doesn’t work for us. And I’ve never met her. Clearly just randomly found our company and decided to pretend she works for us.
A short time later, I also received some interesting observations from an online friend who is fairly familiar with the Japanese language in particular.
Both Nakamura and Hoshino are surnames in Japanese. Nakamura is a very common name, Hoshino less so, but Wikipedia lists a couple of dozen noted people name Hoshino.
I never have come across a Japanese who used a surname as a given name. That alone would make me suspicious.
Nakamura Hoshino remains a mystery, but now at least, she's blocked.
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