To think some romance scam victims are simply stupid?

Agree! There are so many warnings about people like this and yet women still fall for it!
They wouldn't go out in the street and give a stranger thousands of pounds, so why give it to someone online they've never met!

A bit like gambling. The money's gone but you keep trying to win it back, losing even more in the process.

I have also had 'Jason Statham' slide into my DMs...

I’ve not watched this particular episode but when I have watched some I find it so frustrating and hard to fathom.

One case I watched the woman thought she was in a relationship with an American soldier and then she spoke to him on the phone and mentioned to him that he sounded Nigerian and he said to her that his accent had changed as he’d been stationed in Nigeria. It’s beyond ridiculous.

In another case the police came to the woman’s house and explained it was a scam but she didn’t believe them and kept sending money.

I don’t get the psychology. I think it’s like chasing a sunken cost. They must know on some level but can’t face it. So keep going further in.

It must be so frustrating being the relatives of people sucker in.

The lost dog/ missing grandad posts on FB are often used to see who’s gullible enough to share them on face value.

There are some very sophisticated scams out there - I had one claiming to be from O2 that even I was unsure about - and i work in FCP - but many are very easy to see through.

Watching it now - christ! lied to the police about what the money was for

It's absolutely predatory from women in these cases. The balance of power is there

Sometimes I am stunned by male vanity and ego.
Dr Phil interviewed a very ordinary late 50s man who had been catfished.
They tracked down the gorgeous young woman whose photo had been stolen from her Instagram account (and not for the first time) and she came into the studio to share her experience. I don't think the old boy wanted to believe she wasn't the woman he'd been chatting to online.
The clever part: the woman's young handsome muscly well-dressed husband was in the audience, but I don't think the older man thought for one minute "ah yes, he's the kind of guy she'd go for".

I did 😁 To a Captain in US army stuck in ME 10 years ago. I know where they must have gotten the contact and idea I had money from. They emailed specific brand new email I used when helping mum sell our old house. Which goes against the knowledge that it's numbers game but it genuinely was very specific email (based on house location) and not used anywhere else outside of 2 websites with sale ads. What even more ridiculous is that it wasn't english speaking country which was very clear from the ".countryshort".
I asked him to send a nude.

We're compensating victims of crime. It's the criminals who are costing us money.

I have sympathy for people who fall for phishing scams and get conned by sophisticated looking emails / websites (even though there are numerous guides on how to spot these).

I have sympathy for people who are panicked into giving money to someone - "your computer is hacked / your bank account is frozen" etc. Even though anyone who has their faculties and who pays attention should know it's a scam.

I find it very difficult to have sympathy for people who, despite being warned by family, friends, banks, police etc, STILL persist in sending money. At that point, it's your own silly fault IMO.

I work for an investment managers and deal with financial crime and money laundering.

Many of the frauds are not at all sophisticated and Stevie wonder could see they were scammers but there’s people we've contacted warning we believe they’re at risk of being scammed and they totally ignore our advice and hand their cash over anyway.

We've had cases where we’ve frozen someone’s account for their own good and they’ve told us they want the freeze removed and still make payments we’ve told them categorically not to.

So yes there’s a lot of naivety but also a refusal to listen.

Do you think there is nothing predatory about an older woman, from an affluent country, getting with a man who is much younger from a poor country, and needs a visa or money? That there is nothing predatory about the young women who extort these older men? Just like the young men do to the older women? They are also saying you’re handsome, gorgeous, the sex is the best, you’re so special. After the initial introductions, it’s the same shit. Same lines. Just some go to real extremes.

I saw a Dr Phil on this.
Apparently the initial messages with the bad spelling etc. are a form of screening test for the scammers.
People to respond to these are more likely to be gullible and a mark. They do it on purpose so as to focus on those.

A lady on one episode believes she was sending money to Gerard Butler 😳

Even if they are "stupid", the scammer is the one who is responsible for stealing from them. Old men being predatory towards young women is a seperate issue.

Well, yes. PPs have expressed sympathy for scam victims seriously affected by loneliness, but these people never seem to be reeled in by average-looking love prospects!

It's never some 65-year-old bloke who looks like a potato promising endless love if you'll just help him get his car fixed.

Sweet Bobby was particularly weird because iirc, it wasn't about money. It was literally some manipulative sadist doing it because she could. Bobby was also a real person and she met him at some point although he was a complete innocent.

I think the fact that that happened within a strong religious/cultural community probably helped it to seem more legitimate. I never got the impression the victim was stupid even if she did act foolishly there.

Not a romance scam, but my vulnerable young adult DS who has ASD, was taken in by a phishing email for a 'covid passport' asking for his bank details etc. They then rang him, pretending to be his bank, saying there were some suspicious transactions on his account. Of course there were, they had bought some stuff using his card details.

They were very convincing, sending him text message that appeared to come from the bank, (the same number as genuine bank messages) trying to get him to approve a massive 'bit coin' purchase in his app. When I twigged what was going on, we called the actual bank fraud line (from the landline rather than his mobile) and got his card stopped. The words used by the real fraud people were almost identical to the scammers. It was really scary and not at all obvious initially.

My understanding is that those who are fooled by the phishing emails are usually already vulnerable, so worth the effort for the scammers to continue getting more money out of. It's very difficult with someone his age, early 20s, who is an adult and entitled to his own privacy around emails and banking, but also vulnerable to this sort of thing. Hard to find the balance.

I enjoy watching this programme and am astonished every day that people send this kind of money to people they have never met. Some of the stories are ludicrous, the lady today believed her “DP” had been kidnapped by Russian gangsters 😳
And the old men who think a 20 something is interested in them for something other than money.

I have been scammed financially, not romantically, I was super busy, distracted and was waiting for a Post Office parcel where the stamps hadn't been paid, so when an email turned up saying this, I immediately paid it. After about an hour, I started to think that's odd, and then I got a call from the fraud department at my bank telling me this was a fraud and going through the likely transactions, however it turned out this was a fake bank fraud centre and I was kept on the phone to allow the fraudsters to take several thousand pounds. I did get the money back from my bank, eho believed I was not in on the scam. I felt very very stupid as I handed over my details myself. So I try not to judge romance scams but it is hard!

Strong answer.

Good lord.

The victims want to believe it, simple as that.
There are some very interesting podcasts such as Sweet Bobbi, Scamanda and Million Dollar lover, that show how people from any walk of life can fall victim.

I explicitly said that I thought our view was more intelligent, so massive applause for noticing. What you failed to realise was the number of posters bigging themselves up by putting down scam victims... you noticed only the comment that suggested you were perhaps not being super duper smart and found that objectionable, although for all your fury, you never actually said why.

I'll grant that I've no idea why you think I'd care that you think it was cringeworthy (MN's most overused and meaningless shot after "narcissistic"), but it's OK - it's the kind of ignorance I can totally live with.