Have you ever been scammed?

[Ambushedbycakeinmydreams]

Seeing as there's so much of it being talked about and the interest in the Tinder Swindler, I wonder if anyone has their own experiences to share.

I don't think I have been scammed yet, but hope I have had enough warnings by now not to fall for them.

Actually I should add - not just in relationships but any other financial transactions?

Not unless we count the time where I purchased game of thrones on ebay and it turned out out be a fake seller.

Buy my parents had shares in Lanzarote Beach club, which was a big scandal at the time. As after being promised a beautiful hotel, it remained a hole in the ground xD

I think there’s a difference between financial scams and romance scams.

While there most definitely are some financial scams i.e. the Nigerian prince wanting to launder money through your bank account, or the one where you’ve won the lottery you didn’t have a ticket for where people’s greed leads them to part with their cash and really it’s difficult to find much sympathy there, there are others such as the inland revenue ones, or even the Microsoft ones which given the correct market will often find targets in people who don’t have the kind of knowledge to know that it’s a scam or who fear the consequences if they’re e.g. being threatened with arrest etc.

I have 0 sympathy for people who fall for these romance scams though where they befriend someone on the internet and start handing over their cash by the thousand despite the fact they’ve never actually met. I know of someone who gave some bloke over £65k before he disappeared into oblivion. It’s caused a massive rift in her family because she essentially remortgaged her house and spent her children’s inheritance from their father, and they have now gone NC. And she was just stupid IMO.

If you watched the tinder swindler though pp, you'd realise that these people did meet. One of them was in a relationship with him for 8 months. Another one just became good friends with him and so gave him the money when she thought his life was in danger. He prayed on love and kindness. Not stupidity.

They are con artists and they practice their trade well so I don't think it's fair to blame the victim. Even if they never met the victim person. It could be that they have underlying mental health issues that led to them being easily conned, or that that were at a horribly vulnerable point in life, eg: having just escaped an abuser or being widdowed. You just don't know.

It's not just scams though (immediately derails own thread). My ex used manipulation to get me to invest my money in foreign property which we eventually sold but only partially recovered the original investment.