Romance scams.......would you be gullible enough.

My great uncle was scammed, my family believe.
He was "persuaded" that a young widow loved him. He was elderly, infirm, and his wife had recently died.

It was in the 60s. He married this young woman and was dead in about a year. She married another elderly gentleman before long.

Whilst online scams may be what we are talking about here, there has been similar things going on in "real life" forever.

I do think the banks are a bit culpable in this. Surely they could have a system that noticed unusual activity in accounts like this one?

I have a lot of sympathy for those who are scammed. The people doing it are very skilled and experts at knowing just how to go about it. I’m sure lots of people are not taken in but I can j def sat down how those who are targeted are often vulnerable which is why they are taken in. It’s very easy to say it couldn’t happen to me, it in their situation it could well be. The scammers are the ones we should be condemning, not those that are the victims.

Millie22

Never
but loneliness is often the reason behind these scams and that's really sad. There seem to be an awful lot of eligible men in Nigeria!

Or the same "eligible" men many times.

Never
but loneliness is often the reason behind these scams and that's really sad. There seem to be an awful lot of eligible men in Nigeria!

I think they are possibly naïve and have not read abut them before. I wouldn't trust any man that was not my husband and even then it's sometimes dubious.

I think we all think we wouldn't be vulnerable to such things but do we really know how we'd react if all of a sudden we meet someone who we fall for and seems perfect and gives plausible reasons for whatever. I sincerely hope I wouldn't fall for such a con but how can we really tell?

I think the banks should do more to stop this kind of thing. I'm surprised her bank didn't contact her to say there had been suspicious activity on her account when she was transferring huge amounts. I feel desperately sorry for this women who was, as she said herself, not in her right mind when all this was going on. How these conmen can live with themselves beggars belief. Pure evil!

Annaram1 you would of course, been one of many, just don't be flattered because that's what their remit is.

Now, I consider myself pretty astute and yet I succumbed to a scam a couple of months ago. No, not the type on here right now but a scam nonetheless. Luckily one of the ladies on here put me right and quickly enough for me to have my bank sort it out. I no longer 'cannot understand' how people can be fooled. I'm thoroughly chastened.

I wasn't taken in when someone tried it on me but a dear friend was. He has lost a huge amount of money (enough to affect his life). He's not a stupid man. In fact, he's incredibly intelligent but the scammer worked on him for a long time before money was mentioned and by that time he was groomed and taken in.

There might be someone reading this thread who has personal experience of this cruel type of scam.
Easy to say we wouldn’t fall for this but plenty of people do. Heard today on R4 about two UK support groups run by Victim Support in Sussex and Humberside for anyone who needs it.

It’s a type of grooming isn’t it? They become pals on the net and gain the woman’s confidence and once they find that then the sob stories appear. I know that as soon as someone asked me for money alarm bells would ring.

I wonder whether loneliness is a major factor. Some women who have been married a long time must find it difficult when they are widowed. My mother remarried (a perfectly nice much younger man) less than two years after my father died.
I am not sure I would be taken in. I can imagine my children wanted to meet the person! Before my husband retired his job took him overseas for weeks at a time. For his last two jobs he was based overseas for 4 and then 3 years. I worked in the UK and I visited him in the holidays and he came back to UK as well. I don’t think I ever got bored or lonely.

Kandinsky

These woman ( and it also happens to a men occasionally ) are not stupid.
They are vulnerable, kind, and trusting.
But also lonely.
I feel nothing but desperately sorry for them.

this....exactly this

PippaZ I do not think that anyone on this thread has ever said they could never be scammed. What they have said is that they could not envisage themselves ever falling for this particular scam. Not at all the same thing.

I don’t think I would fall for it as I’m quite tight with my money, but I don’t think these women are stupid or gullible, they are probably romantics who think/ hope they have found Mr Right.
Don’t forget men get scammed too

It’s not a matter of being superior pippa if it had never happened before or never been written about, a brand new scam it would be very different, it would also be very different if you were groomed by someone in person on a holiday or trip because yes they are clever and could groom you without you realising it ....but.... to send money to someone you had never ever heard from or met before is strange and foolhardy to say the least
Maybe it’s to do with having surplus money or not, if someone gave me ‘Internet’ love and attention then asked for money it would never enter my head to send it to them, as I don’t have surplus cash perhaps these ladies all had enough money to not bulk at buying love
I m not blaming the woman just find it very very strange that they are taken in after all these years
I guess I don’t need a man that much

If a woman or man said I left my front door wide open but
can t imagine why I was burgled you'd scratch your head wouldn’t you ??

