Profile of an Internet Dating Conman

I was having dinner with a friend today and the topic of internet dating scams came up. We exchanged notes and here are some pointers on how to identify an internet dating conman.

• A huge majority of these conmen come from Nigeria.
• He usually poses as a single parent with a young daughter/son, has a good job and is a Caucasian from either the United States or United Kingdom. His wife would have died in a car crash or some illness.
• Inconsistent information. There was this guy I was corresponding with who referred to his kid as a 'he' and sometimes as a 'she'. Unless his child is gay, I don't think a parent could mix up the sex of his child.
• Notice how he always talks about other things (like declaring his deep love for you) but never talks about himself. This is because there's nothing to talk about himself, his whole life is a lie.
• When you ask for his pic, he'll email you someone else's pic - usually a Caucasian guy's and claim that's him. One give-away is the pics will be blur, which means he would have gleaned it from cyberspace.
• He will declare his deep love for you by the third email, latest. Can a person fall in love with someone so fast without even knowing you? I can't, for sure.
• He'll want to fly all the way to your country to visit you very early in the relationship.
• When he gives you his number, check and see if the country code is +234 (Nigeria's country code). Some of these cheats are not too bright and won't expect the girl to check on the country code. But girls are smarter these days.

Now you might be thinking what are the motives of these conmen. Why do they go through all the trouble to pose as somebody else?

Well, the main motive is usually to cheat the potential victim off her hard earned money. And he'll usually do this by convincing the girl he's in a dire situation like stranded in a foreign country while on his way to visit the girl and needs money badly.

Well, I hope these pointers will come in handy in case an email from a hunky male Caucasian suddenly drops into your mailbox.

Internet Scam - Ask Yourself These Questions

My entry, Fraud in the Name of God, on the William/Rebecca Benson internet scam received a few hits from around the world (I know this through NuffNang).

I figured these people must have received a similar email and would like to know whether it’s a genuine case or not. So I’m writing this entry with the hope that those who think they have gotten lucky will see the rationale in things.

The internet lottery scam started a couple of years back and over time most people have come to know about it and are not fooled. As such, these fraudsters have changed their tactic by using charity as the new angle to trick people.

To those of you who have received a similar email – that you’ve won a lottery or you have been chosen to be recipient of a huge sum of money for charity; and you are jumping for joy thinking you are finally going to get rich, please ask yourself these questions:

• You’ve never bought any foreign based lottery or entered any foreign based contest. So why out of the blue someone is informing you have won this huge amount of money? After playing the lottery in a few companies I can tell you no lottery company will ever do this.

• Why would a complete stranger want to give you a huge sum of money? As far as I know, people usually donate to their favourite charities or known individuals, never to complete strangers.

• What makes you different that the ‘donor’ chooses you above everybody else in this whole wide world to receive the money? Remember, you don’t even know this person.
  
  

I thought people were not so guilable to fall for a trick like this, until an ex-colleague amost fell into the trap. And he was a member of senior management in a well known public listed company.

I've learned that even the most experienced and smart people can be naive and guilble.

So don't be part of the statistics.

Fraud in the Name of God

First it was the internet lottery scam that caused many people to get cheated. Since most people have become aware of such scams, these crooks are resorting to using God's name in vain to continue their crooked ways.

I received this email a couple of weeks ago from a Mrs Rebecca Williams from Kuwait. Her late husband Benson Williams died in 2004 after a brief illness. When he was alive he deposited 2.5 million US Dollars in a bank in Abidjan in a suspense account.

Now that Mrs Rebecca Williams has contracted cancer and stroke and since she doesn't have any children to pass the money to, she wants to donate the money to any church based charitable organisation or individual so that the money can be put to good use.

And of course Mrs Rebecca Williams asks the recipient of the email to contact her via email to discuss further how the money can be transfered, etc.

Now whenever I receive these kind of emails I will delete it immediatly without even opening it. But this time I kept on reading to see what new tactic and angle these crooks are using.

What pisses me off is this para:

"The Bible made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth. I took this decision because I don’t have any child that will inherit this money and my husband relatives are not Christians and I don’t want my husband’s efforts to be used by unbelievers. I don’t want a situation where this money will be used in an ungodly way. This is why I am taking this decision."

Mrs Rebecca Williams has not only used the name of God to cheat people but she has also defiled the name of God by speaking untruths about God and being a lousy witness, if you even consider Mrs Rebecca Williams a witness of God, so to speak.

First of all, she doesn't want the money to be used by unbelievers. Since when did Jesus say that Christians must help only Christians? Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you." - John 13: 34. Jesus didn't say that we must only love Christians; he said love one another.

Secondly Mrs Rebecca Williams used the word 'ungodly'. How can anything be 'ungodly' when the spirit of God exists in everything? That's Theology 101 for you.

As it is, so many people have been cheated by the lottery scam. What more when people receive an email like this wanting to give the money to charity. The crooks behind this scam knows that people are usually more responsive towards God and charity. After all, if someone wants to give the money to charity and quotes the Bible couldn't be a lie, right? Wrong!

Using God's name to cheat people and at the same time spreading untruths about Him is too much. It is one of the things in life that I have no patience for; it makes my blood boil. These scums of the earth are so low that they have resort to the lowest of ways to cheat people.