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.

I have nothing but sympathy for (say) a slightly confused older person who gets panicked and railroaded into giving access to their bank account.

I've rather less for someone who thinks Brad Pitt has fallen in love with them online and even more bafflingly, needs their money. The same applies to very ordinary men who open their wallets because they are in a "relationship" with someone of supermodel level looks. In the absence of a MH issue, it does speak of a considerable ego/level of self delusion to think that these are possibilities, IMO.

God yeah, totally stupid!

I have an elderly family member who has fallen for a romance scam to the point of marriage.
Met online, sent money monthly for a year or so before paying for wedding ceremonies in their home country and the UK, along with funding all flights and visa costs. Bank has warned it follows the patterns of a scam multiple times. They are very obviously biding their time until family member dies (FM is mid-70s they are early 40s, separate beds, Facebook comments from friends saying well done on finding "a rich one", etc.), as they have quite a lot of savings. Have encouraged family member to alienate themselves and outright tell family to distance themselves as all money is to go to the scammer when they pass.
OTOH, family member is a nasty, abusive excuse of a person, so numerous warnings is more than they deserved.

Indeed. A number of the women on the programme admitted to lying to the police & their bank when they were told it was a scam. Including today's edition. She lied to the police after the bank asked them to intervene and went on the send another £30,000 to the scammer. What on earth went through her mind?

A lady I used to work with was talking to an 'American soldier based in Africa' and needed money for whatever reasons. She knew it was a scam but did consider sending the money, thankfully for her she was skint anyway so couldn't but we all told her it was a scam and she was still talking to this person and thinking of sending money 🤯

Scammers are very clever. We had a family member "invest" in a company which turned out to be some sort of scam and then the scammers also sent emails offering to recover money paid out to the scammers.

Sometimes they don’t have to be clever. I read of many who felt hard done by after giving lots of cash to an Arab Prince. They thought they were being smart by not falling for the Nigerian scam but fell for this on the basis the person was not from Nigeria (???) and was a ‘real’ person because they Googled and he was a real live prince. They didn’t question why a real Arab Prince would be contacting some random in Bristol to assist with a current cashflow problem, on the basis it would be sorted imminently and then they would repay ten-fold. It just didn’t strike them that this would be unlikely to the point of impossible. Instead they felt outraged and one seemingly couldn’t even get it through that it wasn’t really that Arab prince and they were calling him out on it insisting he repay them. It was excruciating.

I explicitly said that I thought our view was more intelligent, so massive applause for noticing. What you failed to realise was the number of posters bigging themselves up by putting down scam victims... you noticed only the comment that suggested you were perhaps not being super duper smart and found that objectionable, although for all your fury, you never actually said why.

I'll grant that I've no idea why you think I'd care that you think it was cringeworthy (MN's most overused and meaningless shot after "narcissistic"), but it's OK - it's the kind of ignorance I can totally live with.

The victims want to believe it, simple as that.
There are some very interesting podcasts such as Sweet Bobbi, Scamanda and Million Dollar lover, that show how people from any walk of life can fall victim.

Good lord.

Strong answer.

I have been scammed financially, not romantically, I was super busy, distracted and was waiting for a Post Office parcel where the stamps hadn't been paid, so when an email turned up saying this, I immediately paid it. After about an hour, I started to think that's odd, and then I got a call from the fraud department at my bank telling me this was a fraud and going through the likely transactions, however it turned out this was a fake bank fraud centre and I was kept on the phone to allow the fraudsters to take several thousand pounds. I did get the money back from my bank, eho believed I was not in on the scam. I felt very very stupid as I handed over my details myself. So I try not to judge romance scams but it is hard!

I enjoy watching this programme and am astonished every day that people send this kind of money to people they have never met. Some of the stories are ludicrous, the lady today believed her “DP” had been kidnapped by Russian gangsters 😳
And the old men who think a 20 something is interested in them for something other than money.

Not a romance scam, but my vulnerable young adult DS who has ASD, was taken in by a phishing email for a 'covid passport' asking for his bank details etc. They then rang him, pretending to be his bank, saying there were some suspicious transactions on his account. Of course there were, they had bought some stuff using his card details.

