Would you fall for a romance scam artist?

[Mojitowithelfreako]

They just seem so ridiculous (the men).
The Tinder Swindler, Dirty John, Bad Surgeon, the guy from Bad Vegan... why do they succeed?
I feel like I would see through it, especially when they bring up the 'CIA' stuff. These women don't seem stupid. Do they never sit back and think 'that doesn't add up' or speak to their friends who say 'that's bullshit'. I just don't get it.
Maybe they are super charming but I think they go too far with their lies. As soon as anyone said 'it's top secret' then I would immediately think what a dick head.
Do you think they try several women before they succeed or can they tell which women want to believe, or are vulnerable?
Or could any of us get drawn in?

I work in fraud - sometimes it’s a genuine lack of mental capacity. Other times the scammer has found a vulnerable person out of a hundred they were talking to.
For someone who is lonely and crying out for affection, the scammer comes across as attentive, loving, genuine. They might not even ask for money, they’ll pose a problem for which they need money and of course the victim is only too happy to help their true love.
It’s hard for me to understand - if I were single I’d be more than happy to enjoy my own company and wouldn’t feel like I’d be unhappy forever unless I found someone. However there is a deep rooted need in some people to have a partner and without one they’re incomplete. This leaves them open and vulnerable to it unfortunately.

My friend got scammed badly, he was in his 40’s and had just got divorced had started internet dating and had no real online experience. His wife left him for a much younger man and refused him having contact with his step kids he’d raised from babies, he felt he’d lost everything.

He had no real attention off women his own age - or even a few years older or younger, but then suddenly a beautiful woman with terrible spelling and bizarre use of language comes along and tells him he’s everything she ever dreamed of.

The worst thing wasn’t even so much the money he lost, it was the sheer amount of time. He was spending hours online, he owned his own business and started to neglect it and was just on his phone/laptop constantly.

I hacked into it to read the conversations (not literally but his password was STEVE1968) and they were just so sad with him pouring out his heart and replies of “I love you dear, we will be together dear because our hearts are the same and we in love and I dream of you every sekond” and poems lifted off the internet.

Luckily I did a reverse google image search and the woman he was talking to was a celebrity in another country! It wasn’t at all convincing if you knew what to look for.

He lost £8,000 and a lot of pride and had a dented ego. He would probably still fall for it if it happened again sadly because he’s lonely and vulnerable.

No, because I'm not interested in a relationship and never have been. I immediately mistrust any man who's more than commonly friendly and I loathe flirts. I don't have any property or assets that would attract a scammer, or a cocklodger for that matter.

YABU for the phrase "romance scam artist" - Fraudster would suffice

See, they always say on these shows like the one on BBC with Kym Marsh that these scammers are very, very convincing and clever, but every single time I watch it I’m thinking, ‘’Yeah, it wasn’t remotely clever, it was obvious’’ I don’t get it either. They are literally so obvious to me, all the time. Think they might just be trying to placate the victim. I would never say never though, what with AI becoming more sophisticated. I really don’t think I’d fall for one at the moment, though, and I’d never send money to someone I hadn’t met so they would have to meet me and work really hard to gain my trust so who knows if it would be worth the fassle 🤣

No. I’m far too careful and don’t trust people.

id like to think I wouldn’t. I’m too sceptical. Also the moment a dude says ‘can I borrow money’ or a variation of that my spidey senses go off.

I read all the romance scam sad face stories. They are an amazing insight into certain people. I do believe that most people who fall for these scams are quite self-absorbed with unusually high opinions of themselves. They accept outlandishly ludicrous explanations of the scammer because deep down they believe they are extra special and are deserving of such ridiculously amazing love stories. I do accept there are also vulnerable people with special needs who also fall for these scams and these people have my every sympathy, but for the rest, dear god.

Generally the stories start with the victims saying they are bravely speaking out to warn the rest of us that the scam could happen to anyone. Usually by the second line of the story is where I think, nah, that would not happen to me. Who in their right mind would believe this rubbish! I have yet to read a story where I have thought that the set up was clever and could actually suck in anyone with an ounce of common sense.

