I Have Been Through Hell

... and I'm not out of it yet. Thank you for not abandoning me.

As most of you know, I was diagnosed with metastatic, poorly-differentiated, invasive cancer of the head and neck in June. All of these qualifiers are strongly negative as regards my prognosis. But that is only a side story to this post

Because I had given my word to some children and their parents when I left Cambodia in March that I would be back before the end of June to do their surgeries, I headed back to get these important cases done before starting my treatment. There were 10 promises which expanded to 13 surgeries. Everything went as planned and there were no complications. I wish the story had ended with my last tied knot, vigorous handshakes from relieved parents and relatives and an uneventful flight back to the U.S.

But it wasn’t to be. A British or Australian National (guessing based on his recorded voice) living in Phnom Penh performed a sim swap on my call phone and has stolen my identity.

You have to experience this to know how devastating it is. He commandeered my email accounts and is now asking my contacts to send “me” money. (He is pretending to be me). He opened a bank account in my name to convince people it is “safe”.. He changed the passwords on all my bank accounts and got ~$38,000 so far from them. He continues. Today, I got a notice from VENMO that he changed the password. Yesterday, I got a notice that my request to be approved for a Zelle account has been confirmed. I did not apply to be approved for Zelle and I did not change my password for VENMO. I can no longer get into any of these financial accounts.

How is he able to do this? He got all the pictures from my phone- 5 years worth. He put his face on my passport and driver’s license.

This was reported to the Cambodia Police but they did nothing because someone high up is getting a percentage of what he steals. The fake account in my name at Wing bank is major fraud and they are colluding in the crime. All of the people who received monies from the account in my name merely transferred them to their accounts at Wing and the managers at Wing allowed it.

I can’t make a new email because I can’t verify that I am me. I can’t use my credit cards. When he got my email accounts, he got my contact lists too.

I couldn’t let people know this happened. He has my two Facebook accounts and Messenger. He answers messages pretending to be me. He got $2300 from one friend already. He has my social security number too and opened an ancestry.com account in my name so he would have my mother’s maiden name at his disposal; a common security question.

I can’t publish my book now because he will get all the revenue from Amazon.

I’ve been told the only solution is to change my name. Yes, it’s a drastic measure but he will have control of everything until and after I die.