99% sure a scam?

By joining our community you will have the ability to post topics and access other forums reserved for members. Registration is quick, simple and absolutely free. Join our community today by clicking here.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Aug 2008 Posts: 9

Hi there,
I've been browsing the stories on here for the past few weeks.. I'm familiar with the common scams I've had in my email for years but ran into one today that I'm pretty sure is a scam but wanted to run the basics past people here, just in case I've given bad advice and it was genuine, although I'm virtually certain it's a scam.

My girlfriend's mum died last year, and her dad is lonely so recently signed up on a legitimate singles site to try and make some friends in the area that he can speak to. One of the responses he got claimed to be from a woman in her 20s who had a hard life, her parents had split up and gone back to their home countries and not been able to look after her so she'd been shuttled between relatives, one of whom she'd lived with and had grown up in the UK until the aunt had died and she'd been left with noone etc etc.

Plausible enough, but then curiously she had become an artist and now had an import/export business in Nigeria... At this point alarm bells rang for me and, while before reading things on this site I'd associated Nigerian scam with badly written emails telling me I was the beneficiary of millions of dollars from some relative I'd never heard of, I smelt a rat.

To be fair, he was dubious, and didn't particularly want to get into a close friendship with someone that age, but he did feel sorry for what a hard life she'd had, and how strong she must be to have made something of herself. He didn't quite see how it could be a scam because she'd not asked for anything but I gave some examples of how they might ask for money and just warned him to be careful, although she might well be genuine.

An hour later he called to say he'd had another email from this person and thanked me for the warning and that he'd told her to go and find another sucker - but I don't know what this new email said.

I guess I'm now just feeling worried or guilty that she was genuine - it seemed a bit elaborate to me that 'she' would have paid to register on a singles site and have a good background story in fluent English - it just seemed more effort than most of the stories here have led me to expect. Does it sound like a scam to people here or have I unwittingly ruined a possible, albeit extremely unlikely friendship?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:05 am

I'm not an expert, but it sounds a bit odd at the least.

It is not unusual for scammers to sign up for pay dating sites. They use stolen credit cards, or (as baiters have found out) convince victims of other types of scams to pay for their dating site membership. Even the "elite" sites are plagued with scammers.

The good English is puzzling, although it is possible that someone is writing the scripts and selling them to lads. There's always something new coming up. It is becoming known that potential victims are staying away from badly-written messages.

I, too, would feel bad if my words convinced someone to drop a possibly genuine friendship, but I prefer to err on the side of caution.

Hello I'm New here! Joined: 21 Aug 2008 Posts: 9

Thanks for the reply... I haven't seen any of the correspondance so I don't know for sure how good the English is, but he didn't say it was badly written. I just thought it odd for a 20-something woman to contact a 60-odd man unasked on a singles site, and the Nigerian aspect rang too many bells...

I didn't tell him it definitely was a scam, just warned him to be careful and he said he certainly wouldn't trust her without meeting her to prove she really existed. And while I don't think he'd be careless enough to lend money to someone he didn't know, some of the stories and situations on here - while obvious to someone expecting them - might lead someone naive in the ways of scammers into genuinely wanting to help.

I'll try to find out what tonights email from her said, but I'm guessing that it was either excuses as to why it wasn't possible to meet, or asking for money in some way - something that clearly tipped him off to being a fake.

If that is the case, do scammers usually just give up and move on, or do they try and latch on and win back their mark?

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:27 am

If they think there is money to be made they will stick like poop on a blanket.
The only way to know for sure would be to bait her or at least find out what was in that last email.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:41 am

Hi there and welcome, missed you coming in, I should pay more attention.
Okay here is the missing 1%, it's a scam. Maybe you should send your dad our website so he can see for himself what all is going on here.
He is now warned and if he ever has any doubt and doesn't want to run it by his nosy daughter Laughing

or she is not home, he can always ask here or at scamwarners.com our big sister, they collect lots of scams by topic and if... there's a good chance that they have it posted and there are more websites like that, cause it happens a lot. An easy target group, lonely people.
If he becomes a member here he can just post the email that makes him doubt and we give him our opinion. Or he becomes a member of scamwarners and drops it there and a Scamadvisor will tell him, they're always dead on.
Good catch, nice to have you aboard.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 12:42 am

If you can get the name and e-mail of this "lady" you can google it and might come up with other examples of the e-mail being used in a scam. A negative result from google does not mean she is legit.

I am far from a good romance baiter, but I am sure some of our experts will be a long in a minute and give you loads of good advice.

You might also want to go to www.scamwarners.com our sister site where they do more warning about scams rather than baiting.

Elite Baiter Joined: 11 Jul 2007 Posts: 1979

Send her dad here. I'm 50 something and single. Laughing

I'll wise him up.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:52 am

If it sounds to good to be true,, "IT IS" Ask yourself why would a young girl be interested in a man old enough to be her grandfather. And there's a good chance it's not a girl anyway.

Could you possably post a link to the site or better still the offending thread.

If the site sounds a fairly genuine one, a quick note to there admin, might also be the way to go.

Posted: Mon Sep 29, 2008 1:47 pm

Hi aspidistra and welcome,

Some great advice above already, the best bet is to get your dad to visit either here or Scamwarners for himself and we can show him how to tell by himself.

You could also have him take a look this thread at Scamwarners Click Here there was a woman who provided a range of details on different scammers, the idea was for us to find some evidence on each one using google seaches and in doing so it provides a good guide as to different searches you could try to prove if something is a scam or not, you dont always need much information to get a result but sometimes no amount of searching will prove that a scammer is a scammer.

Tell him for future reference,
Providing some personnal details is not such a bad thing when meeting new people but always be wary of providing a stranger an address and phone number but even if you do that is not the end of the world, for us it can be a problem so we take extra precautions but for the average person it just means you are more likely to get even more scam offers.

What is a huge problem is cashing cheques or money orders, sending or recieving money or goods and providing bank account details, before actually meeting anybody, even then it remains sound advice not to do any of the above because there are a group of scammers known as "Pro daters" they will meet with you, even have very intimate moments with you Embarassed

but they will also be meeting others and will disappear only when you are broke, usually between 1 and 2 years after meeting them depending on how much money there is to lose.

The more I think about it the more I think OBLs offer is the best advice given so far Wink

Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2008 4:29 pm

Hello Aspidistra.
I also have a lad whose English is very good. Then I happened to Google an unusual phrase in one of his e-mails and it led me to a legitimate dating profile that he had cut and pasted. Since then , I've noticed this format in his mail :
Hello XXX here is more about me
Paste-paste-paste-paste-paste-paste-paste-paste-paste
write to me soon i love you.