AER FINANCIAL TRUST - KELLY PETERSON - BRUCE ATKINS - MARWELL PETROLEUM LP - AMEGY BANK OF TEXAS Marwell Petroleum LP Check sent to me in behalf of a man who was an online romantic interest and stuck in Nigeria on business. Needed my assistance to get money owed him and to return home to the US. Check returned unpa Seven Lakes, North Carolina

I received a check from Allen Richy of Crown Global Investment Limited in the amount of $8636.00.  The check was drawn on Amegy Bank of Texas and the account was Marwell Petroleum LP Royalty Account, 5847 San Felipe, Ste 2030, Houston, TX 77057.  The return address on the envelope was Lisa Lope Adams, 18 Front Street, Thorold, ON L2V 1X4.  I deposited the check and it was returned unpaid with the reason 'account closed'.

The check was supposedly funds owed to Rafael Charles, a man I met through Outpersonals.com, a gay online dating site (he found me).  We quickly developed an online 'relationship' which seemed ok and promising at the start.  Things quickly became complicated with his supposed business trip from the US to England and Nigeria, during which time many things went wrong: trouble with customs, credit card not working, illness, lack of food and Internet access, etc.  Of course all these problems required my personal intervention and financial support to resolve as I was the only one he could turn to in his time of need.  I wired him money several times but finally drew the line on the further use of my funds; that's when the check incident mentioned above occurred.  He wanted me to advance him some more of my own money and take what he owed me out of the check from Marwell.

I am reporting the check because that is the one thing that was clearly illegal.  Because the check was delivered from Canada to the US via the two countries' postal services, I imagine there are several layers of mail fraud in there at the least.  I don't know that I have any recourse on the $950 in wire transfers I made, other than to learn a valuable lesson from the experience.