| Personal blog updated August 25, 2010 This page is now out of date; for more current information about scams and fraud please visit the David Kappel page. The original "honeypie" page This is a public service warning announcement for users of the AngloINFO Riviera or Liguria forums who may have seen posts by someone called "honeypie", signing themselves "Jan". This person claims to be a lady probably in her 40s to 50s, living in Liguria near the French border and running a French car registered and insured through her daughter living in Strasbourg. The subject of car insurance often comes up on the Liguria forum and Jan is always keen to point out how much better it is to have a car in France, which is of course quite irrelevant to the majority of people on the Ligurian side of the border. Honeypie pops up fairly regularly to announce ex-pat social events, apparently held every month or so mostly in France and attended by a good number of people coming from both sides of the border. However, when you actually try to find out something about the events you're met with a brick wall. From her posts you'd guess these people are very sociable, but it seems everything they do is behind a veil of secrecy. The announcements promise to let everyone know by email but they never invite new members. This is strange behaviour; why announce on a public forum that you are about to send an email? Why not simply send the mail? Honeypie also answers questions from people asking for help on other topics, chiefly to do with renting or buying property in the border area of Liguria. Her responses usually recommend a friend who has the required information. Chief of these is a man called Dave, who is the companion of another forum regular, Linda Frobisher. I'm sorry to say all the above is complete fiction. Neither Honeypie/Jan nor Linda Frobisher exist; they are invented characters designed to lure the unwary. The man Dave does unfortunately exist, however; he's the one who created the characters (and many others). By constantly promoting these characters on the forums he persuades the unwary to believe they are genuine and helpful, then when he recommends "Dave" they are ready to be taken in. The real "Dave" is David, a man in his mid 50s living a few km outside Apricale on the road to Baiardo. He does no honest work but preys on unwary people, mostly female. He starts off being most helpful but his aim is to extract payment for a variety of services of little to no real value. He is a small-time villain and fraudster and you are strongly advised to have no dealings with him. In particular, never let him near your computer as he will quickly install spyware on it to track your actions and gain access to your financial records. I have met one of David's intended victims and been in contact with two more. I used to live near him and met him socially a few times before realising he was up to no good, so I recognised the description given to me. I still had some photos on my computer from those days and the victim identified him right away. Here he is, though this picture is three years old and time is not being kind to him now:  David never uses his real name when dealing with people, instead creating a succession of aliases such as "Peter Jones", "Peter Johnson" or "David Hansen". He comes from London and his normal speaking voice marks him as being from that city, though he is charming on the phone and is a fairly good voice mimic, able to "do" a wide variety of regional accents. To perpetrate his scams he mainly relies on the telephone or email but he's not averse to using physical violence should the circumstances need it. In fact he gets a good deal of pleasure from inflicting suffering on others. David has a serious obsession with the wife who left him three years ago after putting up with many years of living with an unpleasant, socially inadequate slob who did no work and prevented her from making friends. One of the first things he tells his victims is that his wife went off with everything he owned. The truth is in fact the opposite; she left with nothing except the bruises she received at his hands when she went back to the house to retrieve some belongings. If you have any information regarding David, please feel free to contact the author of this article; just click here to send me an email. I will respond to all messages in complete privacy. For up-to-date information about scams and frauds please visit the David Kappel page. |
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