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Romance Scam

Please report romance scams and dating scams here. We accept reports on Russian scammers and Nigerian scammers.

Disclaimer regarding pictures posted on the board: please understand that you are NOT looking at the pictures of people who are actually scamming you. The people portrayed on these photos are innocent men and women, NOT involved in scamming in any way and have nothing to do with scammers. The scammers are using their images without their knowledge or permission to deceive their victims and steal their money.




Nigerian romance scams

How African Romance Scams Work
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Pinky
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Nigerian romance scams

Postby Pinky » Tue Sep 21, 2010 7:49 am

How African Romance Scams Work

The variations to African romance scams are nearly as many as there are scammers (thousands), however there is only one objective to all of them and that is to get your money. And there are still some basic similarities amongst all of them. There are many other ways scammers take your money, besides romance scamming, but on this site we mainly focus on exposing the romance scammers.

The steps a romance scammer generally follows:

1. They steal pictures, generally of white, affluent looking males and sexy young females.
2. They create fake profiles, usually stealing text and information from other legitimate dating profiles.
3. They make contact with you on a dating or social networking site.
4. They usually ask immediate questions about your experience with internet dating hoping to find you're unaware of romance scammers. They are also interested in your financial status but can be very subtle with their inquiries.
5. They begin the process of engaging you in a 'relationship' with the intent and promise of marriage. They fall for you quickly.
6. They steer you off the dating site to instant messenger chat services.
7. The male scammers pretend to be financially well off and usually widowed with children (to inspire a woman's compassion and empathy). Female scammers are usually young, sexy and needy.
8. The length of time they romance you is variable and determined by your receptiveness to their profuse flattery and terms of endearment.
9. You may notice that they tell you very little about themselves, especially their past, like childhood, education and employment history.
10. When they believe you are sufficiently hooked (in love with them) they then conjure a disaster of some sort that only financial aid can resolve. This can be the hardest part of the scam to accept as false because many scammers are very subtle with their money requests. Some never even ask their victims but wait for their victims to offer. And there are literally hundreds of different situations in which the scammers ask for money.
11. They provide you with options for sending money, usually to a contact of theirs, by Western Union, Money Gram or bank transfer. Sometimes they have fake cashiers checks sent to their victims and ask that the victim cash it and send them the money.
12. The money they receive NEVER resolves the crisis. They will always need more.
13. They keep the victim sending money until the victim stops. If the victim stops because they became aware they were scammed, the scammer will then come back pretending to be a new person, usually in law enforcement, offering to help the victim recover their money. This is called a Recovery Scam.

They also have access to pre-recorded stolen web-cam sessions to fool you and can easily obtain American and UK phone numbers that forward their calls to Africa. Many will have token gifts sent to you and many can also fake accents, but usually they claim to be mixed nationality to explain their own.

Please understand that you are just a job to them. They are professional liars so you can never believe anything they tell you, even if they confess to scamming you and say they love you still. In truth they don't care how they hurt you and they don't even care if you live or die.

Marisa, the founder of this site, once said:
“Remember mathematics at school? There is such a thing called an axiom (a premise so evident it has to be accepted as truth ). So, here is the axiom:

WHITE, HISPANIC OR ASIAN PEOPLE IN NIGERIA OR GHANA CONTACTING YOU ONLINE = A SCAMMER.

You don't have to question it, you don't have to ask why, you don't have to seek for exceptions from the rule, because there are NO EXCEPTIONS. That's just the way it is. And your handsome white dude or chick in Nigeria is also no exception. Sorry.

If they claim to be African-American, but presently “temporarily” in Nigeria or Ghana for any reason (job, taking care of a sick parent, etc.), this is also a scam. Especially if their picture looks like an African-American model or in the case of women, a PORN star.”
Another axiom might be:
Any internet relationship that you have never met face to face, who asks for money = a scammer.

The above is only the basic criteria to beware of. Stealth, a moderator here, has created a list of signs that you might be dealing with a scammer. See her posts below.

Also, you may take our scam test here: http://www.romancescam.com/forum/viewto ... =75&t=5179" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Last, if you are still not sure, you may post all the information you have on your suspect here:
Am I being scammed?
In this section, anything you post will remain away from public view until they are proven a scammer. If they are not proven, the information will be removed.

More signs you might be talking to a scammer can be found here:
http://www.datingnmore.com/fraud/scam_s ... gerian.htm" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
If your question isn't answered in the FAQ, please message a green Moderator or red Admin. We need to know.

Nigerian romance scams

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Stealth
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More signs that you are being scammed

Postby Stealth » Mon Oct 22, 2012 5:37 pm

1) they contact you, claiming to be from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Western Europe
2) their English sucks, though they claim to be the native English speakers and they say "am" instead of "I am"
3) they give you their email or Yahoo ID in the first 1-2 messages and want to get off-site and chat on messenger
4) they are widowers, their wives died in the horrible car or plane crashes, they raise "a kid" alone, or (if they are females) they are recovering from a bad relationship with a cheating ex.
5) they chat with you, send love letters (stolen from elsewhere and easily googled), sometimes send little gifts, purchased with stolen CC
6) they talk to you on the phone and sound bloody African, but you think it's a sexy "Italian" accent.
7) women send you nude pictures, you can bet they are stolen from porn sites
8) often, they propose you marriage or promise to marry you
9) they even send you "documents": bad photoshopped passports and stuff
10) you are hooked, you are in love

I know this is discussed to death, but it can't hurt having more lists that those with experiences with scammers can add more. I notice that sometimes their game switches up, or that there are other signs about them that are not always stressed, that might be useful to add onto a list for potential victims to watch out for.

Here are things I would like to add to look out for that I have found coming from scammers.

1.) In yahoo instant message they adore the "BUZZ" button. They tend to bang on that thing like it's their job. You don't respond within seconds or minutes and wind up with the every annoying "BUZZ" Sometimes consecutively.
2.) They fall for you too fast. Pushy for relationships. You've talked to them for days and suddenly they are adoring you, falling in love, strong connection to you, etc. They even push the love thing even if you tell them you aren't interested.
3.) Some are claiming to be going for masters degree/post grad, etc. asking for money for certificates or journals for school.
4.) To expound on the bad English, they seem to not capitalize most anything and often sound mentally challenged. They also often say the phrase "I will love to know more about you" or some variation. Oh and "Communication is key" or some variation of that.
5.) Their IPS tend to be either nigerian or black hole proxies that are shared (often starting like 172.....)
6.) They are most always god fearing and christian, Catholic in particular. AND they are most often in search of a god fearing mate.
7.) They don't care whether or not you are god fearing, and sooo christian like they are. (remember they just make those claims simply because that's what they think you want to hear and is appealing)
8.) They emphasize the obvious! As in looking for an "honest" and "sincere" person not into games. Who isn't right? (sometimes real people might do this, but the scammers have at least one or more of the above traits in addition)
9.) The men are using the "cheating ex" thing more and more these days just like the make believe females.
10.) They tend to ignore questions. Maybe answering some but not much of them.
11.) They don't mind your age, gender, sexual preference, or anything about you. (Why would they? They want money. I've even baited some that went after male friends, pretending I was a lesbian just to show my friends how they will be lesbian if I want them to be just for the sake of the scam.)
12.) They claim how much they loved your profile even if your profile is hardly filled out and really too basic to love.
13.) They typically try hard to get you to email them first, or get into web cam with them.
14.) I am finding more these days that some want to go straight to phone texting. Probably they keep trying to approach each other by mistake and this is their way of making sure you aren't one of them.
15.) They may stress that they have a combination of exotic nationalities. Mexican-chinese mix, etc.
16.) They sound like they just fell out of a romance novel and came to life for you. They are perfect in every way, have all the right stuff about them.
17.) They are oh sooo tired of being alone, and seem desperate for a relationship.
18.) Very commonly, their occupation is some kind of Engineer, construction worker, goods trader.
19.) 99.9% of those claiming to be in the military while on dating sites, especially deployed in Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, especially on "peace keeping" missions, are scammers.
20.) They tend to go into this long drawn out story about their life history, profiling their upbringing, mom and dad to you, etc. Usually their parents are late/deceased too.

That's my list so far, I am sure there can be more to add. Not ALL will happen at once, nor will the scammer show ALL the traits. But you will find a healthy combination of whats on the lists above. People, if you notice ANY of these things from the original list or mine, drop that mugu and move on. I guarantee you there really is plenty of fish in the sea that are for real, you don't need this. I've had more than enough experience with REAL people and FAKE mugus (nigerian scammers) to be able to confidently say, REAL people do not show these signs. Think about how YOU dialogue with others. Real people will dialogue a lot like you do. Its a free flow convo, and getting a real person to answer questions is not like pulling teeth unlike with a mugu.
"Scam signs"

ATTN GUESTS!!Telling your mugu that he/she is busted will accomplish absolutely nothing but teaching them how to be better at scamming/victimizing, as well as cause other victims unnecessary duress. Unless this is what you hope to cause, do NOT confront them!

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Stealth
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Re: More signs that you are being scammed

Postby Stealth » Thu Nov 22, 2012 7:56 am

More signs,I've noticed lately:

21.) The mugu makes it a point to offer up a tale (without you bringing it up first) of being scammed them self. (As in pot calling the kettle black)
22.) They are paranoid about whether or not you are "real" and their paranoia drives them to be very very pushy about phone number exchange and/or webcam because, as they explain...they "want to make sure you are real....have doubts about you....etc"
"Scam signs"

ATTN GUESTS!!Telling your mugu that he/she is busted will accomplish absolutely nothing but teaching them how to be better at scamming/victimizing, as well as cause other victims unnecessary duress. Unless this is what you hope to cause, do NOT confront them!

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