To think some romance scam victims are simply stupid?

[TheAverageJoanne]

At home today and have the TV on with For Love or Money about romance fraud. One victim is an international business development manager but gave £113000 to scammers, persuading her mother and sister to part with their savings

How far the love of Christ would you trust someone with a responsible job when they do this sort of thing and judgement flies out of the window?

I get there are people who are lonely and vulnerable but this one took me by total surprise. How could she have been so stupid? She received an email while waiting for him at the airport, showed it to airport staff who confirmed it was fake but still sent another £30000 to prevent airport staff at the other side from killing him. Jesus Christ.

Kym Marsh's face, you can tell what she's thinking..

The presenters on programmes about this generally HAVE to take the "scammers are so so clever! It could happen to anyone!" line.

They would have a lot of trouble getting the victims to take part in the programmes and share their stories if they came out and said, "Brenda managed to believe that handsome 25 year old Brett was desperately in love with her, how naive was she?!"

I was listening to a radio programme recently where the presenters kept saying that an investment scammer had been "incredibly convincing." It just seemed like a figleaf to preserve the dignity of the victim who was being interviewed about the process of being scammed. As the story unfolded and you realised just how many people had tried to warn and protect the victim, and how much the victim had lied to avoid the banks' protection protocols, it became clear that -however convincing the scammer had been - the victim had just been incredibly stupid and practically determined to be scammed. But obviously the presenters had to be polite.

So, so true. Excellent post.

Very true.

But I also note the general message these programmes put out is "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is". Which is the situation of being a granny and suddenly having a stunning twenty something interested in you. The scammers are clever in tapping into something where people think they are the exception to these rules.

Just watching the Gerard Butler scam, it's one thing to be scammed but honestly, Johhny Depp? Gerard Butler? Do they honestly believe A listers would randomly contact 65 year old Linda from Grimsby? The mind boggles....

I read one of those stories where after the waiter from Turkey moved to the UK, liberated her account to the time of £18k and then went off her. Her explanation for that was ‘I think he must be gay.’ 😳

But it had a happy ending as she is now being wooed by his bartender colleague who ‘just wants to look after her.’ 😳

Especially as Gerard Butler contacted her by FB messenger - the communication channel of choice for the fundraising A lister

Most of these women being scammed are 'Rescuers'.
They have, more than most, put their own needs aside for others.

Either their kids have grown up and left or their husband has died or left.
They feel better about themselves when they are 'rescuing' others.

Rescuing is a defence mechanism whereby we can put our entire focus on somebody else in order to feeling in control of our own lives because our own feelings and pushed or 'parked' in order to obsess and ruminate about the other person.

It's a very very powerful dynamic and it takes a lot for people to reveal it to themselves because Denial works very well.

Rescuers get lovebombed very easily because they have always taken the role of looking after others and never caring for themselves.

Then when some bloke comes along and offers her all the caring they gave others.... well that's very tasty bait for her and she gets pulled in.

I saw one of these Kim Marsh shows where the victim was a retired police sergeant! And not one who’d retired twenty years ago and was getting a bit senile, she can’t have been more than sixty 😳

I think that was the silver fox American army surgeon type, where he fell ill in Afghanistan and needed to be hospitalised, and he needed her to cover the bill until he could transfer her the £££ from his savings account.

It seemingly never crossed her mind that surely the US army would pick up the tab for his treatment?

Especially as Gerard Butler contacted her by FB messenger - the communication channel of choice for the fundraising A lister

😆

I thought the same about the women taken in by the 'Tinder Swindler'. Lots of people felt sorry for them but I just thought they were greedy. They were blinded by designer clothes, luxury holidays and private jets, so didn't bother to engage their critical faculties.

I just watched this and what was interesting was when they said that scammers are everywhere on the internet, so a lot of times people aren't expecting to be scammed and aren't probably on their guard, because they're on the site to chat about a band they're into or a game they're playing, or whatever. As PPs have said - there are scammers on MN, there are scammers on FB - they're everywhere.

The other thing that was interesting was the subtle approach used on the woman Cindy. Her scammer got her into crypto currency trading on a dodgy platform and he let her seemingly make a lot of money, to draw her into investing more - but he never asked her for a penny. She was clearly a bright and successful woman who had made and saved a large amount of money during her working life, but she was at a really low point - cancer + marriage breakdown - so he caught her at a very vulnerable time.

If they were so greedy, why did they keep giving money?

Because they thought it was only a temporary thing and then this mega rich guy who was so madly in love with them would get out of this little spot of trouble. And then the private jets and luxury holidays would start all over again.

I see.

Not stupid but very sad, lonely, vulnerable, suggestable people who want to believe that someone loves them.

I think with so many of these cases, the Sunk Costs Fallacy cuts in. People might start to think that there's something dodgy about Frankland from Ohio who says he loves you and is going to come and marry you but just needs $10k to pay for the gold he owns to be shipped.... but if you've already sent Frankland hundreds of thousands of pounds to pay for that surgery his darling daughter needed... you've almost got to comply to keep up the pretence otherwise you have to admit that it was ALL a fraud.

And I think it's good not to villify the victims. Ok, we might think they're stupid and self-deceiving and all that, but if that attitude prevails, it stops people from coming forward and admitting what happened. And if just one person telling their story stops others from falling prey to the same story, it's worth it. If we spread the 'all scammed victims are stupid and greedy', then they all clam up and the true extent of the scamming doesn't become visible. Like violence, it needs secrecy to flourish, and opening it to the daylight of scrutiny can be to the good, which people won't do if they feel they will be villified or called stupid.

Fair enough, but aren’t threads like this - that do call the foolish, foolish - doing the right thing? Anyone reading this who still wants to send money to Gerard Butler or Barry Gibb is beyond help. And their scammer is beyond reach.

I suspect that anyone who is deeply enough sunken into their delusion will simply read it and think 'ah, but those people are stupid, my Gerard Butler is the real one.'

True. But then why would you expect such a person to come forward ever? They’ll always make self-excuses for why they did the right thing.

People believe what they really want or need to believe and can't be saved from themselves, sadly

I think it's incremental. And if we can do away with the stigma of reporting, and the fear of being called stupid, more and more people will come out and talk about how they were scammed. The more people who expose these scams and how they work (the language used is always very similar, for example, with pet names being used instead of the victim's real name, lots of 'babe' and 'honey' and 'queen', presumably so the scammers don't slip up by using the wrong name), then the more the seed will be planted in other people's heads. It may be too late to save some people, but others might be helped, if they learn to just ask the right questions right at the beginning, and aren't afraid to ask for help if they start to doubt their 'intended'.

It’s the one’s who say they have spoken to their love interest/scammer on the phone that I really can’t understand. Can’t they tell that that is not an English or American accent but a strong African accent 🤦‍♀️

Becky Holmes Hates Spinach is well worth a look
https://twitter.com/deathtospinach/status/1733098585573499091?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Coat of Arms.
You're quite correct when you say presenters say 'it could happen to anyone '..
Well no it couldn't..It wouldn't happen to me. I'm not so guillable to

believe some chancer trying to bull me up.
Im watching these programmes thinking..Girl get a hold of yourself..
There must be a lot of lonely people out there