Are you looking for that special someone to spend holidays and cuddle on rainy days with? Let’s face it – the older we get, the desire of companionship grows, and the thought of dying alone can be daunting. After failed attempts at meeting people in bars and at parties, that guy in the office who was deemed absolutely repulsive is starting to look more like George Clooney. Snap out of it.
With the growing popularity of online dating, success stories from websites such as Match.com and OkCupid.com give you hope of finding love with a click of a button, and there have been many great relationships that have sprouted from them.
So you get home from a long day of work, pour yourself a glass of wine and decide to sign up on one of these Internet dating sites. You go through a series of questions that seem to be never-ending, but alas, you’ve reached the road to finding love, hopefully.
In 2011, online dating scams cost victims a reported $50 million. We at Scambook urge you to take extreme precaution when you do meet someone through one of these online dating sites. Scambook users have reported over $1 million in total reported damages from online dating sites.
There are tons of sites out there, so stick to the ones with nationally-known reputations, such as Match.com, eHarmony and Chemistry.com. But do remember that phonies are able to register on those sites, so don’t let your love goggles fog too much and impair your judgment.
Here’s a wrap-up of the tell-tale signs of an online dating fraud:
– Professes his/her love for you instantly.
– Sends you a picture that looks like it came from Google Images.
– Claims he/she is receiving a hefty inheritance “very soon.”
– Claims to be from the U.S., but is traveling or working overseas at the time.
– Makes promises to visit you, but “unexpected circumstances” arise
– Asks for money for reasons such as hospital bills, travel or health emergencies, or official documents such as a passport or visa.
Check out this Scambook user’s complaint, and we highlighted some of the warning signs for phony online daters:
I met Charlie on okcupid. we spoke for 2 weeks, never met, then he had to leave the country to take care of some stuff for his late dad. he was to inherit 260k. He told me that the bank said he need to pay some money. He said his son was sending him money. his son sent me the western union paper. Then western union wasnt working, so he asked me. I sent 4k to his attorney bank in Maylasia. Then he was still having issues getting the full 14k he needed. I was not going to send anymore money. I told him this was stressing me out and to not contact me until he got home back to the states. He finally came home, but was caught in customs and needed money again. Again I did not give in. I know he is a fraud. I started to catch him in lies. During this time I had also set up an account for him to send the money. He never did. He wanted my user password and name. I would not give him that information. He knows I know he is a fraud. Lucky I only lost 4k.
If this has happened to you or someone you know, make sure to spread the word and share your experience with others and submit a complaint here.
Sources: FBI.gov
See Also
Online Dating Scams: Women Over 50 Most Likely to be Victims
How to Date Online and Avoid Scams on Valentine’s Day 2013
Casual Dating in the Internet Culture: Grouper, Instagram, Facebook and You
Total sleeze bucket scam artist. Got me for $3,100.00 Anyone else run into this a-hole?
I am being asked by a malaysian girl living in lagos to give her money for a so called travel allowance to leave the country and fly to london ,i have sent her money before and had nothing back ,is this a scam?
Obviously it is a scam – fingers off.
Definitely a scam. Do NOT fall for it.
Yes It’s a SCAM…grab what money you have left and Run as Fast as You Can away from this person…Don’t ever contact her again no matter how much money you send SHE WILL NEVER BE THERE WITH YOU
i too have been either given a runaround when attempting to cancel, been charged for service I did not order, beefn charged additional because I failed to uncheck a previously checked box on an obscure pager or line not easily noticed. Yes I read their disclaimer. All eighteen pages. So what. I had print copies of all my e-mails to them and went to the bank and had the charge reversed. And I pay by debit which you think would be harder. No company ever contested my reversal. I am not an attorney and this is not legal advice. It’s merely te way I handle despicable companies. Since then I have done the following. I opened a checking account,with zero overdraft protection, which use solely for Internet purchases. I keep a small amount in the account and when making a purchase I transfer the exact amount from my regular checking to my Internet checking. That way if the following month they attempt to charge you for an unwanted item there wont be enough funds to process the transaction. Make sure your bank won’t charge you an NSF fee. Mine doesn’t. It works for me.
I’m talking to supposedly a British woman who live in Ibadan, Nigeria.
She said she wants to get out of here but needs these health tests :
Hiv Test, tiphoid test, Ebola V test, Malaria test, tuberculosis test.
