Discussion Boards - Agony without the Aunt

Hi
I am new here. I got a message. Thank God for the administrators here They warned me in time about an email I got from a scammer. Luckily I hadn't contacted him back.
HOw do you tell?

Hi Marion,
First up check out their profile, a lot of the scammers sen to be from overseas and English is not their first language so the email and their profile will reflect this. Remembering that this site is open for Australians only. Second check for their knowledge of OZ, I have read in some scammers profiles things like they are living in Darwin in the suburb of Florida, or that they live in Perth Adelaide! Their lack of Australian Knowledge will give them away! I had an Email on here once from a Woman who was widowed and that here Husband had been very wealthy, she was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer and that before she died she wanted to make sure that her estate was going to be divided up amongst the Church. She had looked through this site and had decided that I was the best one to leave her $10,000.000 USD to! If I will only give her my bank details then she will deposit the money! Yeah Right!!!! Naturally each time I got such an email I notified Admin, and I got a few, there was always something that did not seem right though! I also found that you get more of them if you are on very late at night! Best if you are not sure just don't reply! Also it may be the same one or two trying different methods as I have not had one now for months!.They lost interest when they never received any replies from me!

Shane

hi
This one was not the nigerian scam. It was a male giving his profile. Though it was touting the perfect male. One who is prepared to cook, clean and move location!!!!
Also he had not filled in the basic details and another way I figured out was to look at members who have viewed you. He wasn't there.
read your profile Shane. Congrats. Hope you guys are really happy in Darwin Florida:)
Marion

I have had a couple of strange Emails from within OZ from what were possibly just young people, female or male???? Looking at the profile that they had provided so told me that they were not legit. I think that those that are either not capable or those that can;t be bothered submitting a reasonable profile are to be viewed as suspicious. Some Lady friends have told me that there are men on here that while not necessarily "Scammers" are certainly "Schemer's!" and whist they list themselves as being Christian men they have been found to be severely lacking in certain elements of "The Fruit of the Spirit" I do think that is a small minority though but never the less it is something to be aware of! God Bless you in your search. Thanks for you good wishes! Florida should be nice, if I can find it!!! Hehehe

Shane :-)

there are plenty of scammers coming through this site and any dating site.
things to look for.

usually they will start a message with something to try and charm you. eg
hello beautiful.

next their profile seems to good to be true and some parts may not make sense.

also if you reply as a few questions...most scammers are on a script so they will not answer your questions they will just make a general type answer like.
I hope your family is well, I like this and this.

also please NEVER alert someone you think is a scammer to any errors in their messages as these are scripts and they will correct the errors and make it harder to pick them up.

also there are websites out there that list scammers as they come across them so you may actually find them by the name they are using if you do a google search...if they give you an email address put that into google also and see if it comes up. but dont think just because it doesnt come up they are not scammers.

The 4 scammers that I have picked (or the one scammer 4 times, I can't be sure) were almost identical in the way the letter was set out. Each used the charm technique already decribed, pointing out how attractive and interesting I was. Each used what may have originally been a legitimate profile of a member no longer current; each was (conveniently) supposedly living a long way from where I live, making it impossible for me to verify whether or not the supposed member actually lived there; each sounded too good to be true, listing the qualities which I had stated in my profile were important to me in a prospective partner (things that sound too good to be true invariably are); in every case, it was obvious to me that the person, while having a good knowledge of English, was not a native-speaker (there were basic grammar errors which were not evident in the supposed profile of the individuals, and, as Shane points out, there were errors in geography). The bottom line was that the profiles purporting to be off various members DID NOT MATCH the style of the messages sent to me. Every suspected scam which I forwarded to CC was found to be one, and the individual/s promptly removed from the system. My gut feeling is that many, if not all, of the scams I received were from the same individual because of their similarity in style. However, maybe there is a group of individuals who find it entertaining to toy with the feelings of others for their own amusement.
Please rest assured, however, that there are many genuinely nice people on this site. Please don't feel that everyone who makes contact has the same selfish motives as the scammers.

Hello there,

I used to be on here a while ago but have re-activated my account and now paid for full membership. I'm glad to have read this forum as I had no idea of how scammers operated.

When I think back to another Christain dating website I was once part of, the same techniques of introduction was used. When I replied, eventually, I got an abrupt response.

Thank you for the heads up on this topic.

Karina

I am African and for some reason thought that I was not an easy target for "African" scammers, until this "model" from West Africa send me an email that she was interested in me and my profile, lol. Then an email about some "inheritance" about USD$100,000,000 - I never wrote back, it was too good to be true.

Strange that people fall into these traps.

Hi
Are people getting a scammer by the name of kresten411?
Not if it is . The blurb I had sounded sus.

Yes marion I also received a message from him? that I felt was quite suspect. Will ask CC to investigate

The key is to quickly tell CC you suspect a scam. I think I have had 3 or 4 in the early days, but none on last month.

Once reported they killed the account real quick. One time, they killed the account before I even saw their profile.

For me they were dead easy to spot. Each had a model picture and was about 20 years younger ;-)

No one deserves to be conned but there are out there on other sites. I am surprised and disappointed that these scammers are not removed immediately, but perhaps the staff of personals sites watch the movements of these scammers on-line for a while or perhaps some of them just don't care about their clients being hurt or ripped off. A known on-line scammer, a nigerian man posing as a white Polish man wanted to chat on messenger. I'm glad I saw through it. But reading from his victims about this scammer, he apparently tries to get the women to participate in cyber sex. Ladies beware of these lowlifes.

Can anyone believe the gall of some of the scammers on-line?

NOT ON THIS SITE, but on others online such as yahoo.

A 6oish European man began writing to me, with his photo depicting a tall, blond, bronzed Aussie man in his 40's. He claimed to be a christian and widower whose wife apparently died in labour and said that he was raising his 10 year old son alone. It didn't occur to me that things weren't authentic until he sent me some unusual photos and an email in Greek!! He asked me to send him my photos because he wanted to 'own them' he said, no doubt to use them to lure some other unsuspecting person for his sick gain.

Whether for financial gain or for entertainment, it's a sad world when people like him are deceiving and hurting good people who are genuinely hoping to find friendship and love online.

My advice for all is to not invest your emotions into anything too soon until you can be sure that the person is who they claim to be. If you see inconsistences in their writing, if they don't answer your questions directly but use textbook type answers particularly about love, which quite frankly blokes just don't really do unless they're Shakespeare! And if they show more interest in sex than in caring about your health, work, life and family - run away very fast while you still have the chance!!!

Cate xx

Just wanted to extend an apology to all males for what I've written above as men are very capable of communicating deep loving feelings and thoughts. Sorry!