I am being catfished right now!

[qualitychat]

I received a friend request on Facebook just now. This is definitely someone catfishing me. He comes from Austin, Texas but has pigeon English. He is a Marine Engineer living in Sweden. He does a very dangerous job. He is a nice looking man, he has sent me a photo. He tragically lost his wife 5 years ago due to medical negligence. Am I wrong in stringing him alone?

I work in Adult Safeguarding. We regularly get cases like these referred in.

They're usually vulnerable women with mild learning disabilities that haven't got a formal diagnosis but clearly have some cognitive difficulties. They are often victims of domestic abuse.

When posters say they don't understand how others fall from it, they are coming from a very privileged position.

Auntie is a diminutive of aunt so can have ie not y.

If more non-vulnerable people wasted these scammers time, they'd have to get a real job and contribute to society, rather than prey on it.

They're usually vulnerable women with mild learning disabilities that haven't got a formal diagnosis but clearly have some cognitive difficulties. They are often victims of domestic abuse

I'm quite sure many are but that doesnt account for the huge numbers who fall for it. If this was their only type of 'victim" there wouldnt be so many/widespread. Many people who fall for scams are educated and highly intelligent. Scams appeal to your emotions which is why they often bypass logic.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/09/romance-fraud-scam-common-perfect-victim-money

While you entertain yourself with him he’s not bothering anyone else… but hope you post the conversations.

A writer I follow does this with spammers looking to edit and market his books - they are hilarious as the spammers English is so poor they can’t understand the piss take replies.

@WhamBamThankU

What was wrong with the man? Anyone would think he wasn't genuine........

Sadly I've had a few patients scammed. One was really abusive to me and the PCSO, as we were trying to talk her out of transferring £8k to her new "BF/carer", who wanted to come over from Africa to marry and look after her.

I hate these people my best friend has an aunt in her sixties who has learning disabilities, this happens to get all the time on FB and she believes them. Luckily she has someone in the family who is in charge of her finances because inevitably they ask her for money. She's quite a character and a few times they've ended up blocking her as she messages them so much!
Yes OP waste their time, also report to whichever platform it's on.

I was thinking more of the big ‘call centre’ in Lagos (Nigeria) traced in a BBC documentary not so long ago.

😂😂

How would they hack your Facebook!

And how is stringing the person on going to change that outcome, except not make anyone any money or hurt anyone else?

I had a message from a friend on Messenger, who very quickly started asking me for money as she was in a predicament and needed help.

I went along with it for ages - because the actual real friend was actually sat next to me in the pub! She’d been hacked. It was so funny playing the scammer along. I told them in the end I was blocking and reporting them as I knew they were a scammer, and they tried to call me!

And how is stringing the person on going to change that outcome, except not make anyone any money or hurt anyone else?

Yeah, I didnt get that either. Whether you string them along or immediately block, both ways they get no money so the outcome is exactly the same. Unless this is implying they WANT people to be scammed as some kind of altruistic act to help the person being trafficked which is insane.

Alaye?

It's sad that people are desperate enough to fall for this guff. The BBC (I think they were part of whatever morning show was on) did a series on love scams just recently - very brave of the women to tell their stories.

Someone once cloned my grandmother's Facebook account and I gave him job hunting advice. Turns out there's colleges in Nigeria that teach people how to scam Westerners. It's not all gangs. As far as he was concerned, this was his job and was more profitable than anything else he could do there. We had about a 2 hour chat and in the end I just said that I was going to report him now and he just said he understood 🤣

Isn‘t it a difference between American and British English?

aunty being more common in the UK, auntie in the USA?

I used to love the computer scammers. They started on my 50th birthday because at fifty all women become stupid greedy and lonely. I'd pretend my computer was upstairs and I'd walk up there very slowly then come back down to answer the landline, string them along for ever, up and down the stairs, doing exactly as they instructed. And then when they asked what I could see on my screen (which I guess should have been some sort of security access) I'd go into minute detail about gorgeous snapshots of my fictitious grandchildren who were on my screensaver on rotation.

I’m a Brit and always used ‘Auntie’ - when I still had any aunts.
’Aunty’ looks odd to me.

And @Untilitisnt , ‘Aunties* is the plural of ‘Auntie’, too.

I have a very locked down social media and I had one a few months ago. Someone responded to an exercise bike I was selling on marketplace supposedly interested. In that post I had said no longer able to use due to knee injury.

This guy asked where it was, and he would get back to me. Then said by the way I read about your knee injury and said he was a knee consultant. He was at great pains to let me know that I didn't need to tell him anything if I felt he was being rude etc. It was very, very convincing as an ordinary human being. I started to tell him a bit about my knee and it got to the point where he asked if I would send him a video of the knee bending. I decided to exit at that point as it felt off. A week later I had another message from someone with the exact same script!!

The clever ones prey on vulnerable people. They know something like an injury is something very hard for people and any offer of help will be taken because it can get rather desperate at times. I was quite amazed by this one, and am not surprised people fall for this stuff.

I'm so tempted now. I've had several clean cut, church-going army vets want to friend me on FB recently and when I didn't respond, I got approached by some lovely beardy guys hugging their dawgs. Have to fall for one or the other, surely.

I know someone who fell for it, luckily she got suspicious after a while and asked me to take a look at his profile. She stupidly sent photos of her kids and grandkids to him, luckily she didn’t send any money. It’s hard to believe anyone would fall for it but I guess a woman in her 50’s maybe flattered by a good looking marine showing interest in her 😬

I got inundated by private messages from Paul Simon after I went to one of his concerts. I was way back in the Albert Hall but I must have made an impression. He wanted to give me VIP tickets to his shows. He wouldn't back off. I was like, 'WTF Paul. We're both married. You have previous for domestic violence. I liked Graceland hun but it can't go further.' He still PMs me sometimes. Desperate guy. I guess his voice is failing now he's older and he has time on his hands these days

Was he in 'special forces' and seen terrible things but can't talk about it?