There was a (I think!) 50-60 year old old woman on catfish UK who believed that George Ezra wanted to marry her. I mean, it was so ridiculous it might well have been set up.

Never.

No. Im 30 and grew up with technology so therefor very internet and tech savvy. I can spot a fake account/cat fish a mile off.

Plus I don’t give random men online the time of day.

I do feel for the elderly and vulnerable women who do fall for these scams though.

Unfortunately I think the only answer to this is it depends on how good the scammer is.

I'd like to think I'd not fall for it and am a good judge of character but it depends doesn't it.

I wouldn’t fall for a romance scam but that does make me somehow better than someone who has.

Plenty of women end up in real life relationships with cocklodgers. They pay for everything and often loan them money. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse that those men actually exist. At least the romance fraudsters send nice messages and don’t leave skid marks in the loo.

No, I'm confident I wouldn't. I've done the whole online dating thing though, which naturally makes me more wary.

Awww…so happy for you babes, sounds like you got a good one there

Between the Catfish TV show, the Reddit subreddit called /scams (with screen shots of conversations, very interesting) and people I know in real life who have been scammed - I would not fall for any - romance or otherwise.

One of the real life people I know gives a lot of money to online psychics to tell her what to do in life because she can't make her own decisions.

I'm in a Lesbian social group on FB and since Lesbians think nothing of "dating" someone across the globe, there seems to be a lot of scam attempts in the Lesbian community.

Not interested in a distance relationship, so that would probably filter out quite a lot. Also don't currently have an income. And even when I'm with someone I don't actually believe them when they tell me I'm amazing, they're just saying it to get into my knickers (which to be fair, is mainly why I'm on OLD,) so the chances are low, as I'm too cynical. But not impossible. I'm not really worth scamming though.

Everyone thinks they'd never fall for it but clearly it happens a lot so there's a mismatch there between reality and our perception of ourselves. We all make misjudgements. We've all had times when we've thought to ourselves "damn, I really should have seen that coming". Mostly it doesn't involve us losing our life savings, but we've all been adversely affected by people telling us lies.

If a man in his 20's flirted with me I'd just think he was taking the piss

And I only 42

Changed name for this but yes I did. It was a fucking crazy sequence of events that destroyed my life, and I had a book published about what happened. I am an intelligent person, I have a 1st class degree, I would have considered myself pretty savvy.

How he wormed his way in:

1. firstly, played the sympathy card. This wouldn’t have worked if I wasn’t a kind hearted, caring person.

2. went to extreme lengths to corroborate his stories, with tangible evidence, of course which turned out to have been planted by him, but it was thorough, convincing, and he never missed a beat.

3. started fairly small, it was a snowball effect and by the time the real whoppers came out, I was already completely sucked in. If he’d started with any of those things I would have known something was up, but with the trail of ever increasing, interlinked incidents behind them it all stacked up.

4. created a situation where it was safer to believe what he was saying than not. There were times I questioned it all but had I been wrong, I would have been putting myself in huge danger from external threats (which again turned out to be created by him). It was a gamble that wasn’t worth taking, until it was.

It’s easy to say it would never happen to you. I thought that too. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Oh and just to add, he wasn’t trying to scam me for money or anything material. He just did it to destroy my life, for fun, because he could (he turned out to have antisocial personality disorder). I was a kind hearted, random stranger to him at the time we met. Like I say, wrong place, wrong time.

That sounds awful @Scamvictim 💐

Thanks @Delawear, it was pretty shite. Everything he ever told me was a lie, literally everything. And the kicker is that there is a child who was born into the whole mess. She has a fake name under father on her birth certificate. And although the whole saga was now a long time ago, the stress it caused has meant that my physical and mental health is still badly affected, and so in that respect he won, despite my best efforts to rebuild myself.

This is very true. Never did I ever think I would fall for a charlatan of any kind - you can’t comprehend it until you meet one of these insidious individuals.
I didn’t fall for one of these scammers who do it for the money but I can understand how it happens from my own experience.
This is what happened to me:

Will start by saying I’m unhappily married but stuck (long story) in an abusive marriage.

