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.

A friend recently told me about a much more convincing way of scamming which her very elderly parents are caught up in. About a year ago they were dealing with the local council to have work done on their home - along the lines of putting a bathroom downstairs for accessibility as one is a wheelchair user. Social services put them in touch with a "reputable" local company to do the work. Work completed. About a month later they get a call from someone saying they were from that company and asking for an extra £200 as their bill was incorrect. They paid up.

Now they are regularly receiving calls from "the police" or "the council" - all people with local accents using a local phone number. All asking for relatively small sums of money, or telling them that their card has been used fraudulently and if they could just confirm the details etc.

It's convincing because it's not "John from Microsoft/Amazon" with a strong Indian accent. Police aware, trying to get to the bottom of the leak of data in the first place. Family aware too. It's very different from a romance scam though which you really have to ignore a whole forest of red flags to fall for.

The scams only work on vulnerable people so no, you can't judge until you've been there yourself.

Loneliness causes mental and physical ill health in many people. Someone happy and confident doesn't fall for them

Plenty of men fall for scams too. We do often think the men are just looking to get laid by young women, but to be honest, they are also targeted by these women, as women are by the young men.

there are very often key similarities, age and financial gap being the key ones. As well as Visa rights to the country of the mark.

i don’t think these people are stupid as some are saying, more as said, i think they are usually desperate and lonely. And that makes them vulnerable to someone showing them interest.

I always think that some threads on here where someone is hinting about wanting money should have the OP's private messages disabled. That's the only way money can be sent.

The thread could be left up for financial advice, but if you block PMs then they can't hand out their bank details.

Most people believe what they want to. Look at all the conspiracy theorists.

They don't, they cast their net far and wide. Ive had scammers come on to me, but there were to many inaccuracies, this was after about 6 texts I was suspicious - so asked a couple of other questions which confirmed it was a scammer. blocked and move on

Its not narcissistic. Its right and healthy for a person to believe they are worthy of being loved. You would need to be a pretty despicable person or have extremely low self esteem to consider yourself unlovable. And I doubt for a moment the victims consider themselves 'gorgeous' simply that they've found someone who loves them despite their age/appearance, which no doubt the scammers are very skilled at convincing them.

The thing is that these scammers succeed when they manage to reach someone who isn't thinking rationally, because they are vulnerable. Maybe they're exceptionally lonely or exceptionally desperate for other reasons. When we are afraid, isolated etc, our capacity for clear and measured thought hugely decreases. This isn't a sign someone is exceptionally dim. The same effect would be observed in all of us if the conditions were right.

One of the world's leading experts on chatbots - a hugely learned scientist - was fooled by a romance scam chatbot! He's very humble about it and uses his experience to teach this lesson.

It's very comforting to think that our capacity for rational thought is innate and fixed, but actually it's incredibly contextual (and most of us are a lot less rational than we like to think at the best of times). Add to this the skillful means by which the scammers exploit any weaknesses they find - like jamming a tool into a crack - and bingo.

@MikeRafone Exactly, they target widely knowing that they only need a tiny percentage of attempts to land on fertile ground.

What fascinates me is how do people so stupid get to have so much money in the first place?

YABU.

It's really easy to sit in judgement from a position of someone who can see through the lies - but the victims of these frauds are vulnerable, by age, loneliness, educational disability etc. The fraudsters are really clever, these crimes are played out over months or years, they take their time building rapport, trust, confidence. They don't start out asking for money. It's something that they build up to once they've tricked their victim into believing they are in a serious, committed relationship.

I work closely with agencies who support these victims, and they are often left completely broken, financially, and emotionally. Some still don't even believe they have been scammed. It's incredibly sad.

Because making a foolish decision in one area of your life where you are vulnerable does not mean you are a blithering idiot in absolutely everything you do. I'd think this was obvious, especially to clever people.

Some people have the emotional buttons and decision making habits that make them easier to manipulate.

The Leave campaigns targeted these people so we know that at the time of the Brexit vote there were at least 17 million of them in the U.K.

