Mr. Bernard Houel spent the past week convincing myself and my partners that he wanted to invest $2 million into our movie, but that before he could transfer the funds we had to pay ~$10,000 to a company in Thailand for a "surety bond".
He made several mistakes:
1) He claimed to be a 71 year old french man, but when we spoke on the phone he had a distinct asian accent
2) When I asked him what time it was "where he was", he said he was in Bangkok and that it was "around 10am"... but I know for a fact it was past 1pm.
3) The email address he used to refer to the surety bond company had a hyphen in it (unionsime-darby.com instead of a real company which is unionsimedarby.com, and the hyphenated url was registered only 2 months ago)
4) When my partner reached out to Union Sime Darby, which seems to be a real company in Thailand, they said that Mr Bernard Houel was already being investigated by the police and had tried to pull this scam several times in the past few months.
Copied below is the email reply from Union Sime Darby:
Mr. Bernard Houel Reviews
Mr. Bernard Houel spent the past week convincing myself and my partners that he wanted to invest $2 million into our movie, but that before he could transfer the funds we had to pay ~$10,000 to a company in Thailand for a "surety bond".
He made several mistakes:
1) He claimed to be a 71 year old french man, but when we spoke on the phone he had a distinct asian accent
2) When I asked him what time it was "where he was", he said he was in Bangkok and that it was "around 10am"... but I know for a fact it was past 1pm.
3) The email address he used to refer to the surety bond company had a hyphen in it (unionsime-darby.com instead of a real company which is unionsimedarby.com, and the hyphenated url was registered only 2 months ago)
4) When my partner reached out to Union Sime Darby, which seems to be a real company in Thailand, they said that Mr Bernard Houel was already being investigated by the police and had tried to pull this scam several times in the past few months.
Copied below is the email reply from Union Sime Darby: