It is still hard to believe but yes, it did happen to me. I fell for it hook, line and sinker (almost).
I subscribed to several online dating services and was successful in meeting lots of nice, polite men. However; my story is not about them. I started corresponding with someone that seemed to meet every one of my requirements. (This should have raised the first flag of suspicion.) He was born abroad, had an accent but was raised near myself. I thought, he must be a great guy. He has a child and has suffered a tremendous loss with the passing of his wife.
So I devised a foolproof method to make sure that he checked out. I asked him to provide several things that I could research to see if he was truly someone that met my requirements. Here are the things I asked him to do:
1. Provide the name of two streets that intersected near where he lived. (If he is in another country it would be a little difficult to do this.) In his case he was only able to provide one street name and the name of a nearby coffee shop. It was a nice detail but didn’t completely answer my question. Also, for someone that owned his own business it seemed odd that he would live in an apartment in a not so nice side of town. What person would choose to live near an airport if they had a little bit of money? I don’t think he realized that the area he chose wasn’t as nice as he thought it might be.)
2. Provide the name of the school he attended. (He conveniently named a private military school.)
3. Provide two references that I could contact by phone. One family member and one friend. (He claimed all his family was deceased and that he and his wife were not very social people therefore they didn’t have any friends. I suggested that he provide college or family friends. At this point he started accusing me of not trusting him. Well duh!!!)
I continued to speak with him knowing that there would be some future issue as a result. I found out that he was traveling outside the US due to a business buying trip in Africa. (Yes, with his child in tow.) At this point, I want to advise all ladies that you should stop talking to this person IMMEDIATELY. It is only a scam waiting to happen. Yes, within a few days of talking the shoe dropped. I asked how his buying trip was going and he stated not so well. At that point he then asked me to send him $150 dollars to allow him to free up some of his money.
I thought, here it is. Now, I played along with this knowing all along that I would NEVER send him money. I said sure, I will wire the money to the American Consulate and he could go there and present some documentation to them to pick it up. This wasn’t good enough for him, it was too far away, their hours were irregular and so on. He then accused me of not caring about what happened to his child. (As if this child even existed!!) He got so mad at me that he just disappeared from my computer screen. I thought, "Good riddance to a social parasite." (Within a month, someone else with a very similar story contacted me that was living in Ireland. I listed to my inner voice and said, "No thanks. I don’t talk to scammers.")
So, my point to everyone is this. (Men are also subject to the same online scams.) If it sounds too good to be true, it is. If he/she states in his/her profile that he/she is living abroad, just pass and say no thanks. If your radar goes off, don’t ignore it.
