DATING SITES ARE FULL OF SCAMMERS

Transcription

1 DATING SITES ARE FULL OF SCAMMERS ZOE KOMOROSKY Most dating sites are full of scammers, and many sites don't bother to get rid of scammers because scammers look good, use model photos, have nice profiles, and that attracts more members. Scammer needs money for bus fare or gas to travel to meet you. Scammer may exchange s with you for days or much longer, you may talk on the phone, until the two of you decide to meet. The scammer cannot afford it, but offers to drive to meet you (or take a plane or bus), and requests money to help pay for this. After you send the money, you never hear from them again - or you receive ongoing excuses to delay the trip and more requests for money. Scammer has a hard luck story and asks for your help. Scammer is sick or has a sick parent or child, or is stuck in a country (Nigeria or Russia usually) and they need your help. Their money, credit card, and ID has been lost or stolen and they have been arrested and need to pay a lawyer so they will be allowed to leave the country. Or they got injured and are in the hospital but can't get treated without money. They are very good at making you feel sorry for them. You may feel inclined to help them and send them money. After all, you have been led to believe this is your future spouse. This is a scam! Scammer says he/she is starting a charity and needs your donations. This is a scam! Real charitable organizations do not use dating services to get donations! Think about it!

2 Facebook scammer Tim Lawson Facebook s message: Hello dear, nice look, I was going true some profiles and yours caught my attention. How are you doing? I am a British Solder here in the Afghanistan. I will love to be your friend, Tim. Facebook scammer Lillian Malsui Facebook s message: Hello. Nice meeting you here, how are you today i will want us to be friends contact me here with my address (malusililian@yahoo.com) because i have a special reason why have contacted you so that i can send you my photos and also tell you more about myself here is my address malusililian@yahoo.com) you can also drop me your mail address i am waiting to get a reply from you remember that colour, language or age and distance does not matter but understand matters. Yours New Friend, Miss Llilian. Scammer is planning to visit your city or country and wants to send money ahead for use while there. They are going to 'trust' you to cash the checks for them. They may want you to buy something with the money and send to them - or their trip falls through and they ask you to send the money back. Scammer sends you counterfeit cashier s checks and you end up losing the money you sent to them. Not only that, but you may be found guilty of cashing bogus checks. Another scenario is that the scammer finds out that you have a need for money and loans you a large amount with cashier s checks. You may be threatened when you are not able to pay it back right away.

3 Scammer pushes you for your address, phone number, or other personal information early on. They may use the excuse that they cannot upload a photo to the site but want to you some photos. If they can a photo to you, they can a photo to the site to be added to their profile for free. The scammer is creating address lists which will be sold worldwide and used for all sorts of purposes. They may give you their address and ask you to send photos to them of you and your family. If you do, they will have your address and also your photos to use to convince other victims that they are 'real'. You may not get a further response because they have what they want from you. Warning Signs to watch for Scammers use photos of models from modeling sites or from magazines. Scammers often ask for your address right away, or give you theirs. They want to communicate off site as soon as possible. Beware they may be building lists. The member has a hard luck story, they make you feel sorry for them, and they ask for help or money, or get you to offer it because you are 'such a nice person'. The member offers you money. They will do this to gain your trust. They will send counterfeit cashier s checks which will eventually bounce at your bank and get you into trouble. The member is from your country but travels for their job (working an oil rig, buying antiques, etc.). They have lost their ID and money and have been arrested or injured and urgently need money to get back home. The member is from Africa (especially Nigeria). There are large banks of computers with people paid to sit at the computer all day and scam innocent hard working people. It is a $100 million dollar business!! Africa is not within the Connecting Singles membership area, but sometimes they slip through registration. The member is from Russia or Ukraine. There are agencies that enter large numbers of fake profiles on dating sites. They use good looking pictures of women to scam lovesick men into sending them money to come to their country or to help them with their personal or family problems. The scam could also include credit card fraud, excessive charges to an affiliated travel company, etc. The photo is a fake and is not the person you are writing to. The girls are not real and you will never see the person you are writing to. Russia and Ukraine etc. are not within the Connecting Singles membership area, but sometimes they slip through registration. The member speaks or writes in very broken English. A lot of scammers will run their profiles through automated translators, and their profiles and s will sound very strange. Scammers, who don't know English, often do not even know what their s say. Sometimes, they will put the same letter in their profile narrative that they use to mass people with. (Note: some scammers speak English very well!). Many scammers copy their profiles from other real profiles so they will sound perfect. They use model photos or photos sent to them by past victims. Scammers often write flattering letters to people out of their age range, to those who have stated loneliness in their profile, or to recently widowed Scammers give you a lot of personal information right away making you comfortable and willing to share your own personal info with them. They will often make up a first and last name and put it in their profile, to make you feel safe. They will often use common names like "Greg Williams" or "Jane Smith" or "Kenneth Cole". If someone puts their first name and last name in a profile, it is probably a scammer!