They were very convincing, sending him text message that appeared to come from the bank, (the same number as genuine bank messages) trying to get him to approve a massive 'bit coin' purchase in his app. When I twigged what was going on, we called the actual bank fraud line (from the landline rather than his mobile) and got his card stopped. The words used by the real fraud people were almost identical to the scammers. It was really scary and not at all obvious initially.

My understanding is that those who are fooled by the phishing emails are usually already vulnerable, so worth the effort for the scammers to continue getting more money out of. It's very difficult with someone his age, early 20s, who is an adult and entitled to his own privacy around emails and banking, but also vulnerable to this sort of thing. Hard to find the balance.

Sweet Bobby was particularly weird because iirc, it wasn't about money. It was literally some manipulative sadist doing it because she could. Bobby was also a real person and she met him at some point although he was a complete innocent.

I think the fact that that happened within a strong religious/cultural community probably helped it to seem more legitimate. I never got the impression the victim was stupid even if she did act foolishly there.

Well, yes. PPs have expressed sympathy for scam victims seriously affected by loneliness, but these people never seem to be reeled in by average-looking love prospects!

It's never some 65-year-old bloke who looks like a potato promising endless love if you'll just help him get his car fixed.

Even if they are "stupid", the scammer is the one who is responsible for stealing from them. Old men being predatory towards young women is a seperate issue.

A lady on one episode believes she was sending money to Gerard Butler 😳

I saw a Dr Phil on this.
Apparently the initial messages with the bad spelling etc. are a form of screening test for the scammers.
People to respond to these are more likely to be gullible and a mark. They do it on purpose so as to focus on those.

Do you think there is nothing predatory about an older woman, from an affluent country, getting with a man who is much younger from a poor country, and needs a visa or money? That there is nothing predatory about the young women who extort these older men? Just like the young men do to the older women? They are also saying you’re handsome, gorgeous, the sex is the best, you’re so special. After the initial introductions, it’s the same shit. Same lines. Just some go to real extremes.

I work for an investment managers and deal with financial crime and money laundering.

Many of the frauds are not at all sophisticated and Stevie wonder could see they were scammers but there’s people we've contacted warning we believe they’re at risk of being scammed and they totally ignore our advice and hand their cash over anyway.

We've had cases where we’ve frozen someone’s account for their own good and they’ve told us they want the freeze removed and still make payments we’ve told them categorically not to.

So yes there’s a lot of naivety but also a refusal to listen.

I have sympathy for people who fall for phishing scams and get conned by sophisticated looking emails / websites (even though there are numerous guides on how to spot these).

I have sympathy for people who are panicked into giving money to someone - "your computer is hacked / your bank account is frozen" etc. Even though anyone who has their faculties and who pays attention should know it's a scam.

I find it very difficult to have sympathy for people who, despite being warned by family, friends, banks, police etc, STILL persist in sending money. At that point, it's your own silly fault IMO.

We're compensating victims of crime. It's the criminals who are costing us money.

I did 😁 To a Captain in US army stuck in ME 10 years ago. I know where they must have gotten the contact and idea I had money from. They emailed specific brand new email I used when helping mum sell our old house. Which goes against the knowledge that it's numbers game but it genuinely was very specific email (based on house location) and not used anywhere else outside of 2 websites with sale ads. What even more ridiculous is that it wasn't english speaking country which was very clear from the ".countryshort".
I asked him to send a nude.

Sometimes I am stunned by male vanity and ego.
Dr Phil interviewed a very ordinary late 50s man who had been catfished.
They tracked down the gorgeous young woman whose photo had been stolen from her Instagram account (and not for the first time) and she came into the studio to share her experience. I don't think the old boy wanted to believe she wasn't the woman he'd been chatting to online.
The clever part: the woman's young handsome muscly well-dressed husband was in the audience, but I don't think the older man thought for one minute "ah yes, he's the kind of guy she'd go for".

It's absolutely predatory from women in these cases. The balance of power is there