What’s the scam?

[Whatdoyouthink01]

If you get a Facebook friend request from a good looking man from the US who you have no links with and has only one or two friends, what is going on?

Do they set up lots of different accounts using fake photos and try to lure you into a relationship for money? Why don’t they have more Facebook friends?

I had one request last night from a silver fox type from the US and one today from a male model from Rome.

I have blocked them but I am wondering what happens if you actually engage with them. Has anyone done this and what happened?!

I can’t work out how they would set up one Facebook account just to contact one person on the other side of the world on the off chance that person might one day give them money. How many accounts and contacts would they need to make it worth their while?

These are not a couple of blokes in an internet cafe, the scammers are huge operations very often run by organised crime - which is why it is IMO madness to bait them and get involved - and as someone said, bots can open hundreds if not thousands of accounts.

https://globalinitiative.net/analysis/compound-crime-cyber-scam-operations-in-southeast-asia/

A bot could send that friend request to umpteen thousands of random people a day. All it takes is for one gullible person to take the bait.

Exactly. Then that person is groomed to feel special and loved and cherished and thus it begins. These scammers are NOT working on their own, it’s big business and runs 24/7 globally.

I once saw a programme about a woman who thought she was in a relationship with the Canadian comedian Matt Rife (I think) and the host asked her what she liked about his comedy and she said she had never watched him perform!

How do these women think that Hollywood actors, military doctors, bridge engineers that travel internationally, diamond mine owners and so on are going to have anything at all in common with a twenty years older retiree from Idaho? What do they think they will talk about beyond how beautiful she is?

Why do you think they're only contacting one person? It's a scam crime group setting up thousands of profiles and contacting thousands of others. It's spam. If they have 'selected' you it could be due to age or if your profile says you're single.

It's been going on since the advent of Facebook and in other forms for hundreds of years!

You only need to consider how many posters to MN talk about their serious long term ‘relationships’ with people they have never met to see that there are plenty of idiots out there who are easy prey for romance scammers.

The scammers don’t look carefully at profiles, just check that women are single and some idea of age range. My profile says I’m an active pacifist, but I still get emails inviting me to connect with retired military men. I’ve had a couple where they have used the same AI generated silver fox type image.