| Personal blog updated August 25 2010 This page is now out of date; for more current information about scams and fraud please visit the David Kappel page.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 Linda Frobisher page Anyone who regularly uses the forums on AngloINFO Riviera or Liguria will by now be familiar with "Linda Frobisher". This character is a strident, arrogant, pompous self-publicist who seldom lets a week go by without some attempt to prove to the rest of us how superior she is. If the postings can be believed she is a thirty-something blonde living in Beaulieu and driving a German sports car. Her lifestyle includes frequent flying to New York, probably on behalf of her father, a successful local businessman. When not jetting about she relaxes by her pool (of course), but in spite of this hectic lifestyle she has time to post trivial questions on both Forums about matters ranging from pet shops in Ventimiglia (a town she affects to despise while apparently spending a lot of time there) to low-temperature fridges, horse manure, importing cars from Germany and getting her "other half" (OH) registered to drive her car. Most recently (January 2010), Linda was getting exercised about what she claimed are the low standards of service and frequent rip-offs encountered on the Riviera. Apparently encouraged by a cabal of friends she was constructing a "blacklist" of companies to avoid, based on nothing more than people writing to her with their complaints. Utterly unaware of the likely consequenses of publishing such a list she ploughed on like a latter-day Lady Bracknell, ignoring the advice of wiser heads, until AngloInfo sensibly pulled the entire thread off their forum. None of this is totally unbelievable on the Riviera, home to a lot of very odd people, but what does stretch belief is that in spite of her frequent appearances on the AngloINFO forums she has no presence at all on social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Her name simply doesn't appear. It seems her activities are confined to just the one forum, unlikely behaviour for a thirty-something businesswoman with a busy social life. Anyone as keen as Linda is to promote themselves will have a presence on several social networking sites. Furthermore, if you Google "Linda Frobisher" you get back the very page you are reading now but nothing else relevant comes up except links to posts on AngloINFO. There's no evidence of her father, the "successful local businessman", either. It's perhaps fortunate for Linda that she is so difficult to locate, in view of the likely reaction by people finding themselves on her blacklist. Linda never answers emails from lower forms of life (i.e. anyone who disagrees with her) but has time to camp on her computer and reply to forum postings within minutes. Her posts rarely contain anything resembling useful information, just vacuous boasts. I look forward every day to her latest piece of drivel, which makes life more interesting and reminds the rest of us that there are really unpleasant people around, some in fact even worse than the Linda caricature, as you will shortly see. Linda is not married, but instead has a close association with a person she describes variously as "my slob" or "my lump", a portly gentleman of much more advanced years, a strange unshaven and unwashed fellow who lives reclusively in a remote outpost of a village on the Italian side of the border, does not own a car and who evidently does not share her love of self-publicity (or is computer-illiterate) since he never posts on AngloINFO in his own name. He is the reason why she spends so much time in the hateful Ventimiglia. Over the past couple of years her postings have narrowed down the place of residence of this person to the area above Apricale, and residents of this region will recognise him from the clues she has spread in her numerous postings. At one time, when I had connections in that area, I had the doubtful privilege of knowing him. He's not difficult to spot when he takes the bus into town - you might at first mistake him for one of the regular Ventimiglia tramps but they tend to be smarter and cleaner. Why a yuppie like Linda should want to share the same planet with such a person is beyond imagining but presumably points to a serious mental condition on her part. But I've been misleading you a little, dear reader. Linda's "Other Half" is far from being computer-illiterate. Quite the reverse, in fact; he's a prolific scammer and computer hacker, preying mainly on vulnerable women who post questions on the AngloINFO forums. I recently discovered I knew one of his intended victims and by confirming his identity I was pleased to have been able to prevent any serious harm being done. How could we be sure it was him? Well it just so happens I have a few photographs dating from the time I knew him, and the victim was quite definite he was the man she'd met. Here he is, in a photo taken a few years ago. Nowadays he doesn't look this good and he's going downhill fast.  Linda refers to this delightful character as "David" but it doesn't matter much what his real name is because he never uses it when dealing with people, instead creating a succession of aliases such as "Peter Jones", "Peter Johnson" or "David Hansen". Now in his mid 50s, he hails 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 works for AngloInfo in some capacity, official or otherwise. He is responsible for most of the posts on the Ligurial forum and is probably paid to source news content on the Riviera site or boost levels of activity on the forums to attract advertisers. It's quite likely AngloInfo either doesn't know much about him or prefers not to. I'm providing this information as a public service; if you've seen this person please do not have any dealings with him as he will be out to exploit and defraud you in some way. In particular, never hand him a credit card or let him near your computer as he is quite adept at quickly installing software to spy on you and extract information. Oh, and if you hadn't already guessed, there is no Linda Frobisher. She's entirely the invention of David, who spends most of every day in front of his computer gradually reeling in his victims or searching for new ones. I suspect David has some gender identity confusion, hence his general hatred for women and the need to invent Linda Frobisher as a kind of "über-woman". 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. Footnote: Since I put up this article a few months ago I have had no contact from anyone claiming to be Linda, nor from the person in the photo, nor from any legal representative. If Linda were real she might object a little to what I've said about her. I rest my case. Post-footnote: As of August 2010, Linda Frobisher hasn't been heard of for weeks. It's as if she died. The truth is her inventor has no further use for her and is focussed on new scams. Read more... |
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