I am being catfished right now!

I had a message from a friend on Messenger, who very quickly started asking me for money as she was in a predicament and needed help.

I went along with it for ages - because the actual real friend was actually sat next to me in the pub! She’d been hacked. It was so funny playing the scammer along. I told them in the end I was blocking and reporting them as I knew they were a scammer, and they tried to call me!

And how is stringing the person on going to change that outcome, except not make anyone any money or hurt anyone else?

How would they hack your Facebook!

😂😂

I was thinking more of the big ‘call centre’ in Lagos (Nigeria) traced in a BBC documentary not so long ago.

I hate these people my best friend has an aunt in her sixties who has learning disabilities, this happens to get all the time on FB and she believes them. Luckily she has someone in the family who is in charge of her finances because inevitably they ask her for money. She's quite a character and a few times they've ended up blocking her as she messages them so much!
Yes OP waste their time, also report to whichever platform it's on.

Sadly I've had a few patients scammed. One was really abusive to me and the PCSO, as we were trying to talk her out of transferring £8k to her new "BF/carer", who wanted to come over from Africa to marry and look after her.

@WhamBamThankU

What was wrong with the man? Anyone would think he wasn't genuine........

While you entertain yourself with him he’s not bothering anyone else… but hope you post the conversations.

A writer I follow does this with spammers looking to edit and market his books - they are hilarious as the spammers English is so poor they can’t understand the piss take replies.

They're usually vulnerable women with mild learning disabilities that haven't got a formal diagnosis but clearly have some cognitive difficulties. They are often victims of domestic abuse

I'm quite sure many are but that doesnt account for the huge numbers who fall for it. If this was their only type of 'victim" there wouldnt be so many/widespread. Many people who fall for scams are educated and highly intelligent. Scams appeal to your emotions which is why they often bypass logic.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/09/romance-fraud-scam-common-perfect-victim-money

If more non-vulnerable people wasted these scammers time, they'd have to get a real job and contribute to society, rather than prey on it.

Auntie is a diminutive of aunt so can have ie not y.

I work in Adult Safeguarding. We regularly get cases like these referred in.

They're usually vulnerable women with mild learning disabilities that haven't got a formal diagnosis but clearly have some cognitive difficulties. They are often victims of domestic abuse.

When posters say they don't understand how others fall from it, they are coming from a very privileged position.

haha! I have had two of these and my profile clearly shows my husband in it!

The first was a "consultant surgeon" who lives in LA, also widowed, and has lots of cheesy filtered shots of a silver fox as his profile but he really likes me (despite me being a complete stranger in the UK)

The second is an attractive man quite a bit older than me who suggested he be my sugar Daddy and would buy me lots of designer bags/shoes/meals out and would love to spend all his money on me if I was to be his sugar baby (its just that to prove I'm serious, I have to transfer him £200 so he knows I'm "genuine").

Do people really fall for this horse shit? Both are now blocked. Go for it- string him along for as long as possible

He's from texts with pigeon English? Yes he's a scammer and you want to keep him occupied?

Whatever takes your fancy, but take care as
your fb may get hacked.

I'd dump and block, I dont need drama in my life.

And yes @qualitychat it's hard to know how people get scammed but some people are more vulnerable....

PS If really pedantic, it would be Aunt, no 'y' !

I actually knew one of these scammers in real life.
Bloke came from a family well known for their distillery business back home. Family money. Mum was always turned out beautifully. Gucci this, gucci that, brand new Mercedes bought directly from Germany in cash.
The family business was where money was coming from but the boys were all so hard working.

Turned out the business was actually love scams. They were found to be working in a group of 10 and they'd scammed so many women, and had so much money I could've believe.

His wife was not best pleased either.

Aunty - singular
Aunties - plural
Aunty's - (pertaining to/belonging to aunty e.g. 'my aunty's head fell off [thank you for that gem, will use infuture])
Apologies, this isn't entirely relevant to topic, but for some reason, Auntie has become the norm instead of Aunty, and it's just...grrr!

He'll probably say he doesn't like ABBA.

No one is saying pay the scammers? You don’t have to feel anything for them. Just block and move on.

I had a primary school friend of mine fall for this, the man was German or Swedish. To this day I’m still not 100% sure if he was scamming her or how he did it as he was very clever. But what man in their 20s/mid 30s at guess wants to date a mid 40s
mother and grandmother from Croydon?!

This friend had I think some learning difficulties but it was only when she was posing in semi pornographic poses on Instagram and messaging me loads there too that I got annoyed with her and said I don’t want to see your boobs on my feed! I ended up blocking and deleting her. Saw her by chance a few months later in a shopping centre with no engagement ring like he’d promised her and she looked down so I felt sorry for her, we exchanged a few words but I didn’t want to get into a long chat. If you’re single or divorced on Facebook or Instagram it’s so easy for these men to target you. I’ve been “conned” once but luckily realised after a week and then warned all my friends about it.

At the end of last year, we had to convince my friend's mother that the guy she was supposedly meant to be collecting from the airport for Christmas, wasn't actually coming. She would not have it, he did have her 100 believing he was real.

So we searched the guy in the pic so that we had as much proof as possible. The guy whose pic had been stolen now has all the stolen photos clear on his own profile. On it he says that the pics have been stolen and he is leaving it up to make woman being catfished to be aware of it. The problem is that they stole photos of him with his children as well, so even his children's photos were out there.

Thankfully this worked to let friends mum realise, but she's gone into quite a deep depression since.

I am ok with playing along with them, as I know they are not real. I bet loads of women do in fact. But sadly they are still able to extract funds from the most vulnerable.

Amazing that anyone would care about the scammers instead of their targets. 🙄

I had a few, on Pinterest of all places.

I was playing along with one, also from Austin (seems a good place by the amount of times it gets chosen). Engineer, in oil industry, widowed, one child blah blah, the usual.

But all my replies were song lyrics. He clearly didn't know any of the songs, and ended up blocking me 🤣

I was very bored that day. Gave myself plenty earworms though .

What ? ..... you mean ... my Keanu ? 😩🙃