Honey trap - just what was he thinking?

Why is Greatnan sometimes confused with absentgrana? jess!

oh dear. Sorry. Doh. I am a tad distracted today in a good way.

No problem, Jess. Absent and I have a lot in common, after all!

!

The three of us have kids in NZ in common actually. A little club.

It is when I start getting myself confused with either of the other two that you need to worry.

The man is a fool but tbh these people are incredibly skilled at manipulating people. They discover what is important to you and feed your needs.

When I was internet dating I was contacted by an american engineer working in Nigeria. We chatted for a few weeks by which time he knew what I did for a living and my outlook on life and beliefs. TBH I was suspicious from the first message....he was far too good looking and was in Nigeria....but I went into internet dating with a cynical mind. One day he contacted me in a panic. The story was that his driver had been ill and so he'd driven himself. When passing a local primary school (remember I was a primary teacher) a little girl had run into the road and he'd hit her. First he told me he had to pay for legal support as the police were being difficult then he added that the little girl was badly injured and needed surgery or she would lose her leg. He, of course, needed money. I suggested he take out a loan but he couldn't do that. Then I suggested he asked his employers for help....surely they must be insured for these types of situation but of course he couldn't ask them. So I told him sorry but he was barking up the wrong tree. I had no money but huge debts so had nothing to send him. Oddly I never heard from him again.

But you see how they work. They think they've got you hooked emotionally....I was just wasting his time tbh because I knew what he was...then they strike. The little girl loosing her leg was the icing on the cake knowing that I worked with children of that age.

I didn't suggest that JessM's post was racist. I just wondered why older woman and younger man and [implied] white woman and African man was inevitably silly. That is quite a different scenario from imagining that you have a lasting relationship with someone you have never met.

Well, it certainly seems as though he got himself a new life - just not the one he hoped for... young fool (only 68!)

I think the great majority of mules used to smuggle drugs are female...

They must have got right under his skin. A friend who was ripped off by a younger woman online said that by the time she asked for something he was so besotted he couldn't see what was happening. Fortunately he wanted to see her so badly that he insisted on meeting her and as she was in the UK she agreed.

She then quickly realised that he had very little spare money and dumped him. She had thought that his educational background and the job he'd had before he retired meant that he must be very rich. Meeting at a Travelodge must have shaken her rigid lol.

Why should stating what is actually happening; stupid middle aged European women being wooed and won by young handsome men from poor countries, be considered racist.

But men arent alone in falling for internet floosies they have never met. A few years ago there were a lot of internet scams involving stupid women and supposed hunky handsome American soldiers. They never met but after a period of grooming the 'soldier' would start asking for money because for some reason his money was held in some inaccessible army account. Some of of these women sent the 'soldier' thousands of pounds. In fact behind the pictures and the guff about heroic service in Iraq and Afghanistan was a group of men in Nigeria.

I must be mean - I can't imagine any circumstances in which I would give money to any man, let alone a stranger!

Some people are too trusting. On internet dating sites if a person seems too good to be true then they probably are. The internet seems to strip some people of their natural cautiousness. They probably wouldn't give money to a stranger on a bus but think nothing of sending it to someone they have never met.

I'm with Greatnan, I can not imagine any situation where I would give money to somebody asking for it online, on the phone, or with their outstretched hand unless it was a close family member or very longstanding friend and I exactly understood the need.

For the last ten years DH has been rung up regularly by those dodgy outfits trying to get him to buy even dodgier shares. Even before we knew the whole thing was a scam, his immediate reaction was to put the phone down, why on earth should he consider buying shares in a company he had never heard of sold by a company he had never heard of who had cold called him? Yet aalmost weekly there are stories in newspapers and on the radio of people who have invested their whole life savings in these companies, saying well the sales man was so charming, persuasive, so kind to me etc etc. Where does peoples common sense go?

I don't feel sorry for anybody smuggling cocaine or any drug they deserve everything they get and to use the excuse I thought he or she was the one that's just rubbish these people know what they are doing and I'm sorry if people take offence to that but it's true.

Lizzie49 you are absolutely right

I'm not justifying what he did...just explaining how they get into someone's head.

Funny story about internet dating site. When i was staying in NZ my DS's flatmate was looking for a girlfriend and trawling through dating sites all evening, night after night. He read out a description of one local woman - good looking, intelligent, self aware, financially secure etc etc, looking for similar man, blah blah, not willing to compromise.
DS looks at it and says: OMG that is my therapist!

FlicketyB I never suggested that JessM's post was racist. My slightly surprised response had more to do with older woman and younger man. Why is a middle-aged European woman wooed and won by a younger African man automatically classed as stupid? I have three European women friends happily married to younger men – one African, one Afro Caribbean and one Chinese. I have never considered them to be stupid.

Depends absent I am married to a younger man who is not a Uk citizen and I'm not stupid. Not daft either, as my nana would have said.
But I think someone who goes on holiday to a very poor country (whether it is a man or a woman) and meets a local person - from a very different culture - who is much younger than they are and is themself very poor, is probably deluding themselves and taking a huge risk if they convince themselves this is the "real thing" and make a rapid decision to get married or to sell up and move abroad. It can work of course...
My MIL - a very proper, cautious person, met FIL in Ireland when she was on holiday. Bit of a romance. She didn't write. A few years later her Irish friend was ill, MIL went back to Ireland again, and within a week was engaged to FIL!
But they were a similar age, same religion, similar culture and neither brought a significant amount of money to the marriage. She had 6 older sisters who were scandalised!
I think it was a happy marriage, but blighted by both illness and economic problems of the time.

I don't think you are stupid or daft either JessM. Or racist for that matter.

Spot on, Jess. There are so many sad stories in the press about women of a certain age who have had two weeks in the Gambia, get wooed by a young man, come back and send him money for his ticket , marry him a soon as possible, then are heartbroken when he dumps them, often taking all of their money with him.
My daughter is married to a man eight years younger than herself, but they have a shared culture, etc. I don't think even twenty years difference is a big problem in those circumstances, although relatives and friends might be a bit quizzical. (My daughter's in-laws were lovely and welcomed her and her four children with open arms - very special people).

absent, iI wasnt accusing you or anyone else of being racist, I was being rhetoric. I am sorry if I could be described as lacking respect to people who have quietly made cross age/cross race marriages. The only ones I know of are those discussed in the papers, which have almost always gone catstrophically wrong, personally I know of no others.

women go on holiday fall for an bloke they get besotted thus a visa then in this country then the bloke leaves