But these women were not actually participating in a romance scam, their role in the scam was, as stated in the indictment, to receive the stolen money in the U.S. and then reship (thus this part of the scam is known as the Re-Shipping Scam) the money to their associates in Nigeria, as well as places in Ecuador, Great Britain, India, United Arab Emirates and the U.S. They'd keep 10%.
The Nigeria associates posed as members of the U.S. Armed Forces on dating sites and stole over $1 million from 374 victims. See how darn profitable these scams are? It's why there are so many Internet scams to deal with.The unsuspecting women victims were led to believe that the soldiers would use the money to retrieve property, travel to the U.S., and pay other expenses.
These two women were just moving the money. Do you think their "Nigerian associates" care about them now? I think not. I'll be a lot happier when I can read about the authorities indicting/arresting the Nigerians and other scammers who are the real source of the problem....
Here are the two women indicted:
The dating scam continues.
ReplyDeleteIn this example, a woman was on Match.com and started corresponding with a man claiming to be in the military. His profile said he was 39 and the woman was 61 so she said he was too young. He wrote back and said he had made a mistake in his profile (yeah, right...) and he was actually in his late forties. So the woman said she believed him because he was in the military. So knew she wouldn't date him but they became pen pals and later she would say he felt love. Then he talks of coming to visit her and sends her papers to fill out for his release. Of course, these papers asked for all kinds of personal and financial information. That raised a flag for her and she began researching more, finding out that civilians can't requests leaves in behalf of military people. He had also asked for $850 to process the paperwork. Scammers just love to go for as much as they can.
So she didn't lose her money or information, fortunately, but she still felt quite embarrassed and ashamed that she had let this scammer string her along for so long.
Most scammers like to get in quick and get out quick. The risk of a slow-burn scam, one that takes a long time, is that the victim will catch on before the scam is complete.
This was an unusual twist on the dating scam in the news today - a porn star is now warning her fans that a gang of scammers are using her image and videos of her to scam men out of their life savings, via the dating scam we've talked about here before.
ReplyDeleteThe men believe this woman, who they have never met in person, is their fiancee, and the money from these men pays supposedly to fix her broken webcam and in many cases, wedding and travel expenses (that never materialize).
She said on her website, "First and foremost, I am not from Ghana and I do not chat with people on email, Yahoo, MSN or any other messenger."
Dating online is hard enough, but should never include sending money to someone you've never met in person and/or in the very early stages of a relationship and should NEVER ever NEVER include using wire transfer services to send money.