Romance scams

[NextDoorToAlice]

How can someone fall for a foreign love who they never met who wants money and more money and more money while making excuses not to meet while wanting more money.

There was something on TV this morning about a man who fell for a romance scam and lost 85000 pounds and his home and made himself homeless in the process.

My mother was watching this having the utmost of sympathy for him and I just kept thinking - he's a fool.

Surely if someone was to fall for something like that, what is the cut off point. Surely someone should have stopped after 50/100/250/500/1000 pounds. He stopped at 85000 pounds. It's too much. I can't believe he went on TV because what it looked like to me was that he found someone interested in him and he was trying to buy her love.

I remember getting a call from my phone company who wanted me to confirm my name which I did. Then he asked me to confirm my address and all hell broke loose over the phone with me shouting at him - 'How do I know that you are legitimate and that this isn't a scam....go f*ck you' and I hung up.

The people I’ve met are elderly and either: have noticeable learning difficulties, very religious, computer illiterate.

I just tell spam callers to hang on so I run up their bill and see how long they stay on call before giving up they don't call back lol

Good advice to remember is to 'tell two people' and 'take time to think'. If you're not willing to tell two people about the friendship, or what you are doing, then that's a sign you know in your heart of hearts something isn't right.
Don't think this just happens to other people. Scams are going to get even more problematic very quickly due to technology changing.
They play on our cognitive biases, so once they have you, they have you.

You are so right the scammers are run by organised crime and use many avenues to rip people off I do think the romance one is probably the worst as people are genuinely looking for love obviously vulnerable too loose the money is probably not as painful as the hurt they feel

Someone I knew did this. A man she met in Bali 'fell' for her. She gave him a lot of money to build their dream home in Bali. he actually had a wife and children and used the money to build them a home then asked for more. Even after she found out, she still gave him more money, set up a business with him. I found it bizarre that she continued to trust him. It dragged on for years.

Scammers are very clever about targeting peoples vulnerabilities. Sometimes it starts with a sick child who needs treatment, then a fire wipes out their income source, then the sick child gets worse... A kind and trusting person gets too worried about the person they have strong feelings for, to doubt them. Somebody rather callous and self-centered probably wouldn't get targeted.

The ones I find hardest of all to believe are when it's somebody posing as a rich, world-famous celebrity - and then their victims still believe they'll be desperate for a relationship with an unknown, ordinary person and also need their money.

That Brad Pitt scam for example: would you not stop and ask yourself why such a hugely successful Hollywood actor needs to 'borrow' money from Maureen in Wigan?

But, as has been said, they target vulnerable people and groom them. I suppose many of us would have some kind of vulnerability that a nasty person could potentially exploit (not necessarily just for financial gain) if they know which button to push... and this is their button.

The scammers are all pathetic cowards in reality - albeit dangerous and nasty ones.

I love it on Scam Interceptors when they manage to track one down and speak to them directly to confront them and give them personal info that they've managed to find out about them - often, you can almost hear them filling their smalls!

I think as @KitsyWitsy said upthread a lot of greed and delusion is often involved.

I don’t know if it’s the same one OP but I saw in the news a very old English man sent all his savings to some young pretty woman in Kenya or somewhere like that to “build a house” for the two of them.

Of course she promptly disappeared once she got all the money. Not even sure if they ever met in person. I’m sure he could’ve found a nice woman his own age at the bingo!

And I don't think £2k would cover the cost of fuel. Her mum gave her the money seems Brad Pitt is scammers choice of celebrity. I just can not fathom why anyone would fall for this, I can understand if it was nobody who engaged on line for a while to hook them and pull them in so they send them small amount of money, although I wouldn't, but then to send money again and again I just don't understand

Yes, this. You'd think that the online catfishing would try to avoid over-egging it, wouldn't you?

Maybe somebody 10-15 years younger than the victim and attractive, well-dressed and well-turned out, but not film-star beautiful... then the victim might think they were doing very well for themselves, but still within the spectrum of people who might also be attracted to them.

