To say more should be done to stop romance scammers

[nctoday1]

I was really upset to find out that my best friend, an intelligent and amazing woman had fallen victim to a prolific con artist who pretended to be someone else and took money from her.

This man has now been arrested but now I know his real identity and have looked him up online, I can see lots of articles about him and that he's been to prison already for these kind of crimes and he's had convictions for scamming dozens of vulnerable women. He was breaching restrictions to stop him having extra computers and phones, but it didn't stop him scamming my friend and other woman at the same time. He'd even been in trouble for getting hold of phones and contacting new targets from prison.

I think more needs to be done to stop this kind of thing. I was suspicious of him as he told stories about himself I thought were probably made up, but I couldn't find anything out about him because he wasn't using his real name.

It's one of those things where you think it'd never happen to you or you know you're suspicious of strangers and think you could never fall victim. But my friend was exactly the sort of person you'd think this wouldn't happen to, but the man spent a long time convincing her of his fake identity before he moved in and started taking money from her.

Is there anything you think can or should be done to prevent people like this from continuing with their vile scams? I'm angry and upset to see the effect this has had on my friend and she's just one of many victims of this con man and there are many others like him.
Does anyone know if there's anything already where identifying pictures of romance scammers and con artists can be checked?

A friend is being ensnared right now..he's a lonely 65 yr old gay Christian man , troubled and seeking a spiritual and physical relationship .He's been hurt badly and taken advantage of before by younger men , but now is deeply 'in love ' with very handsome young American airman stationed in Africa ...they met via a Christian dating site and have lots of long emails about God and religion, but already this character has started using manipulative techniques to keep my friend on tenterhooks .No requests for money yet, but petulance and silent treatment over minor disagreements until my friend pleads forgiveness . The photo this guy sent was of a young , chiseled jawed very handsome man in uniform. Lotsnof alarm bells ringing..talk of a future together , plans for holidays.. We're staging an intervention on Sunday!

I'm a little bit surprised by how many people think the blame/responsibly lies with the person who's been conned but fair enough.

I know that she'd met him on a dating site a long time ago, had met up but nothing had developed and then years later he got in touch saying he'd just moved back from another county and this time the relationship took off and became what she was led to believe was very serious.

What I think I'm trying to say is there's something seriously wrong with convicted fraudsters who are supposed to be on licence with restrictions and being monitored being able to carry out the same scam on loads more people.

I don't think fraud gets looked into anything like enough. Whether it be things like this or the calls my gran kept getting from dodgy people claiming to be roofing specialists telling her that her roof was about to fall down and she must immediately pay them to fix it (luckily she didn't)

But how do you genuinely think they can be stopped?

It's terrible. A friend of mines stepdad was talking to a lady and sending her money for random situations she found herself in. I reversed google searched her photos which came down to loads of scam warnings and stories etc. We sent them all to him but wouldn't heard a word of it and lost £10k in the end. It was her deceased mums money he inherited.

My parents' estate is set up as a trust partly for this reason. In case one dies before the other a scammer can't persuade the survivor to part with very much in the way of assets.

I'm surprised that this is still happening. Someone tried it on me in August 2005. Some 15 years ago now, but even back then the internet wasn't new. I believed in the first 2 or 3 emails that he sent, then I started to spot patterns in his writing style. I entered some of his phrases on Google (yes Google was around back then!) and it gave me other people's accounts citing similar canned emails. From accounts where the victim lost money, and those who got suspicious early on and thus didn't divulge any personal info.

If the scammer got far enough in the scam, they end up with the required travel documents (with the help of the victim) and then they start a new life in the new country. Back in 2005, it was called the "travel and VISA scam", while keeping romance as the main theme.

You say that you thought he was dodgy and tried to warn your friend, but she wouldn't listen. Your friend wouldn't have listened to anyone else then would she? People do have to take responsibility for themselves ultimately

All the people saying "she should have known better." Well, all that tells me is a "yearning to meet the right person" isn't your particular weak spot.

But everyone can be scammed - not the same type of scam for everyone, obviously, but somewhere out there is a scam you'd fall for in the wrong circumstances at the wrong time.

Half expecting a phone call from your bank because you think your card might have been skimmed in a shop, and as chance would have it, that's the point at which (random bad luck) one of the scammers who does the "this is your bank calling, we've noticed some suspicious activity on your account, we need to transfer the bulk of the funds into a holding account to make sure it doesn't get touched while we check out the irregular activity, can you give your permission for the transfer?"...

Or you occasionally, but not routinely, handle invoices for your firm and one of those "please check this invoice for us and follow it up" spam emails drops into your inbox. You don't handle invoices all the time, so you don't immediately think "that doesn't look right", but you do have to cover for a colleague from time to time, so it's not beyond all likelihood that you'd have to handle an invoice. But because you don't do this all the time, you don't spot that this is the one with the malware link that freezes your computer system till you pay up in bitcoin...

Or a scammer catches you with a "your mobile phone bill hasn't been paid" text when you're trying to cope with a close relative ill in hospital and a crisis at work and a crisis at your child's school and you just think "shit, I'm so stressed I've dropped a ball somewhere" and authorise payment...

Or... or... or...

There's none of us wouldn't fall for a scam that just happened to press our hot buttons. It's just that our own hot buttons may not be the same as everyone else's. So it's easy to be smug about romance scams if that's not what you personally would fall for. But stop and have a think about what you might fall for before feeling too smug.

(The invoice one I got at work - fortunately I never handle invoices as part of my job, so was immediately suspicious. But the actual email itself looked pretty damn plausible to me.)

Agree 100% @DianasLasso

I’ve read that they think that fraud is underreported as many people are embarrassed to have been taken in. These attitudes explain why.