Because she’s been there for 2 years. Is it true that you need these tests to get out of the country if you’ve been there for 2 years, and that it can cost as much as 3-4000 UK pounds ????
Dont be fooled by this person she is a scammer similar to what i met she is out for your money only.
I know what i am talking about because my story is on scambook
These scammers should be put in prison for what they do
Cut and run is the expression because any person aswking for money is untruthful
I met this girl from russia,she somehow got my email address and scammed me out of $2500.she said that she had a work visa and is coming to the USA and needed money for plain ticket and after emailing each other and talking of love and gaing my trust I gave it to her,said she was stuck in moscow and needed my help,when she got the money by western union,than she was gone,never heard from agian
This sounds so familiar to what happened to me. Only the con artist claimed to be from US going to Greece for work to put together the interior of a hotel. We communicated for 7 months. Said he believed in love at first sight; talked of true love & how much trust he had in me; said he loved me & that God sent me to him when he needed me. Proposed to me. Told me once his job was completed he would return to states so we could be married and start our life together. After job was completed he was unable to get back to states. Couldn’t cash his payment check because of what was happening in Greece with financial crisis. Asked me to send him money to pay his hotel bill; loan he had taken out & to buy flight ticket back home. Asked for $6K. I was not able to; however I did send him a total of $300 to help him buy food to eat being he was not able to return to the states (as I did not have money to bring him back). On several occasions told me he was tired of life and was going to kill himself because he no longer wanted to be in Greece. He kept begging me to send him money. I received an unusual public response from a woman he attempted to contact via Facebook. When her response to his message asked him who he was and why he was contacting her. I knew then that I had been taken advantage of. When I confronted him he denied everything. After that all communication stopped & I was out $300.00 & left with a broken heart.
After what I experienced, I become more closed. I am a person who is always suspicious of people I’ve known. And I always prayed I’d found a massive true love. and hopefully I found it.
who knows Paul (Peder) Magnus? He has account on FB under paulpeder64, is listed in US dating-line “Wayn” with Paul Magnus and has
account at KissNoFrog with paul_magnus64. He’s obviously a romance scammer. He send me the typical mails, that he loves only me, want to stay with me for ever until death, want to marry me. His profile: male, 47 years, divorced, 1 son 8 y, is born in Sweden, speaks english and swedish, now lives in Texas (Texasville) and want to relocate to Sweden within this year. Now he’s in Belgium (?) for 2 -3 w for business and then wants to visit me. I don’t believe him anything anymore. His emails are in a quite good englisch, yesterday he phoned me and I hardly could understand him, what confirms to me, that he’s not the person he pretents to be, then he send me a mail and the english was like before – maybe 2 persons? Who knows this man – of course goodlooking.
I had a similar experience, said his name was Garry Davis James even sent me a picture of his son. Lives in Washington but when he gave me his number me being suspicious checked the area code and found that it was from NC, then did a reverse phone number check and found the phone was issues to a different name. Alarm Bells!!!! So when he called I was sure as the accent was not from Washington. There was a second attempt to contact me and this time from Peter Smith in the UK. Another alarm bell. SO I sent an email saying that I was not an idiot and had no money blocked him from facebook an email. Not even 5 minutes later I checked his facebook page and lo and behold it was no longer there. I was lucky so ladies please beware.
Hi, I’m Isabelle from Luxembourg. This guy Paul Paul (on FB) is writing me right now 🙁 He said, he lives in Belgium, Europe! Belgium is close to Luxembourg, so I asked him to come to visit me!!! But he’s very busy…. His father is from Sweden, his mother from Greece; both are dead. He’s a son who lives with the mother in the US. I never trust this kind of men; he was in love with my picture, but he did not accept my friendship on FB! I told him, that I’m a police officer and I asked him, if he’s from the NIgerian Connection? He was very angry….
I think it’s the same guy!
My experience with the U.S. Army from Afghanistan
I was asked to apply for leave permission, then I get a reply that for the moment there are no permits are allowed to leave but only permanent leave. because I love the wrong people, I finally agreed to pay a sum of money in the procedure,. and I’ve paid for it but he did not appear. It’s a great lesson in my life. I hopefully will not experience it again.