If even Leonardo DiCaprio, with all of his fame and money, struggles to find an endless supply of women under 25 who want to be with him, you do have to wonder why an elderly, overweight, plain-looking, unknown person would countenance the thought for a moment that a knock-out stunner/hunk who is 40 years younger than them might genuinely choose them for no other reason than true romantic, passionate love.

Spot on @SprayWhiteDung It’s like they have zero self awareness.

These 70 year old men are either foolishly convinced their boyish charm is what’s attracting a 30 year old attractive bubbly woman or they are well aware it’s transactional and are effectively trying to buy their partners.

Same goes for 60 year old women participating in sex tourism with 21 year old men in developing nations.

Who is exploiting who?

Sometimes they’re all as bad as each other.

This is about people pretending to be someone else, using their identity to engage with vulnerable people to rip them off both males and females, whilst the culprits sit in call centres targeting people

I had a work colleague who fell for these scams time and time again. He was mid 40s, desperate for a family and grieving a much loved father. He could not and would not see the scam. He was a very very kind and gentle man. Eventually he married a women he knew for a month. She needed a visa (not U.K) and she was pregnant immediately and had a premature baby. He didn’t care and was happy and is a brilliant “father”

Usually the call centre scammers don’t use pictures of 70 year old women to lure 70 year old men do they? Why not? Because these type of old men wouldn’t be interested!! They want 30 year old susie with no kids/grandkids.

Many of these “victims” are not particularly vulnerable. Not the ones I’ve seen interviewed in documentaries and news stories anyway.

As a pp said it’s like they feel they “deserve” more than the women/men they usually attract in terms of looks.

The scammers know they would be attracted to younger person and scammer targets them and makes first contact

Sadly most of it is loneliness and vulnerability

So true, they target over 50's who are looking for love, like they target older people with banking scams, my parents in 80's get loads of spam attacks trying to get bank details I work in this line of business so my mum just puts down phone and calls me. Most young people don't bother with landlines so scammers know if they call landlines chances are it's an older person

Maybe there’s even a nature or nurture link. My dad sent huge amounts of money to scammers (not romance ones in his case, plain old ‘let me use your bank account to release my inherited millions’ ones.) Then a month after he died, I believed a romance scammer and paid him money. I do think I was in a weird mental state. It was incredibly stupid and I knew, really, even when I was paying, that it was a scam. But part of me wanted so much for it to be true.

My dad not surprisingly didn’t have a pot to piss in. But he had something like £250 in his bank account when he died because he’d been in hospital, so had few outgoings. The scammer coincidentally asked me for £250 and that’s what I lost to him. Slightly freaked me out.

That's the trouble with technology all our data movements habits are in databases the scammers are always one step ahead whilst governments debate should they upgrade police systems etc

I worked with a woman who lost tens of thousands of pounds to a romance scammer. They’d never even spoken on the phone! No idea how they ‘met’ but it all came out when the police showed up at work. She was one of many.

They do it over computers scammers are set up in call centres abroad they approach multiple people on dating websites and find the ones who are easy targets. This is run by organised crime gangs as are scam calls for banking scams, mortgage scams

The scammers often trick you to install a Remote Desktop app which enables them to see what you’re doing on your device in real time. It’s not so much about databases being unsafe. These days there are very strict laws and regulations in place to safeguard people’s data - hence why you need to do a cartwheel and remember your old aunties second dog’s puppy’s name in order to access some of your stuff. But by tricking you in to downloading an app that gives access to your phone in real time, they can see what password you’re typing, they can change them, even go in to your banking app and apply for loans.

if you are idiotic enough to send money to some internet profile don't cry the victim when the money runs out and the profile disappears

you would not hand your life savings to a stranger in a pub who comes up to you n says I love you here's my sob story

so don't send it to a online profile because they said I love you here's my sob story

That Brad Pitt scam for example: would you not stop and ask yourself why such a hugely successful Hollywood actor needs to 'borrow' money from Maureen in Wigan?

Maureen doesn't want to ask herself this question, because she so desperately wants to believe it's true. The desire to believe the delusion is so powerful that it overrides reality.