N3LONI – a familiar story

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*** BANNED *** Joined: 18 Jul 2004 Posts: 2049

What a morning! A friend of my wife called asking for help for a woman involved in a “romance scam” out of Nigeria. The story was all too familiar.

N3loni is a single mother who is trying to find love and has become involved with a “man” who claims that he wants to come to Canada to work for a construction company in her city.

But . . . (you and I know there is always a ‘but’) he needs $500 sent to a Nigerian charitable organization, via Western Union of course, to get a certificate to allow him to be employed. Total bullshit of course –he uses an existing charity’s website but has a unique email address. N3loni falls for it.

He then says he will reimburse her but needs $700 more and sends a cheque for her to cash. She sends the money. Surprise! The check bounces. She emails the scammer never to contact her again but, as usual, this “loving, caring, honest man” calls from the UK (with a real English accent) and says he will book a flight and come to her city to personally make things right. You bet! And this is to happen TONIGHT.

I will be sending her the URL for this thread as well as these links (suggested by Branwen and Ima).

Quote:

An introduction to love or dating scams

Are you falling for a love scammer?

Check Scams

Everything is coming to a head this evening and I am worried that she may be conned to go somewhere with money and be met by a Nigerian associate who will do her harm.

Posted: Fri Jul 02, 2010 5:48 pm

Romance scammers can be very inventive. I spend a lot of time baiting them, and they tell my characters all sorts of stories. Some of them are quite believable ... until one starts to look a little deeper.

One of the Romance scammers, that I've now written to for over a year, has told some very similar types of stories. My character is in the UK, and this scammer has pretended that he wants to come to the UK to study. He tells my character that he is in love with her, and will be with her forever once he arrives. He has even sent her a fake university acceptance letter - it looked very real.

When that story didn't seem to be bringing him any money (because, of course, I never intended to send him any), he invented a different story - he said that was going to start up in business. He, too, said that he needed a special certificate (from the council) in order to do this work. He said that would cost $1,000. And please would my character help him out with that money.

He has also pretended that he has booked a holiday for himself and my character at a beautiful destination - then, he couldn't quite afford his flight ticket at the last moment, so he asked my character if she would 'lend' him the money .... sending it by Western Union.

I haven't spoken to him on the phone, but he sent a little recording of his voice to my character, and he speaks very well - he could be mistaken for a British man; although, actually he is Nigerian. It seems that he has friends in the UK - I don't think it was one of them speaking on the recording, but I believe he emulates their accents. If, however, my character was a real person instead of my own invention, and she agreed to meet him, he would only 'pretend' to arrive in this country, and instead send along one of his British friends. And that friend would have one aim: to persuade my character to hand over some money.

It would be a total mistake, though, to meet a criminal like this - who knows what else an unknown criminal might do?

Money is all that scammers care about. They can be very patient, very inventive, very convincing even. But they are scamming as many people as they can, at the same time, with similar invented stories, over and over again.

I often bait a scammer from more than one email address, using different characters. He will adapt his lies to suit the individual character ... but it all goes the same way .... he 'needs' money. Some of them (including that one above) will also pretend to be women (looking for love from men) as well as writing to other female victims as men.

They will put fake profiles on dating sites, pretend to be affiliated with real organisations and charities, and even set up their own fake website, maybe about their fake business, maybe about their fake charity, maybe even a fake personal site.

There are lots of clues that these men and pretend-women are not real. ScamWarners 'Romance Scams' forum can help people to discover what the 'warning signs' are. Having baited so many of them, I've become very familiar with what they can say, and what they can claim has happened to them.

Their 'profession' is telling lies. Their 'profession' is extracting money from people by their lies.

Romance scammers will profess love to anyone who seems willing to send them money. They will tell the 80-year-old that she is beautiful, and the crude and aggressive woman that she is charming and delightful. They aim to get inside a woman's heart. Because they want to get inside her money-purse.

They don't fall in love with their victims. They even have mocking names for their victims. They are lying criminals - and they steal as much money as they can.

Posted: Sat Jul 03, 2010 5:57 am

A definate scam, good thing that you have knowledge about scams and asked.

Scamwarners is the place to ask if she hasn't already and those links are very good, there is lots of other good information that will be relevant to her situation, get your wifes friend to post and start reading while waiting for a reply

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