One useful thing is to do a reverse image look-up on Google images. I’ve lost count of the friend requests I’ve had from charming-looking US military men (pity they didn’t notice I’m a pacifist) and a reverse look-up produces the identical image of a chap with quite a different name and a biography which often includes a wife. In some cases, the person in the photo is dead. So I notify Facebook that it’s a fraudulent account.

In truth, about the last thing I need in my life is an ageing swain, so it doesn’t bother me, and I certainly wouldn’t consider sending anyone money under such circumstances. I feel sorry for anyone who is so desperate for love that they are blind to this stuff, but I also think they must be terminally stupid to fall for it.

I wouldn’t be on a dating site in the first place. I have had the occasional dodgy message on Facebook, I just report and block.

I have been on a couple of dating sites but the chaps on them now are just too young for me. Only one tried to ask me for money. Some hopes! However when I went to Egypt on a Nile cruise the head waiter seemed to take a shine to me and refused to charge me for my drinks. He lurked around the table where the puddings and desserts were and kept giving me advice about which were the best. He asked me my name and said he liked me. He used to phone my cabin if I was a few minutes late for a meal. It got to the stage where I asked a woman at my table to accompany me when I went for dessert, and the wretched man kept saying flirty things to me in front of her. Another older woman I met on the same cruise told me she had actually married an Egyptian waiter the year before and had the paperwork to prove it. But she had not told her husband and children back in England about her Egyptian husband. I worried about her, because if she dies he could have a claim on her estate. Are these men scammers? I was not asked for money on the cruise and managed to sneak off the ship without the head waiter seeing me. I wondered if he might have tried to get my address off me and maybe have started a relationship of some sort. To foreign waiters we are enormously rich.

I haven’t seen anyone displaying any sense of superiority, just posters expressing their doubts on the likelihood of being sucked in themselves by a request for money from an internet stranger they had never met.

Yes we all know it goes on but surely most women on an online dating site would immediately smell a rat at the very first request for money.
I know I would, and I certainly don’t say that from any sense of superiority.

Having watched the BBC series about these scam romances what always amazed me was -
the person was supposed to be arriving at the airport but something always happened to stop the meeting - why doesn't the person who is providing the money suggest THEY fly to meet up. Obviously there will be more excuses why that can't happen but perhaps it would act as a warning sign. If they have the money to send to the fraudster they would be able to afford to pay for a ticket.
I do have some sympathy for whoever is scammed, man or woman, I am just amazed at how easy the scammers find it to carry them out.

I joined an online dating app , for over 60's, lo and behold up pops a man who cleared out am elderly neighbours bank account when she was dying.

A few weeks ago I started chatting to a man, normally dont bother, looking at the pictures is like looking througb an Argos catalogue for men.
But this chap photo, nice dog, we chatted, discovered he was an American widower, living in Birmingham, had been called to Ghana to take delivery of a shipment of medical equipment,as a business competitor had tragically lost his wife and daughter in a car accident the previous day and had asked him to take the contract on, could he have my email so that we could chat while he was there.

I started to feel creeped out after only two days he couldnt wait to hold and kiss me
I had given a phone number to him, he rang , his voice sounded very un American, More Nigerian?

Next day email pops up he has been victim of identity fraud in the past, problem with bank, needed to come back to Britain, but just needed me to lend him some money till he got here.

I blocked him, on ipad, phone.

I hope that I would not succumb to such a scam or any scam really. BUT until I am able to walk in another's shoe I don't honestly know. Like many others on here I would like to shout out no and after working many years in the criminal justice system I believe I'm pretty savvy, but I just can't condemned the scammed individuals. These criminals, because that is what scammed are, are professionals who are very accomplished in their craft. Not nice people. Love to anyone on here who has been scammed, you were not in the wrong you were just too trusting.