Cyber relationship turned into scam

[wavejock]

IDK maybe this is just me..but i dont get why people talk to people in other countries in this manner, like they are pen pals. Like hey, you go visit a country or youre planning on it, totally talk to the locals, get online to hook up if you want whatever..but to be like in one country and start getting into an online " relationship" with someone is so fng weird 1000s of miles away. And then to take it to the level of having them come visit.. ( red flags or not) just shows a bit of immaturity/naivete IMO. I mean a dude in China thinking a person in Florida wants a relationship is crazy ( especially if you know Florida which is pretty much BS trash central lol) I understand if a person is lonely but if you cannot find someone to talk to or meet in China or even a nearby country you most certainly will not find it in Florida.

 

[alfreak]

We looked into that, because she was clearly a danger to herself. Sorry for a long story.....

But you can't really do that anymore. Yay USA! We have enormous homeless populations of mentally ill people thanks to the laws that lowered the bar for commitment....basically, if she could say her name, what day of the week it is, the name of the President, and draw the outline of a house, she was "competent". And left to her own devices.

She lived in Maine, which has extensive resources for assistance. Mom had suffered a stroke months before, and while somehow her already disabled body was spared, it screwed up her head just enough to remove reasoning and some time issues. She torpedoed her business and was upside down on a big mortgage on her house. Her husband had passed a year prior. We called the State, which sent a social worker to offer help....get her food, medical care, restore power (which means water and sewer) to her house. Pay her taxes. Basically everything. She told him to get out of her house. Twice.

So a 68 year old woman who requires a walker to get around is left, by law, to live on $1,400/mo in a home that's miles from nowhere, has no electricity, water or sewer, or heat, and has a $3,000 monthly nut. We visited as often as we could (we live over 600 miles away) and tried to help, talk her into moving in with us, whatever we could. Nothing. No go.

Then the boyfriend appears. He's an engineer from Georgia working in Cairo, Egypt and can't pay his workers, so he needs her, "his love" to take wire transfers from him and wire the money to him to pay them. Ummmmm, if he can wire to you from there, Mom, why can't he wire to his employees? "He needs my help, he wouldn't do anything wrong." Ugh. So she did what he asked. We alerted her bank, who blocked her from accepting wire transfers. She found another bank somewhere else. We called FBI's wire fraud division and our local office, several times as well as countless emails. NO reply at all.

This went on for about 8 months.

In short, Kim's mother was found dead by local police three days before Christmas. A local clammer on the bay across from the house heard a chirping sound coming from her house. He saw the back bedroom door open...the chirping was a smoke alarm with a dead battery. Outside temperatures were ranging from 10F to 35F. The man called police, who had been doing every-other-day Well Checks on her, and they found her in her bed. We don't know if she intentionally left the door open or not.

My deepest condolences. I hope she didn't have to suffer much.

 

[alfreak]

IDK maybe this is just me..but i dont get why people talk to people in other countries in this manner, like they are 14 yo pen pals. Like hey, you go visit a country or youre planning on it, totally talk to the locals, get online to hook up if you want whatever..but to be like in one country and start getting into an online " relationship" with someone is so fng weird 1000s of miles away. And then to take it to the level of having them come visit.. ( red flags or not) just shows a bit of immaturity/naivete IMO. I mean a dude in China thinking a person in Florida wants a relationship is crazy ( especially if you know Florida which is pretty much BS trash central lol) I understand if a person is lonely but if you cannot find someone to talk to or meet in China or even a nearby country you most certainly will not find it in Florida.

A long distance relationship was never what I wanted. I guess I was just caught up in the moment.

For the record he's not from Florida, he does not have the accent. Also I have some good friends from Fort Lauderdale...

 

[Gj816]

Gosh I hope you didn't send him the $400. People are schmucks sometimes. Life is too short to try to scam people. Assholes.

Good luck to you in the future.

 

[wavejock]

A long distance relationship was never what I wanted. I guess I was just caught up in the moment.

For the record he's not from Florida, he does not have the accent. Also I have some good friends from Fort Lauderdale...

Ha I was just jokin/trashing Florida..because it is an easy place to joke about. But Yeah i get it..you got caught up in it..I guess I just dont see the value in this long distance serious chatting. With that said any GL surfers from Oz..ill be willing to take the chance lol

 

[Phil Ayesho]

it astonished me the lengths to which some folks will go for a lousy $400.

Anyone willing to work that hard at scamming $400 bucks could easily make ten times that with the same number of hours invested in something legit.

 

[AlteredEgo]

A long distance relationship was never what I wanted. I guess I was just caught up in the moment.

For the record he's not from Florida, he does not have the accent. Also I have some good friends from Fort Lauderdale...

Florida is huge. There isn't any one accent. I lived on the Dade/Broward border for four years. I heard MANY accents. Russian. Hebrew. Cajun. Creole. No less than 8 distinct Spanish accents. Lots of NYC accents. Canadian accents. French Canadian accents. Southern drawls of various stripes. Jamaican. I learned Portuguese just by ear. And that's just in ONE part of a state as large as some countries. I would not suggest an outsider try to guage when or not someone is in Florida by accent.

 

[LaFemme]

I get targeted all the time. I get three or four fake friend requests on FB from scammers a week. Why? I don’t know. I have my privacy settings set as high as possible, I don’t say I’m single.

I even got a scammer once on LinkedIn. And forget about dating sites. Nigerian scammers were almost the only ones who contacted me.