People in thrall to conspiracy theories also have the same issue.

My MIL was scammed out of around £50k by a ‘builder’ who became her ‘friend’ not long after she was widowed. She was going to go away with him for the weekend and rang my SIL sounding like a 15 yr old excited girl which is when we found out. Despite the police becoming involved (which took a long time) she insisted he was her ‘special friend’ and he would pay her back money she had loaned him.

the family moved her out and sold the house. Whilst the house was empty someone broke in but we had taken all paperwork by then so there was nothing of value for them to get.

if the police had acted sooner they could have tracked them down as they had left scaffolding at the property.

she was definately lonely and wanting male attention as she continued having strange relationships after that and never spoke of what happened.

I don;t think many of these people DO have lots of money. The £131k was unusual, and not all hers. She had taken out loans and asked family for money.

Most of the romance scammers will start smaller and work up to the bigger amounts as time goes on. Alarm bells should start ringing with the very first request for cash but never does.

A friend of mine who I met through volunteering lost everything for a Nigerian price. No lie. She is a good 30 years older than me. Was going through a divorce at the time. Had just come into money from her share of the house etc.. still to this day we don't know how she fell for it as she's so switched on normally. She got some of her money back but not all of it unfortunately.

It's the type of person they believe that loves them makes them narcistic. I have someone who loves me, so do not consider myself unloveable. It's the fact that they believe the likes of Johnny Depp or Barry Gibb or some stranger half their agie will fall for them and contact them over the internet which brings narcissism into it.

So there are people out there even dafter than she is!

I don't think they're necessarily always stupid. They'll know exactly the sort of people to target I think.

I've read past threads where they won't be told, or face reality, when they're obviously being scammed. I think that's sad.

I looked her up after the documentary finished. She has put several posts on Facebook and has been on other TV shows about this, it all started in lockdown. There were lots of warning signs going through the story. It's an astonishing story. She said she felt like killing herself. She seems to have turned it around now as she has just moved into a new build detached house.

I watched a few of those programmes, even when presented with the facts it's a scam, that the pictures are fake etc, some of the victims are still making excuses and refusing to believe it. My nephew worked at bank customer service and he said he spends ages trying to warn people about making transfers to dodgy people, but they insist its sent. There's only so much you can do if victims refuse to accept the truth

I have mixed feelings about this. Yes people can be stupid, and some people are greedy and that leads to being scammed. But we as a society, and I include friends, neighbours, banks, churches, family, "support" networks - we allow loneliness - we almost encourage it.

All these factors - and many more - have influenced how individuals live their lives and how they can become lonely and caught up in a alternative reality.
Online banking, (no friendly branches with the cashiers that knew you), adult kids who "go low contact" because they don't approve of your "views" and don't need you, neighbours who are too busy or too prejudiced, (race/age/status/class) to look in or chat over the fence or answer the door. The demise of the pub, day centre, church; of easy jobs where Joan or David feels valued and part of something. The attitude to grandparents - a nuisance who have "had their turn". The lack of any support for elderly care or care for young adults who are struggling and who cannot get a job. The decline in public transport and small shops and the shift to an online life - a new reality. People often really are drifting untethered.

So whilst yes, some people are stupid - we all believe that our lovely partner loves us, so we move in, marry, have kids. Why do we all think we are worthy of that? (because he told us, because he's been so lovely to us???)

And at what point do you look at yourself and really believe that you can't possibly be worthy of love? Because that's the key.

Those are a very very low percentage of successful scams.

They've already been punished for their foolishness by losing money and heartbreak; I don't know why people have to make up further moral failings. Presumably to convince themselves that they would never ever fall for something similar, being not only too clever but also too morally wonderful.

@HolyZarquonsSingingSeals

"What fascinates me is how do people so stupid get to have so much money in the first place?"

This did make me laugh. I must admit when you hear they've drawn out £100,000 and then 3 weeks later another £50,000 followed by £30,000 and so on. Most of them don't seem to have had stellar jobs or anything. Who's got that sort of money?