PSA: never give a guy you're not married to or the mother of a massive sum of money

[CurdinHenry]

Double not if you've only "met" him online

Scared by how many smart and brilliant women fall for this and even end up in debt to give money to some random guy on the back of a sob story

Never ever ever, ok?

We're not allowed to say that though. One of my posts was deleted for saying it. FFS. We're all just supposed to accept increasing nannying from our banks making it very difficult to make simple payments with money we've earned because they're unreasonably expected to stop this sort of silliness. I hate that the UK repeatedly legislates based on the most incompetent in society instead of the mid-point. No one is allowed to fail, and by extension, to succeed.

It’s grooming. Very cleverly done to take advantage of what are often our better personality traits.
Grooming and manipulation don’t require people to be stupid. They just require people to be open minded, warm hearted.

We socialise women to suicidal empathy- which is how women end up in terrible coercive relationships. They aren’t stupid. They’re groomed into compliance.

It's very rarely stupidity - nobody actually sends cash over after a couple of generic lines - and often the result of a complicated con using deep psychological tricks. Something to be aware of is how often women are accused of being gold diggers (frequently by losers who, as the Americans say, ain't got shit). Many women feel hugely pressured to fork out in order to prove they're not.

They're getting more sophisticated all the time, too. AI, as we see, is scary.

Ditto. I was dating a guy who I’d known as a friend for years, however the first time he asked me for a loan we were done.

I’d earned my (divorce settlement) money and there was no way I was handing it over to anyone! He had a far better job than me too!

Stupidity mixed with vanity is a very potent combination

THIS!!

Yep. There's a thread right now where some people are suggesting a woman lends a £500 dress to a relative with no kind of insurance and are guilt tripping her (although most people agree she shouldn't). Once you've built up a connection with someone, you can be made to feel very very mean and guilty if you don't do what they want... and women get all the moralising in the neck.

I agree it’s amazing it happens so frequently.

I suppose those who fall for it are ultimately quite vulnerable.

This is my Mum. Convinced she would never be so stupid. I tried to point out that sometimes it is literally just timing - if she goes into the bank one morning and then gets a call that afternoon her defences are probably 50% down already. Not sure if that message got through or not tbh.

I protect myself from these sorts of scams by spending all my money as soon as I get it 🤷‍♀️

It's the fact that everyone knows about these scammers but the women they target go all in anyway. Even when their bank asks have you ever met this person and they have to tick no. Or their friends tell them, it's a scam and they think they know better. Maybe it's a combination of arrogance and stupidity.

I defend myself by being tighter than a duck's arse.

It IS. When you read/watch these stories, it often starts with some random person messaging them out of nowhere on Facebook/instagram and flattering them. Sometimes pretending to be a celebrity. I would never, ever respond to any such message and I have been desperately lonely at times. They then tend to talk to people who are unable to video chat and all the rest of it.

I remember one episode of catfished on YouTube where she thought she was dating Elon Musk and he was going to come get her one day in one of his Teslas. She divorced her husband and packed up her whole house. The team had her message him when he was live at a conference and asked her how he could be speaking live and also messaging her at the same time. She started to finally grasp it then started trying to get her husband back! Poor man just hanging about as it all unfolded.

Or if you're happy to give you should only do so with the full knowledge that you will never get it back.

I think it is loneliness that makes people engage and they get addicted to the attention and the adrenaline rush when the messages come in. It probably isn't that dissimilar to gambling and the odds probably slightly better.

A lot of really cold and unempathetic people around. I think loneliness can turn a switch in people's heads.

You can be friendly with people online and chat with them. If they ditch you because you don't give them money then they're not your friend are they.

Literally everyone knows this.

We might quietly think 'oh come on woman, what did you think would happen?' to ourselves. But the attitude that only stupid women get conned, or that they deserved to lose their money because how could they think a young man might be in love with them is what stops people who have lost money through fraud from coming forward.

If you think you are going to be called stupid or told that you deserve it, then you're not going to come forward and tell your story. And the more people that admit that they are intelligent people but they STILL got conned - the more people will take notice and hopefully not fall for it themselves.

Anyone can get conned. Anyone. It might not be a romance fraud but if scammers catch you on a bad day, a bit distracted or worried, and hit you with the right story - you too can be scammed.

I don't think they deserve it. I think they have a right to give away their money if they want to. But they should take responsibility for their own decisions.

This is not a moment of distraction, this is them believing that a man 20 years younger than them, in another country, who can never talk in person is genuinely interested in a relationship with them.

Replace the word 'incompetent' with 'vulnerable' and hopefully you can see how wrong and unethical that would be.

If I ever did get conned, it wouldn't be via romance scam. I'm not stupid enough to believe someone much younger/richer/etc is genuinely interested and even if it got that far, the minute they asked for money, I would be out. And as I said before, I don't answer unsolicited messages from randoms.

According to research, men are more likely to be victim of romance scams than women.

So, yabu to be addressing women alone, if you are a man, op. It comes across as superior but men are not immune.

https://home.barclays/news/press-releases/2024/07/barclays-scams-bulletin--men-more-likely-to-fall-victim-to-roman/

I think the patronising, "let me educate you" tone of the original post is slightly more annoying than being scammed.

What's interesting is how, once people are sucked in, they seem oblivious to all the warnings. I once sent money to a friend in a developing country, as a gift - it was somewhere I'd previously lived, and I knew them personally. I was not expecting anything in return (other than gratitude). The only way to transfer it was via WesternUnion, and even then I was absolutely grilled about who I was sending it to and why - and transfer agencies like WesternUnion are designed to make it easy to send the money to anyone, no questions asked (or so I thought).