For women, it might be about age, though. The older a woman gets, the more desperate she is presumed to be. Also, she is settled and might not be too tech savvy. Fortunately scammers are lazy and recycle their pictures, messages and stories. Poor grammar and spelling, quick “I love you’s”, sappy messages and profiles, from ‘here’ but working ‘there’. Lots of clues.

I’m glad you caught on before any money was exchanged. Of course you miss the affection. It wasn’t real but it felt real. It wasn’t your fault. You were a victim of someone who does this professionally. To them, all North Americans are rich. $400 would have been the beginning. It would have escalated from there until you had nothing. There are rooms full of these guys doing this 24/7, bilking men and women of their savings. Pigs.

I’m glad you didn’t let your open heart lead you down that path. Stay open. Stay smart!

 

[wallyj84]

Two people tried to scam me with this recently.

I got messaged on FB and they tried to talk me up a little bit, but I guess I wasn't being a good enough Mark and they stopped very quickly.

 

[someperson]

So a few weeks ago. Someone sent me a message on Jack'd. He said he's very interested in me. I am in Beijing and he said he's in FL. We talked for a while and he asked for my IM. I thought there's no harm so we did.

Since then we've been talking day and night. We don't talk for long cause of the "time difference". And what we've been discussing is boring: mostly was basic stuff like what's your job, what's it like living in beijing etc. Two weeks in he called out of the blue and said something like I am falling for you and I wanna pay you a visit. In my mind I was like I don't know you that well... But nevertheless I said ok if that's what you want. Before he hung up. He said "I love you" and I froze.

I don't know him enough to address him as an acquaintance let alone boyfriend. Maybe he's raised in a hispanic environment, I thought to myself. That should explain the enthusiasm and the accent.

So he started to buy tickets and apply for visa and stuff. Before his flight he showed me his itinerary and it shows that he's gonna stopover at malaysia. which is odd cause it's not the best route. So the day has come, he was gonna land in beijing. But in the morning I got a call from him. What he said was he brought a lot of cash with him and it's been confiscated by the custom and he needs 400 bucks to pay them to get the cash back.

SCAM, Finally I realized.

In a retrospective view I noticed every sketchy little thing that was off. The accent, sometimes poor grammar, the know nothing about Netflix... All make sense now. And I accept all the bullshit excuses that he's been using. Like one time I tried to facetime him, he declined and said his phone's broken.

At first I thought to myself I'm not hurt cause I don't think I have the "deep connection" he thought we had. But now a few days past by and sometime I'd recall our convos. Mostly boring stuff but it's quite nice to have someone you can talk bullshit and nothing to. I have a lot of friends. But I haven't had someone I feel attached to for a long time.

I should've known it's too good to be true, but at the time I was like: take a chance you stupid ho. I'm not sure how to express this feeling. But the affection lingers, and there's no one to turn to. I tried to explain it to my friends but I just couldn't describe my feelings right. I guess this is what people call false hope. Except in this case the subject doesn't really exist.

So there's my story. Any thoughts?

yeah scam. tell them to deduct it from the amount he had

 

[Spartan727]

So a few weeks ago. Someone sent me a message on Jack'd. He said he's very interested in me. I am in Beijing and he said he's in FL. We talked for a while and he asked for my IM. I thought there's no harm so we did.

Since then we've been talking day and night. We don't talk for long cause of the "time difference". And what we've been discussing is boring: mostly was basic stuff like what's your job, what's it like living in beijing etc. Two weeks in he called out of the blue and said something like I am falling for you and I wanna pay you a visit. In my mind I was like I don't know you that well... But nevertheless I said ok if that's what you want. Before he hung up. He said "I love you" and I froze.

I don't know him enough to address him as an acquaintance let alone boyfriend. Maybe he's raised in a hispanic environment, I thought to myself. That should explain the enthusiasm and the accent.

So he started to buy tickets and apply for visa and stuff. Before his flight he showed me his itinerary and it shows that he's gonna stopover at malaysia. which is odd cause it's not the best route. So the day has come, he was gonna land in beijing. But in the morning I got a call from him. What he said was he brought a lot of cash with him and it's been confiscated by the custom and he needs 400 bucks to pay them to get the cash back.

SCAM, Finally I realized.

In a retrospective view I noticed every sketchy little thing that was off. The accent, sometimes poor grammar, the know nothing about Netflix... All make sense now. And I accept all the bullshit excuses that he's been using. Like one time I tried to facetime him, he declined and said his phone's broken.

At first I thought to myself I'm not hurt cause I don't think I have the "deep connection" he thought we had. But now a few days past by and sometime I'd recall our convos. Mostly boring stuff but it's quite nice to have someone you can talk bullshit and nothing to. I have a lot of friends. But I haven't had someone I feel attached to for a long time.

I should've known it's too good to be true, but at the time I was like: take a chance you stupid ho. I'm not sure how to express this feeling. But the affection lingers, and there's no one to turn to. I tried to explain it to my friends but I just couldn't describe my feelings right. I guess this is what people call false hope. Except in this case the subject doesn't really exist.

So there's my story. Any thoughts?

I can relate, I was in a virtual relationship for 2 years. Never realized it wasn’t going to be more than virtual until it was finished.
We met in a syndicate game I’ve played for years. I know the connection, I don’t blame him I made the choice to open my heart.
I didn’t realize how much I cared until it was over.
You need to remember Not everyone is like that, one bad experience doesn’t define everyone.