Met and had an intense attraction with a (married) man on a night out. He then persued me but not in an ott way - was just very complimentary (“it was so great to meet you last night - can you do lunch this week?”). Told me this about his marriage “it’s complicated - we’re just friends, haven’t had sex for over two years, she’s had MH issues and was a recluse for years so I have to tread carefully” also claimed he would struggle to separate properly as they have a dog and he was scared she’d try and take her (!!)
I told him of my unhappiness in my marriage - I believe he quickly latched into this and started his manipulation.
From the first meeting told me how beautiful I am, would stare into my eyes and act like he couldn’t believe his luck in meeting me. Acted like he was the kindest, sweetest, most altruistic guy you’d ever meet. Gave the impression he would do anything for anyone, offering me help with things such as sending a plumber round to fix things in my house, getting the brakes sorted on my car, offered me a job in his office when I told him I couldn’t leave my dh due to finances etc. Told me things like “you’re the only person I can talk to/who understands me”, was very loving and caring in bed, future faked: made plans, told me he’d booked tickets for festivals in the summer that we discussed etc etc.
I could go on and on but long story short, I fell very much in love with him and thought he was in love with me. I admitted early on to my dh as I couldn’t keep up the lies and he (scammer)told me he wanted us to be together, would constantly say things like “I want to be out there in public with you”. He spent a lot of time with me when he should’ve been working and had me round to his house when his wife was working away, pushing aside my concerns by saying they really were just friends and it was over.
When my dh found out who he was and threatened to contact his wife I told him I thought we should stop seeing one another. He then said he was going to tell her that he was moving out and seeing someone else - ok fine. Next day she “took an overdose”. This was when I started getting red flags. It all seemed too convenient. It was also extremely intense and when I told him I thought we should take a break he would manipulate me by getting upset and saying we were in this together/he only has me to talk to.

Long story short his wife knew nothing about me until she found out by herself by snooping on his phone! Then the shit hit the fan.

Turned out he had no intention of leaving her. I actually think he is unhappy and doesn’t love her but needs her for her money - he wouldn’t have the lifestyle he does without her and he mentioned several times that she earns more than him.
I can’t believe someone would do that to another person and the level of lying and duplicitousness it must’ve taken to be spinning his story, as well as lying to his wife is just mind-blowing. I realise now I probably wasn’t the first.

He has already had one business go into liquidation and the one he’s running now looks like it’s going the same way and I wonder if part of the appeal with me was that he knew (or thought) I had money. We live in a big house/nice car etc and if you looked up my dh online you would see he is a wealthy guy - he told me early on in our relationship he had googled my dh and knew who he was. The thing with these people is also that they often tell the truth about some things so for instance he didn’t lie about being married, he told me about his first business going into liquidation- probably because these were things I could’ve easily found out by googling him. So it’s not like they are just necessarily lying about everything.

So there were red flags but I guess I ignored them because the good stuff and love-bombing was doing dopamine type stuff in my brain! There’s SO much more I could put here about the things he did/said to completely convince me that we were going to be together.

Hid wife bailed him out with his first business ploughing a lot of money of her own to pay off some of his debts - I wonder if he was lining me up to give him money too, I don’t know but it’s crossed my mind.

Im intelligent and don’t suffer fools gladly - I’d describe myself as a cynical person. But he still managed to “scam” me. Not out of money but he scammed me nonetheless.

Some would probably say I deserve it but I feel like I was groomed in some way.

Ive said this on another thread bc I want to actually warn other women about him: his initials are DW and he lives in Cheshire and has a dog with the initial W!! I really feel like he’ll be on the lookout for his next victim and it actually really worries me, he was such a convincing liar.

I think anyone can be manipulated it’s often about meeting someone at the right time

often these people have antisocial personality disorder traits people who lie with no thought of consequences they simply don’t care about the harm they cause and many will enjoy this

though I think the Tinder Swindler there is an element of buying into a lifestyle

but I would never say never me as I have experience how these people operate