Scams - Romance and Dating Sites Part 2

Scams - Romance and Dating Sites Part 2

I have had people try and scam me, on a very personal level.  They say that scammers are very clever, but in fact they are very stupid.  They select their targets very carefully when they pull a scam.

They have tried many different scams on me.  They use the fact that I am single and alone, that I am lonely and crave love so badly. They strike up a relationship and their words soon turn to words of love.  For a desperate woman, this is all her dreams come true.  For me, I never believed a single word that was ever written.  Oh, the words of love, so passionate and enduring, one would think they should become writers instead of scammers!

I met this man on a dating site, he told me he was a business man and that he was away a lot and was hardly ever on this dating site and he suggest we exchange email addresses.

When I looked for him on this dating I site, I could not find him.  He had disappeared.  I never thought much of it.

He even gave me a cell phone number, and the dialling code was for the UK, again I never thought anything of this.

We even exchanged phone calls in the beginning.

He started sending emails on regular bases.  The relationship on his side moved very fast.  He was soon telling me how much he loves and misses me.

He even gave me a cell phone number, and the dialling code was for the UK, again I never thought anything of this.

I noticed in his emails that there were a lot of spelling mistakes and often he got my name wrong.  I replied to his emails and after a while I started to ignore his emails.  After a while I emailed him again and he just continues like nothing has even happened. He never got upset that I had been ignoring him!

The writer then continued in the same vain, words of love, how much he is missing me, how much he loves me and that he was in Italy and that he wanted me to send my physical address to him and he will send a small gift, a token of his love.  I did not use my own physical address, but the address where I work. 

He sent me another email, with the tracking number and the website address. I went to the website address that he provided me, but something was off.  The website looked very professional but something nagged at the back on mind.  I looked for contact details and I did not found any contact details.  Strange?  Also another thing the parcel was despatched very fast plus the status kept the same and never change.  I went to my boss with this; he is very familiar with scamming as his father in law was being scammed.  My boss showed me how to find the original web page that they had copied.  He went to that web page and underlined whole paragraphs and then went to Google and pasted it into the search engine.  Not long, he had found the real web page.

Once must be able to recognise a fake web page.

One of the first signs that something may be wrong with a website is an incorrect address. Always check the address bar and verify that all is as it should be.

The correct URL for Lloyds TSB is http://www.lloydstsb.com

The example above is a fake website

The next day I got a call from a black man, saying that my parcel had arrived and that I had to pay 5 thousands rand to get it released from customs, he said that he had sent an email with the banking details.

It’s virtually impossible for a package to arrive within 24 hours from the UK, they is much delays as the package makes it way from one depot to another before arriving at the airport.

In this package he had included money, in dollars, notebook and a few other things.  So it was claimed.  I know how customs work in this country and it does not work like that.

They would send an invoice from customs and payment would be done at the local post office, if a courier service was used, the courier company would get hold of me and send me an invoice, outlining the amount I need to pay and when delivery would be made on receipt of my payment.  All very official.

I knew I was being scammed, but how many others have fallen for this scam?

Another scam, I struck up with a conversation with this man, also from the same dating site.  He claimed that he was from West Africa.  We started to talk in Yahoo.  He said that he like me very much and would love to meet me soon.   He said he was prepared to fly all that way to come and visit me.  He wanted me to pay for half of his airfare.

I told him, sorry I don’t have the money to pay half of your airfare, but he persisted and was adamant that he had already had booked the tickets and he said he would send an email that he had received.

I received the email from South African Airways, with what appeared to be bookings that he had made.  It was a confirmation giving details on his departure.  I had already done some research on how much the airfare would cost, and the amount there was very high.  I did not take it as its face value and clicked on the link on the email. This link took me to a quotation page, on the South African Airways webpage.

This man had not booked his flight; instead he had edited the quotation that South African Airways had sent him, editing the price of ticket as well.

I looked it up on the internet, surprise, its a very common practice of scammers.



Just an example.

The Internet, a wealth of information, there are programs that can generate fake airline tickets.
Ticket-O-Matic