[quote Yeahthat]@DrSbaitso
I find it hard to believe, for example, that the first woman had developed genuine feelings and a sense of obligation after one month. The overriding emotion which she described in her account of the initial period after meeting him was awe at the material things he offered her, "The hotel was 5 stars; private jet; I'd never ate this food before." These weren't genuine feelings, they were superficial.
I also thought it was very telling that none of them seemed to have consulted friends or family about the situation to gauge their opinion. The first woman has a sister of approximately her age who's in the police. In my opinion she didn't ask because she "wanted to believe" and probably on some level knew that the bubble would burst if she did.
It's not that I don't have sympathy for victims of scams and I understand that they can involve truly complex psychological manipulation played out sometimes over years. I recently watched Puppet Master on Netflix - which depicts just such a scenario. The romance scams are equally appalling.
A PP has mentioned a case of someone whose parents are attempting to manipulate her with feelings of guilt and obligation into buying them a house. I see that as a case of complex psychological manipulation.
I guess that I just see this particular case as a more simple tale of greed. And in the case of the scammers (because there were at least two others involved, running the scam practically as a business), total amorality. The women had a glimpse of the instagram ideal and didn't want to look under the hood.[/quote]
Perhaps you've never experienced very heady, intense romantic feelings early on. Some people never do. But it's not an uncommon experience. Whirlwind romance and all that.
And as I keep saying (and you claim not to understand), money is dazzling. Coupled with saying and supposedly doing the right things, it's a powerful force. But it's not the only one. It's a very important part of this particular scam but it isn't the only thing. It's dazzling, it's overpowering and when combined with other powers, it can feel very much like love. There's a reason all those Mills and Boon heroes are rich as Croesus. OBVIOUSLY it's still Twoo Wuv between him and the heroine, but all those billions certainly aid the process.
If this isn't something you can relate to personally, I'm sure you can understand it on an intellectual level.
It is NOT simple greed. If it were, it would be a mere investment scam, and given how many people do make wise investments, I'm not convinced there's any automatic moral slam dunk on those victims either.
It's a ROMANCE scam. The clue is in the name. The appearance of wealth is a huge part of it, yes, because it's a dazzling act, but you're oversimplifying it very much to reduce it down to nothing more. As people say, it's not exactly much of a promise of luxury if he can't get the money when he needs it, so they're obviously working on some other thought process than "quids in" by the time they're forking out because he's told them his life is in danger or whatever. If they were utterly tight and self serving, they'd be less likely to be taken in!
People are insisting it's nothing but greed because they're failing to understand how the psychology works, failing to see the context of that psychology and, to a large extent, telling themselves they couldn't ever fall for something like this because they're Not Greedy And Shallow. Despite the fact that people in these scams often feel obliged to fork out precisely to prove they're Not Greedy And Shallow.
It just isn't that simple.