What is a Romance Scam?
A romance scam essentially occurs when strangers pretend romantic intentions, gain the affection of victims, and then use that good will to gain access to their victims’ money/bank account or by getting them to commit financial fraud on their behalf. Most of these scams seem to originate from, and are prevalent in West Africa (especially Nigeria and Ghana) although they are becoming increasingly common in Russia and Eastern Europe. Another emerging region is Thailand and The Philippines or any other country where ‘mail order’ brides are available. Romance Scams, rely on creating strong emotional ties that by-pass logical thought and appeal strongly and exclusively on emotions. These feelings are triggered by using appealing photos, dream profiles on dating sites, persuasive and flattering words, and poetry and love song lyrics. The strategy is to get victims to fall in love/lust so strongly that they want to be with the scammers by whatever means possible. The promise of marriage is ve
A romance scam is when one person forms an online pseudo-romantic relationship with another in an effort to try to swindle money out of them. The victims believe that they are in an actual relationship, only to later find that they have been conned. The lucky ones are those that realized what was happening before actually losing any of their money. Someone that is trying to pull off a romance scam will contact another person by email, through a dating website or by any other means of communication via the internet. This person then works on forming a friendship with the hopes of it eventually leading to a pseudo-romantic relationship. In some cases, the transition from one level to the other is extremely quick and the victim believes that he or she is involved in a whirlwind romance. The scammer then makes the move for money, and in some cases, actually gets it. It is important to beware of getting involved in a romance scam when talking to someone on the internet. The scammer may use
