I Am Worried About Dating Scams

We here a lot about dating and romance scammers don’t we? Fortunately, it is really quite rare when someone actually gets involved with one, but when they do it can be costly and painful. Most of the online dating sites, usually the paid subscriptions one, have an anti-scammer policy and even software to detect and reject them. If you make yourself aware of the scams you are less likely to get caught out. Do be careful if you are not using a quality dating site, and you are looking in Facebook groups and the like, as many scammers like to lurk in areas where there is no monitoring of new users.

What telltale signs of a romance scammer?

If only one the items listed rings a bell then continue very carefully

• Ask you for money, even very small amounts or a sick or injured relative.
• They want you to quickly switch from the dating site to texting or social media.
• They are overly romantic and start contacting you every day.
• They appear very attractive yet sound vulnerable.
• They seem simply too good to be true.
• They want to move things on very quickly.
• They ask lots of personal questions about you, but they’re not interested in telling you too much about themselves.
• They are working away or visiting family in another country.

There are the clues that may suggest the person you have been in contact with is a romance scammer:

Don’t Get Caught By A Dating or Romance Scam?

Like most scammers in any field, they are after relieving you of your hard-earned cash. They are professional criminals. So what happens and how do they work.

First, they will join a dating site, or social media group and create a fake profile, sometimes many many profiles. They really can be very plausible by using a very attractive picture and creating a good story, with the aim of befriending people and perhaps getting them to fall a little bit in love with them. Lonely single people are particularly at risk but don’t think it could happen to you. These scammers real professionals in what they do. and make a lot of money from it.

There have been instances where romance scammers have asked people to send them money, take out phone contracts for them and even send money using different names to transfer to their bank accounts on their behalf. Invidual people from all around the world have lost thousands to these criminals

What Does Typical Dating Scammer Appear Like?

The typical scammers can be anywhere in the world but will make out he or she is not too far away. Or they are in another country working or visiting family. They are often based in places like Nigeria, Philippines or Russia.

Women are often targeted and they will usually put a photo of a white man in his 30s to 40s for the profile picture, yet the scammer could be a 60 year old Nigerian or even 20-year old Asian women. The very same scammer will target the men putting up a photo of a 20 to a 30-year attractive woman. Amazingly the scammer will work on many people at the same time.

Their aim is to get you to like, trust and even love them. They have developed and perfected ways of getting you to do this.

So if you find that you have found that person you have long been looking for and it seems to happen very quickly and you haven’t met yet – BEWARE.

They will also try and get you to communicate off the dating site like Facebook, Skype and WhatsApp – BEWARE

They will also try and move things on very quickly – BEWARE

They are often are very likely to not want to meet in person – BEWARE

If they do want to meet then they won’t actually make it, and they need a bit of financial help to do so.– BEWARE

The Next Stage is To Get Your Money

The next stage, once they have won your trust is to get you to give them some money, just a small amount at first. After you have given the scammer even a small amount of money, that psychologically you are like to part with much more. You have invested in this new relationship and you don’t want to let it go.

May people really do part with thousands to these people, so don’t think it couldn’t happen to you.

There are many many ploys that are used. Their Army pension hasn’t turned up, they have had an injury, or a family member has just died. A female scammer might say that they don’t have quite enough for the rent and the nasty Landlord his asking her for sexual favours.

Quite frankly if someone asks you to help them with a little bit of money, no matter how lovely they seem, they ARE almost certainly a scammer.

Dating Sites Really Do A Lot To Help You From Getting Caught By A Scammer

With a good quality dating site, there is usually a team in the back office that check your profile and these people and are fully trained to look out for scammers. Companies also use software to detect them. Many sites also share their scammer information with other sites, all to protect their customers..