To think some romance scam victims are simply stupid?

Never mind. I cannot do an in-depth treatise on narcissism. Take thinking that about yourself to a pathological degree, and being unable to care for another person, except for what they can give you. The others in your life are simply "suppliers." Replaceable. So long as you are getting what YOU need, it doesn't matter from whom. I've lived with this in the past. It's horrific, and utterly tears down your self-worth.

Actually, two narcissists would never marry, or wouldn't be married for long. Neither of them would supply the other with anything.

I've now watched several of the Catfished episodes. I'm amazed at the tall tales they fall for. The swindlers are always getting payment of millions in gold or something, if they can just get x amount of money to do y first.
Always being in terrible car accidents so they can't get in touch. Or been held hostage by pirates on their ship full of valuable cargo.
Bad earthquakes in London, and terrible internet. I mean London is a major global city, surely people will have some sort of notion that it's not in an earthquake region and that they probably have decent internet?

And yes again, the accents. If your paramour is allegedly from the midwest and the picture you have seen is of a lily-white bloke in a polo shirt, would it not ring alarm bells if he has an Indian or Nigerian accent?

I veer between pity for these obviously vulnerable, lonely, often widowed women, and total frustration at them.

Even the much younger woman that thought she was going out with Dacre Montgomery had apparently never heard of reverse image search.

I suppose the Tinder Swindler was slightly different in that he did actually appear in person to his victims, and some of them actually spent substantial amounts of time with him.

@cheezncrackers I mentioned Shirley Valentine in particular, because of that specific storyline. Maybe some people have this fantasy that they could do the same. Then when they go on holiday and meet a handsome young waiter who is all over them... they think their dreams have come true.

All the Hollywood ideal romance shit does, surely? I watched The Tinder Swindler last night and Cecilie, one of his victims said she watched Beauty and the Beast over and over. The romantic ideal that is presented to us by popular media is totally unrealistic, but we all know people who would describe themselves as 'romantics' and what it means is that they'll overlook any number of red flags if there is a chance that they'll get their happy ending, their romantic dream, their prince charming (rich, handsome, charming, attentive, bla bla bla).

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is.

Shirley Valentine has a lot to answer for...

We also mustn’t discount the fact that before the banks became tough and refused to refund the ‘scammed’ money, some of the ‘scammed’ were not the victims they made themselves out to be. So they ended up with two sets of money, the original amount sent by the bank, and the refund, which they could share with the destination account holder.

I seem to remember that one of the reasons for introducing PIN was that people couldn’t claim their cards had been stolen, and that false withdrawals had been made from their accounts. If the withdrawal used the PIN, it proved otherwise ( of course, the criminals have devised ways round this, I sometimes think that if we could persuade them to turn their talents to legitimate business, the world would be a good deal more prosperous).

Coat of Arms.
You're quite correct when you say presenters say 'it could happen to anyone '..
Well no it couldn't..It wouldn't happen to me. I'm not so guillable to

believe some chancer trying to bull me up.
Im watching these programmes thinking..Girl get a hold of yourself..
There must be a lot of lonely people out there

Becky Holmes Hates Spinach is well worth a look
https://twitter.com/deathtospinach/status/1733098585573499091?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

It’s the one’s who say they have spoken to their love interest/scammer on the phone that I really can’t understand. Can’t they tell that that is not an English or American accent but a strong African accent 🤦‍♀️

I think it's incremental. And if we can do away with the stigma of reporting, and the fear of being called stupid, more and more people will come out and talk about how they were scammed. The more people who expose these scams and how they work (the language used is always very similar, for example, with pet names being used instead of the victim's real name, lots of 'babe' and 'honey' and 'queen', presumably so the scammers don't slip up by using the wrong name), then the more the seed will be planted in other people's heads. It may be too late to save some people, but others might be helped, if they learn to just ask the right questions right at the beginning, and aren't afraid to ask for help if they start to doubt their 'intended'.