4 Scammers wants you to leave the site to use personal or IM because it's so much easier may actually state they will not accept responses through this dating site. Mail to you is often poetic, sing-songy, pretty words with no meaning, general flattery, generic, does not directly address questions or concerns you have voiced or remarks you have made, uses a lot of seductive or pet nicknames for you instead of your name. They keep things general so they can send the same letter to many people (mass mail). Scammer gives you the name of another website and asks you to meet them there (ask yourself why when you are both here on a free site) or they will invite you to view them on a webcam or porn site. Be aware that some of these sites are setup only to gather personal info. You may be asked to enter your address, credit card information or other personal info. You may end up with spyware or a virus on your computer. Malcolm DeGennaro Nigerian scammers A romance scam occurs when a stranger pretends romantic intentions, gains the affection of victims, and then uses that goodwill to gain access to their victims' money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, accounts, and/or national identification numbers or by getting the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf. The majority of scammers are located in Africa especially West Africa: Nigeria (Lagos), Senegal and Ghana. Nigerian scam comes in many forms: 419 scam, when they offer to transfer millions of dollars into your bank account, or lottery scam, when they tell you that you've won something in some bogus lottery. However, Nigerian dating scam (or romance scam), besides just asking for money for their studies, sick relatives, etc. usually involves this scheme: the scammers upload fake attractive photos, in most cases of white people. They pretend to be the foreign specialists working in Nigeria or Ghana (usually originally from US and UK, but it may also be Canada, Australia or any other European country). After they establish some lovely correspondence with you, fall in love and maybe even send a couple of cheap presents, they will either:

5 a) be almost on their way to meet you, but something will happen to them: they will get robbed, beaten, get into the hospital, or other misfortune will happen and of course you will be their only contact to ask for financial help, or: b) tell you that their employer pays them with Money Orders, and they can't cash them in Nigeria. They will send you the Money Orders and ask you to deposit them into your bank account and then wire the money to them via Western Union. Usually they say to keep some money for your trouble. Needless to say, those Money Orders are no good, and not even worth the paper they're printed on. If you cash them or deposit them into your account, Money Orders will come back after few weeks as fraudulent and you will be responsible for paying back the money to the bank and sometimes even charged for passing counterfeit instrument. Nigerian scammer Roy Hudson. He speaks English very well and uses phone numbers: , and Nigerian scammer Matthew Dave Torres with his daughter Andrea

6 There is also a re-shipping scam, when they will ask you to re-ship goods for them. These goods are purchased with stolen credit cards. Never re-ship anything for strangers, especially to Africa. There is a reason why online merchants usually don't ship there. There are also military scams. For God sake, there are no American generals browsing dating sites and no military man will ever ask you for money. Then, there is a recovery scam - a scammer re-contacting you pretending to be FBI, EFCC or any other authority, telling he can help you recover your money... but for a fee, of course. And finally, there is a "stuck parcel" scam, when they supposedly sent you goods/gifts, but they got stuck somewhere on the way (for example, on the customs) and you have to pay to "customs"/bogus shipping company to get them. All types of scams are described in details on White people in Nigeria or Ghana contacting you on the dating sites or social networks as facebook are always 100% scam. No exceptions. There are no white engineers or female models stranded there. It is always scam. Nigerian scammer Tom Larry When we say "Nigerian scam", it doesn't mean it originates from Nigeria only. It may also originate from any other West African country, like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal etc... But recently Malaysia became a real hotspot for Nigerian scams. There is a huge Nigerian cell operating out of Malaysia, targeting mostly Asian women. Please keep in mind: all these white engineers supposedly from the UK, but appearing in Malaysia, with awful spelling are in reality Nigerian scammers. Where do scammers get their photos from? Many of their photos are taken from the modeling sites, like focushawaii, modelmayhem, newfaces, etc... Female pictures are almost always of the Internet porn models. But with male pictures, recently they started shifting from modeling pictures and mostly send pictures of ordinary men: either of their ex-victims or stolen from social networks, like myspace, tagged or facebook. You can visit new picture blog Scamdigger to see if a pic in question has been known to be used in scams. You should always keep in mind: the photos you see on the scammers profiles ARE NOT the actual faces of people who are scamming you! It is very important to understand that you are NOT looking at the photos of scammers, those are photos of innocent people that scammers use, and in a way those people are victims too.

7 Marco Miller, California - Fake Kenny Ajibola, Nigeria - Real The scammers have many faces: not only they frequently change names, s and photos, but they may list themselves on different dating sites as being of different gender, race, age, location and sexual

8 orientation. Sometimes on the opposite: many scammers may simultaneously use the photos of the same person, like for example the images of this poor guy: looks like half of Nigeria is using his photos. Richard Brown, California Fake photo Unknown name, Ghana Real photo

9 More scammers photos Victor Steven McGrath

10 Matthew Torres, speaks English and writes in English very well. He uses phone# John Freeman and his son. He speaks English very well

11 Ann Harry Burton, speaks English and writes in English very well. He uses phone# Richard Poole, he uses phone#

12 Linda Frankie Marco Pellegrini

13 Matthew Linville Alex Deminici" Cindy

14 Tagurit January Kisses Bobby

15 Fake passport What you can do The best thing to do is avoid these people, don't waste your time on them. Report them: FTC toll free hotline: 877-FTC-HELP ( ) FTC online complaint form (

16 Canadian PhoneBusters hotline: Internet Fraud Complaint Center ( To be continued ZK, BAA, INT