Tuesday 12 February 2008
The dating scam has become a new favorite of online fraudsters. The fraud has a common theme, similar to many of the Nigerian scam emails.
It works something like this……
A woman (or man) posts their profile on a dating website. She is contacted by a handsome, charming man and strikes up a ‘friendship’, they exchange many emails and develope trust over a few weeks. The man may even send flowers or gifts to the woman; the woman may even fall in love.
But the a sudden emergency happens to the man (he has been mugged, one of his family needs expensive medical treatment, etc etc) and he asks his ‘girlfriend’ for a loan. It may only be for a relatively small amount at first, like a test payment, to see if she will be willing to send money. But it often escalates to significant sums of money.
Not surprisingly, when she asks for the money back, her ‘boyfriend’ disappears.
What has really happened? Well, the boyfriend was never a handsome, charming man - he is a scam artist, often from Nigeria, operating out of an internet cafe, using a photograph of a model he found on the web, and spending his day sending out hundreds of similar emails until he gets a ‘hot’ lead to pursue for money. This is his ‘job’. He will often have several ‘girlfriends’ on the go at the same time, this is how he earns his living. Its a scam.
The scale of this scam is not really known. Many women are too hurt or too embarrassed to report it to the police. Plus the police find it difficult to track down the fraudster who is often thousands of miles away.
So beware of the handsome love rats and the internet dating scam
scam email