People believe what they really want or need to believe and can't be saved from themselves, sadly

True. But then why would you expect such a person to come forward ever? They’ll always make self-excuses for why they did the right thing.

I suspect that anyone who is deeply enough sunken into their delusion will simply read it and think 'ah, but those people are stupid, my Gerard Butler is the real one.'

Fair enough, but aren’t threads like this - that do call the foolish, foolish - doing the right thing? Anyone reading this who still wants to send money to Gerard Butler or Barry Gibb is beyond help. And their scammer is beyond reach.

I think with so many of these cases, the Sunk Costs Fallacy cuts in. People might start to think that there's something dodgy about Frankland from Ohio who says he loves you and is going to come and marry you but just needs $10k to pay for the gold he owns to be shipped.... but if you've already sent Frankland hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for that surgery his darling daughter needed... you've almost got to comply to keep up the pretence otherwise you have to admit that it was ALL a fraud.

And I think it's good not to villify the victims. Ok, we might think they're stupid and self-deceiving and all that, but if that attitude prevails, it stops people from coming forward and admitting what happened. And if just one person telling their story stops others from falling prey to the same story, it's worth it. If we spread the 'all scammed victims are stupid and greedy', then they all clam up and the true extent of the scamming doesn't become visible. Like violence, it needs secrecy to flourish, and opening it to the daylight of scrutiny can be to the good, which people won't do if they feel they will be villified or called stupid.

Not stupid but very sad, lonely, vulnerable, suggestable people who want to believe that someone loves them.

I see.

Because they thought it was only a temporary thing and then this mega rich guy who was so madly in love with them would get out of this little spot of trouble. And then the private jets and luxury holidays would start all over again.

If they were so greedy, why did they keep giving money?

I just watched this and what was interesting was when they said that scammers are everywhere on the internet, so a lot of times people aren't expecting to be scammed and aren't probably on their guard, because they're on the site to chat about a band they're into or a game they're playing, or whatever. As PPs have said - there are scammers on MN, there are scammers on FB - they're everywhere.

The other thing that was interesting was the subtle approach used on the woman Cindy. Her scammer got her into crypto currency trading on a dodgy platform and he let her seemingly make a lot of money, to draw her into investing more - but he never asked her for a penny. She was clearly a bright and successful woman who had made and saved a large amount of money during her working life, but she was at a really low point - cancer + marriage breakdown - so he caught her at a very vulnerable time.

I thought the same about the women taken in by the 'Tinder Swindler'. Lots of people felt sorry for them but I just thought they were greedy. They were blinded by designer clothes, luxury holidays and private jets, so didn't bother to engage their critical faculties.

Especially as Gerard Butler contacted her by FB messenger - the communication channel of choice for the fundraising A lister

😆

I saw one of these Kim Marsh shows where the victim was a retired police sergeant! And not one who’d retired twenty years ago and was getting a bit senile, she can’t have been more than sixty 😳

I think that was the silver fox American army surgeon type, where he fell ill in Afghanistan and needed to be hospitalised, and he needed her to cover the bill until he could transfer her the £££ from his savings account.

It seemingly never crossed her mind that surely the US army would pick up the tab for his treatment?

Most of these women being scammed are 'Rescuers'.
They have, more than most, put their own needs aside for others.

Either their kids have grown up and left or their husband has died or left.
They feel better about themselves when they are 'rescuing' others.

Rescuing is a defence mechanism whereby we can put our entire focus on somebody else in order to feeling in control of our own lives because our own feelings and pushed or 'parked' in order to obsess and ruminate about the other person.

It's a very very powerful dynamic and it takes a lot for people to reveal it to themselves because Denial works very well.

Rescuers get lovebombed very easily because they have always taken the role of looking after others and never caring for themselves.

Then when some bloke comes along and offers her all the caring they gave others.... well that's very tasty bait for her and she gets pulled in.

Especially as Gerard Butler contacted her by FB messenger - the communication channel of choice for the fundraising A lister