omegle/msn scam?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 12 Jul 2010 Posts: 4

Hi,

I've met some girl on omegle, she claimed to be from russia, her english wasn't great but I thought "what the hell" and added her to my MSN. She got increasingly flirty with me, but we also talk about normal stuff. She also sent me some pictures of her. This has been going on for about 2 weeks every day. ( I also have a real friend in russia and after talking to her it was fairly obvious she can't be from moscow at least)

...so I took my trusty tineye and looked at the headers of the emails and lo and behold... the pictures aren't of her, and the IP is from hong kong.

Now I'm not asking if she/he's scamming, it's fairly obvious (or so I think) that she's lying. I'm just asking if anyone has an Idea what she's trying to do? I couldn't obviously send him/her gifts or money because the place he/she claimed in to be is half a world away from her/his current place... Just what's happening here? Is this maybe actually an old scam I don't know about? I don't really get what all the talking (and sometimes even arguing) about normal stuff brings. I've run into scammers on omegle before and they where like, really dumb. This person obviously isn't.

EDIT: Spelling mistake corrected

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 10:27 am

Hello thespan, and welcome to Eater.

I'm glad that you realised this was a scam before you lost any money to the scammer.

The scammer (who is probably a man, pretending to be a woman) would most likely eventually request money from you (for travelling documents, flight tickets to meet you - or for some other reason) and tell you to send it through Western Union or MoneyGram.

Money sent this way can often be collected in a different location to the one it was sent to, and even by a person with a different name. Alternatively, a local scamming colleague might collect it from a certain location, and then send it on to the primary scammer.

Many scammers are smart, university educated, and are successful criminals who have refined their scam scripts and methods over many years. Many romance scammers are also prepared to spend a long time pretending to get to know you, and gaining your trust, before asking you for money.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 12 Jul 2010 Posts: 4

Thanks for the information.

I figured as much, I had people trying to scam me before online, but normally it was really obvious what was going on from the get go. This one almost steered me into an argument which made me almost stop talking to "it" but made me doubt a lot less at first, it was genius.

I think I'll screw around a little with "it", of course my life just started to take a turn for the unbelievable and awesome and I just have to tell her that I won the german lottery and want all my friends to take a share... Very Happy

Posted: Mon Jul 12, 2010 11:50 am

No, don't continue writing to that scammer - he has your real-life information, and it is not safe to bait using your real details.

If you set up a brand new baiting webmail account (Gmail is recommended) in a false name, with totally fake information, and perhaps a fake dating profile as well (make it short, boring, and off-putting to genuine date-seekers), you can then safely bait other, similar, scammers.

You'll find more helpful tips and information here:

Romance Baiting FAQ

But drop all contact with this current one. Bait safely. They are criminals.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 12 Jul 2010 Posts: 4

He/She doesn't really have any more personal information than my real first name, the country I live in and an gmail-adress I use when I deal with people I don't trust fully yet, which isn't a lot. But I guess I'll cut contact anyways, I don't really have the time at the moment in my life for scambaiting. Since I posted first I read through a few successful baits of other users, quality stuff. Very Happy

I think I'll visit this site more often in the future. Also thank you for the link and the advice.