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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 ??

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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 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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

Fernhillnana

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?

Banks do flag up any unusual activity and contact you to confirm the transaction, I regularly get texts to confirm payments.
After they have contacted you and explained the risks, if you say “pay it” it will be paid, its your money and they will obey the instruction.

Despite my profile on Facebook clearly stating that I am married - with a link to my husband's profile - I still get several message requests a week from men supposedly around my age. Fortunately they are usually innocuous on the lines of "hello dear how are you today" - some of my younger friends on FB have been sent dick pics and even dirty videos (obviously in those cases they report the profile). I just block the person and delete their message for the ones I get. What on earth makes people think they can message a random stranger on Facebook and get a reply? Are some people really daft enough to reply - don't answer that one, as the answer is clearly self-explanatory.

I do feel sympathy for the victims but I really wish these women and men would be a bit less naive about so-called romance scams. If everyone was a bit more sceptical about falling for the wide variety of internet and phone scams, there would be less scammers about. They exist because people fall for their schtick, unfortunately.

i used to play words with friends on my mobile . no more now . the men scammers on there are unbelievable. please send me money as i need an operation /pls send me visa papers/ you are beautiful/ lovely legs/i love you /you are wonderful/ my answer is oh yeah .. no money/no visa and no you dont love me you are a stranger ..maybe we can get to know each other via another messenger service . no thanks am only playing a game on here . then they get tough . i know where you live .really ??? i will come and get you . really without a visa etc? next is the delete button ...