Online dating scams are something that are happening all the time. I would say that most weeks I receive emails from someone who is dealing with a scam, sadly it’s often after they’ve already sent money to the scammer.
In the past when I wrote on identifying online dating scammers, I often concentrated on the fact that scammers would ask for money. My advice, which I still believe, is that if someone asks you for money through an online dating service then you should immediately assume you’re dealing with a scammer. Yes, even if you’ve been talking for months on the dating site.
While people seem to be learning that requests for money on an online dating service are a bad sign, the scammers are also learning new ways to make a profit. Robin wrote in to talk about scams she’s been seeing lately. Here are her thoughts:
Firstly, the guy seems to follow some list of questions to ask, waits for response from me, then plunks down his answer to his own question repeatedly…very predictable. Then, if I’ve managed to get through this process, he’ll start inching the scam. The common theme here is he’s in Afghanistan, a soldier (oh, not to forget he’s helping the orphans) and the camp got hit by terrorists and some of his men died.
The thrust here is that money isn’t asked for, but a care package of requested contents that will easily exceed two or three grand (laptops, iPods, iPads, cell phones, lots of expensive clothing like ten trousers, etc). After the terrorist attack, personal belongings were unusable, so the scammer NEEDS to replace these items for him and his boys. Of course, I declined to send a care package and when I declined, I was promptly told that, “You’re a waste of my time cuz you don’t support your troops.” Gosh, gee whiz.
Another good one was a guy claiming to be a soldier, but he couldn’t tell me anything about his work or himself because it was classified. I didn’t bother wasting my time with this one.
I think it was good that Robin points this out: it’s not that scammers are just those who ask for money. It’s those who ask for anything of value at all. While some services do help prevent scamming, such as the way eHarmony works, it’s probably still best to know that avoiding people who are asking for “stuff” is the first step in a good strategy to protect yourself.
Sadly, shortly after Robin had sent me her experience on this I got another email from a woman who had been scammed. In her case, the guy didn’t ask for money. He claimed to be stuck in Africa and asked her to send him an unopened cell phone and a football jersey. As odd as that might seem to you and me (and you might be saying you’d never fall for it), it still happens. The scammers can be very dedicated in communicating with their targets and sometimes we want to believe something so strongly, like true love, that we stop questioning what we’re being asked to do.
So be careful with anyone asking for anything!
Image by TaxCredits.net via Flickr
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About the Author:
Brad initially struggled with online dating but over time became quite successful using it. He met his wife using online dating and has been giving advice and helping people improve their results since 2007. He has written a Free Online Dating Guide to help others find success with online dating. You can learn more about his personal experience using online dating and running this website here.