This happened to my 75 year old vulnerable mum. Scammers got over £11k from her. In her case they were caught and once COVID is over will be tried in court. She will hopefully get her money back.

Those of you saying that people need to take responsibility for themselves are not seeing the whole picture. These people are evil, they exploit people's vulnerabilities - in DM's case, she was a lonely lady with MH problems looking for a bit of companionship. She totally believed all the stories, fake pictures, promises to meet. It was only when my DB got hold of her computer that we found out the scale of the fraud.

There is a difference though between being taken in by someone you’ve met in person and someone you’ve never met who claims to live in a foreign country and is away on military service....

People get taken in even if they’ve been married for years, so that is understandable.

But talking to someone online and then parting with money, not just a fiver here and there, but thousands and thousands should scream dodgy to anyone who falls for it.

I play a game called dice world. On there there is a chat facility, and over the past few months I was chatted to by a few, all of whom claimed to be widows, working off-shore, wanting to take communication off the site to somewhere called google hangouts which I’ve never used...

And they’re all such charmers. “Oh you sound like such a lovely person/I just love talking to you/I’d really like to get to know you more.” Thing is, it’s the smooth talking of the internet, and all those lines are just so over-used that I can’t believe anyone falls for them in this day and age.

I used to string them along until they talked of going offline, oh and the one who messaged me and when I didn’t reply said that he was upset that I hadn’t messaged him and why not. But after that I would block them, then I got fed up with it as I’m only on there to play the game and waste time, so I turned off the chat facility.

Every single story i've read of romance scammers, i've thought how could you fall for that?
Yes, this, as bad as it sounds. My old nanny was scammed by a guy. She was late 50's, he was mid 20's, they did not share a culture or even a language, but he swore undying love for her and proposed on the second or third date.
I spoke to her several times, but she got super defensive as all that she heard in my words was "you're not worthy of love, old cow". I really, really could not get through to her.
I unfortunately had to say goodbye to her as my spidey senses were in an overdrive - when she started asking whether she can bring him over to my place. 6 months later, she was scammed of her life savings, presumably paying for their wedding.

ilovecranberries What was the eventual outcome?

we had a relative who got scammed, very proper middle aged widow, met him through a shared interest - might even have been bridge - she married him, we thought he was a bit of a fantasist but she hadn't told us the half of it. Evidently he was in the secret service (which she couldn't tell her family, naturally )and had to go off and serve Queen and country for weeks on end. He was an ex military type, called himself "major" 'John Doe'.

She only found out the truth when he had a heart attack while away, she was contacted, rushed across country to be at his bedside only to discover another wife already there. You really couldn't make it up. He was a bigamist and she was wife 2. She had set up joint accounts with him (first husband had left her comfortably off) and he had stripped them.

It happens to perfectly sensible, ordinary people, these scammers are pretty convincing.

I know a woman who was badly scammed. Was stealing her money, poisoning her and faked a break in to her house when it all started crumbling around him.

He served a prison sentence and she went public with her story and she was contacted by other women.

It does happen and he was quite unusual in his MO, so I don’t believe they are able to spot. They are professional liars.

Evidently he was in the secret service (which she couldn't tell her family, naturally hmm )and had to go off and serve Queen and country for weeks on end. He was an ex military type, called himself "major" 'John Doe'.

They're always in the secret service or the SAS!

(I knew someone in RL who claimed to be ex SAS, also claimed that Osama Bin Laden had been one of his porters for an expedition to K2 back in the days when the Mujahadeen were our pals against the Russians... Being a climber, I asked him about the expedition. Amazing how fast he changed the subject once he realised that I was likely to know far more about it that his bullshitting could cope with.)

The scammer I knew was ex SAS. he claimed he was one of the officers in the Iranian embassy raid.

@Nicknacky
That was it, we weren't in touch anymore. I know only that she had transferred him a significant sum of money to arrange a wedding abroad (his home country), he allegedly went to organise it and that was it. I know it only because she called me and told about it.

ilovecranberries Thats sad but unfortunately far too common.

This thread is full of victim blaming. These people are criminals. They are professional manipulators. It's hard not to fall victim to grooming as these people are good at it.

OP I read a book a while back about a Scottish woman who was targeted by a bigamist/conman. It was essentially a form of mind control in the end. From what I remember he’s carried on with similar crimes after being released from jail.

It's amazing how many of them seem to claim this but the guy my friend was scammed by was of course "secret services" too. But of course he never said the words secret services- he just gave every euphemism for it possible to make sure he left absolutely no doubt as to that being what he was claiming. I thought my head was going to fall off it sounded so ridiculous to me but he'd got her so hoodwinked by then it made no difference what I thought.

Honestly op I think it comes down to people educating themselves about good healthy relationships

I would never give money to a boyfriend of several months even where we had known each other in person for all the time. It’s really not long enough and the fact that he even asked would set off all kinds of alarm bells

That to me is something that a good person in a loving healthy relationship but one that has not reached the commitment of marriage yet would ever ask their partner to do.

There needs to be a mindset change. There was a thread on here recently about how being single needs to be seen as a valid choice. People also need to vet prospective partners and have firm boundaries and expectations. There’s a great reddit sub called female dating strategy which has lots of info about that kind of thing. It also talks about working on yourself to make sure you’re in the right place to think about getting into a relationship.

I do feel for your friend. It must be horrible and she is clearly a lovely trusting person.

I could have been in this situation - however it ended the minute he asked me for money. Sorry but I had no intention of lending ANYONE any money - I don't care if we were about to walk up the aisle - there is no way would hand over money. Your friend may be intelligent - but that doesn't mean she wasn't incredibly naive. And it's not like this kind of thing hasn;t been in the news.

The only thing you can do is educate people. The scammers, of all varieties, are believable and manipulative. We can only educate ourselves. Not much else.