This entry today is a public service message for the greater good and the safety of women and men alike who may have fallen or been prey to the online romance scam artists.
Right off – this entry may or may not exceed my word limit, so bear with me.
However, to all of you that read this – you have my permission to share this with your bff’s, your guy friends, your parents, siblings, your children, your elderly neighbours, your social media groups etc.
We need to get the word out so that not one other person loses their livelihood to an unscrupulous, malicious, uncaring, and dishonest con artist. In Canada, we have a special division of the police -the Anti Fraud Unit. I plan to share the emails and instagram posts with them so that they can publish my experience to help others. I may also work to get my story out to out local news outlets.. spread the word, please!!
During this pandemic, we are all at home, surfing the Net, reading page after page of Instagram posts, while a few of us single ones are looking for that person to connect with online.
My story is a common one. To reassure you, I did not fall victim, in that I did not lose money, jewels, investments, etc. I chose to keep the facade going in order to share with you some commonalities about how these people operate.
I too, joined the Facebook Dating portal, in the hopes of finding my new Mr. Right and you guessed it, one of the men that contacted me, was a romance scammer.
Our conversations didn’t last too long as he never seemed to accurately answer the questions I had for him and they were very vague and not specific. This brief interlude lasted about a week until I caught on and then I ended the conversation.
One other experience involved a gent claiming to be some sort of engineer who was currently in the “high land of Ghana” to finalize some Estate dealings from his late father. After a while, I got bored with the daily expressions of love and devotion and was not going to wait for the “ask”.
There is always the “ask” – the point at which the scammer reveals why they have found you, how much they love you and what they ask of you.
One of my life philosophies is ” I know enough to be dangerous” and “Question everything”.
These are the indicators of a Romance Scam Artist:
They may claim to be: in the Military, a civil engineer, a salesman, an architect, have their own import/export business, etc. They are either divorced or widowed, they usually have a “teenage son” or a child away in New Zealand or Australia in Medical school or the child is being cared for by a nanny. Their parents are no longer alive – so the whole premise of being “all alone in the world”. Most notable about these scammers is their inability to write full sentences, spell properly, use proper sentence structure/grammar and they will use phrases that are just not part of the North American lexicon. I got the impression they were using a translation service to read my emails and then to respond back. Which should make you think – if they are all so educated, how can they be so illiterate.
They will tell you just a bit about themselves, without giving real specific answers, sometimes coincidentally their birthdays happen to be the same month or year as yours. When you attempt to engage them in conversation, they take a long time to answer or show no real interest in your interests or hobbies. An example – this gent claimed his birthday was in June ( Gemini ). So I asked him – “what aspects of the Gemini sign do you most relate to?” His reply – “Sagittarius”. Uh what??????? So when I called him on it -he claimed to not have understood the question and thought I meant something to do with his son……
They will have some or very similar hobbies to yours, they will claim “they are new to Instagram” and found your profile. I never give them my full name nor the City where I live – usually just the province/country. I am very vague with my personal profile info – for obvious reasons. One of my standard questions is to ask them what they know about Canada – most often, they claim to know nothing. Hence why I don’t reveal the city I live in. I usually tell them I am single – not divorced, separated, widowed etc. Within a few weeks of email exchanges, they will start to express their unconditional love for you, how much they miss you, they will send you cute flowers, or images of unicorns (??????), they will ask for your address, so that they can send you flowers or a teddy bear, etc. They will feel cheated if you tell them you don’t have the same feelings – how can you – you don’t even know this person and you haven’t met!!!!.
Now – here comes the ask and the whole reason behind the scam, in the first place…..
This man, claimed to be on a peace keeping mission in Afghanistan – he had been there for a few years and was hoping to retire soon. The first ask was – he wanted me to write to the United Nations and pretend to be his wife, so that he could get vacation time……Well that wasn’t going to happen and I quashed that right away. The more serious ask, came a few weeks later, where he claimed he was so close to retirement now, ready to come to Canada and be with me,but oh – he has a trunk with millions of dollars in treasures, taken from an assassinated general in Kabul and he needed me to take possession of it and keep it safe for him……. All I had to was send a letter to this courier company in Germany, advising them that I was his Trustee and for them to send it to me…….
Ah – do you see what’s wrong with this request? So I told him – well send me a photo of the trunk, a list of the contents, the value of the contents, the Insurance Certificate, the B13 for Export, the Commercial Invoice and the Packing List. Surely he could understand that the Customs and Border Agents would need all of this info….. Anyway, this is a condensed version of the Romance Scam Artist – these people all follow a similar pattern and line of questions and histories……
Please, please – don’t fall for them. I know some of you are lonely, you’ve lost your best friend, your spouse, your partner, your children, your parents, etc – but these scum bags prey on your desolation. Rise above them and find comfort with friends and family. Take up a new hobby – find your own joy in being alone. I have and my life is rich, joyful, fun, entertaining and full of treasured moments.
Thank you for reading and for letting me spread the word. Good luck, stay safe, stay healthy.
Joye
Single Older Woman - Living Life Passionately 