Hello,
When a person has their computer go on and offline continuously is that a tell tale sign of a scammer? Do they have a particular email that is unique to them is their a place I can lookup possible scammers and are they added daily to a list? lost money through worldpension plus any links to investment advice and safeguards. Romance scam too.
in http://www.asiandating.com many people who verify his or her ID. Whether the person is guaranteed the truth of their identity?
I want to put the name (Ikemefuna Temi Abasili) of the man who scammed me on the web. He caught me on Match.com. It started out, he was Rome born from the UK in the US on business (his alias). I got suspicious the 2nd night when he asked for a small donation for his daughter’s cause at UK boarding school. I confronted him, and he disappeared for a few days. When he resurfaced again he “came clean” that he was an African man (later he revealed from Nigeria). I should have discontinued all contact with him then, but didn’t…my humanity wouldn’t let me…big mistake (take warning). We talked and first I sent money for food; he said he hadn’t eaten for days. Sending money continued for this and that, to include money for treatment for an illness, till almost a year and a half later, when I could finally send no more…my credit was maxed & I was emotionally drained from caring too much, getting nothing in return. It will now take years to pay off the credit card debt I accumulated for caring. I just hope some one just met someone & will heed the warning these words contain. Walk away…don’t care…chances are you can’t afford it. In case he is still practicing this same scam the email address he used was [email protected] or [email protected] I also saw a cross_rizzo 51 & cross_rizzo61. He speaks English pretty well with an English/French/African accent. UK. He sounded sincere in his declarations of monogamy, care & love for me….but it was part of the scam…
I was scammed by Eric Darkovich…does anyone heard of him?
I was scammed by Daniel Harry, US ARMY in kandahar afganistan. And I get another one that leads to a scammer named Fred Rich Moore from UK.
http://www.zorpia.com/mini#!FREDMOORE
http://www.zorpia.com/charlesnn41
about US ARMY in afganistan,
just beware with this person
[email protected] and [email protected]
I really found the hard way… Any one can be “he” or “she’, I felll for it
Her name was Ella Pierre did everything to convince me she wanted to Join me,$400 later I realized “it was a man” A scam artist from Nigeria.
They are the most agressive coniving scam artists…. Bastards…………
Don’t ever never send no money to no one under any conditions,,, Never..
I lost almost $ 6000 USD 😀
This lesson is very meaningful to me. and made me more careful. because the webcam was not able to guarantee the truth of one’s identity
Beware of a man named Rodney Kelsey, he claims to be a 60 yr old widower, who tragically lost his wife and also lost his daughter to cancer. According to messages sent to me, he has a Phd degree in architecture and is a building design engineer. He has a grandson named Joel who attends college in the UK, he is 16 yrs old, when I asked him about his age and attending college already, he told me he had attended high school in Canada, and was a very bright young man. He seemed to be very intelligent, but I did notice several misspelled words, and his punctuation was a little whacky, especially the use of capital letters where they shouldn’t be used, I also noticed the use of words were a little strange as if someone who spoke a foreign language was attempting to speak in English. I did a search on this guy and found under an anti-scam website called SisterAct where he had reported to several women a very similar life story, but there were small details that were different, for instance he wrote to one woman that he had a son by the name of Joel, but in the message he sent to me he referred to Joel as his grandson. I have also found it to be interesting that these “suspicious” guys seem to have either no family, or very little familly and if they have family like cousins or aunts or uncles they are always not close or haven’t been in contact for years, there is always no one to turn to but you! I was taken for over 4000.00 usd by a previous scammer on a dating website, so I was a little more cautious this time. He eventually asked me for money because “his bank account had been suspended, and he needed 500.00 to send to his grandson in the UK, that morning. When I told him I could not send him money, he tried several times to convince me, I finally asked him if he was aware that his name was listed on an anti-scam website, he acted shocked and wanted to know where I had gotten my information. I told him and that was the end of him. I’m so thankful I did not get caught up in his scam. Ladies, I’m in my late 50’s and on the market again after being married for 26 yrs. I live in a small rural town, not much opportunity to meet men, the internet is a wonderful tool, and I know that many have found love via the internet, but please proceed with caution. I have learned much through this experience, I didn’t have 4000.00 to give, and I’m like the lady who wrote previously in that it will take me years to pay that amount of money back. It has not prevented my online search for love, but it has made me much more aware of men who seem so eager, and it has made me a lot more cautious, and I’ve decided I will never give money to anyone again!