# Romance scams are on the rise across the U.S.



## Trade (Aug 27, 2019)

https://money.yahoo.com/romance-scams-cost-202205142.html


> A report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) found that romance scams are soaring, with more than 21,000 people reporting them in 2018.
> 
> Based on 21,368 reports about romance scams submitted, the FTC found that Americans involved had lost a total of $143 million, which was “more than any other type of consumer fraud” identified by the FTC’s team, the report stated.
> 
> ...


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## Don M. (Aug 27, 2019)

It's a rare week that I don't get some E-mail Spam regarding "Senior Meeting/Dating".  I suppose that older folks who have lost their mate might be tempted to "explore" some of these sites....but, like most Spam, the odds are that it is just a ploy to get money from those who respond.


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## terry123 (Aug 27, 2019)

I get a ton of them too and most of them are in my spam box so easy to delete all at once.


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## RadishRose (Aug 27, 2019)

That dollar amount is astounding!


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## Lara (Aug 27, 2019)

I don't get any romance emails ☹

(j/k with the sad face...but it's true I don't get that type of email spam)


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## RadishRose (Aug 27, 2019)

me either, not yet anyway.


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## Olivia (Aug 27, 2019)

But there are also a lot of people who get together online and form really wonderful honest relationships. So don't  let the bad apples ruin it for everyone else.  As Trade said, be careful and use your brain and gut feelings.


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## Trade (Aug 27, 2019)

The reason I posted this is because it seems to me we've been getting more suspicious traffic lately.
For example the person that was using a picture from a Russian dating site as an Avatar. That's not the only one either.


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## Trade (Aug 27, 2019)

Olivia said:


> But there are also a lot of people who get together online and form really wonderful honest relationships.


 
I don't know about a lot of people, but it sure worked out that way for you and me. 

❤


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## Olivia (Aug 27, 2019)

Trade said:


> I don't know about a lot of people, but it sure worked out that way for you and me.
> 
> ❤



Yes, for sure.  
❤


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## Judycat (Aug 27, 2019)

No romance emails but some for male enhancement products.


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## fmdog44 (Aug 27, 2019)

Never had a romance email.


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## Ruthanne (Aug 27, 2019)

Someone tried to scam me at a dating site but then I realized it was all BS.


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## AprilSun (Aug 28, 2019)

Judycat said:


> No romance emails but some for male enhancement products.



I get those too.


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## toffee (Aug 28, 2019)

must say I have not noticed -maybe coz I dont get them ' but had a couple on a site I was on long ago
load of BS , not amused by scammers !!


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## Leann (Aug 28, 2019)

A friend of mine who is a woman about 65 years old joined several dating sites after breaking up with her boyfriend. She was emotionally vulnerable, to say the least. An extremely handsome man about 5-10 years her junior contacted her from one of the dating sites. She was flattered and was immediately smitten with him. A group of her friends, including me, tried to warn her that this was probably a scam. The guy lived abroad, owned some kind of company that had 75 offices in the United States, was a widower with two adult children and was having trouble getting back in the U.S. 

He slathered attention on her with emails and texts that made her swoon. This went on for months. Although she never admitted it, I'm almost certain she sent him money; money that she didn't have to give in the first place. Suddenly everything stopped. He cut off all communication and she never heard from him again. We had told her about a website called PigBusters.net which is a scammer awareness site. I suspect that she went there, realized she was being scammed and shut him down.


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## JimW (Aug 28, 2019)

fmdog44 said:


> Never had a romance email.



Give me your e-mail addy.


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## RadishRose (Aug 28, 2019)

Pigbusters! I love it!


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## jujube (Aug 28, 2019)

I met the Spousal Equivalent through a dating site.  I had just about given up, so had he.  I was skimming through the ads and saw a guy who ticked off most of the boxes.  I "winked", he "winked" back.  We met the next day, I introduced him to the family the day after.  

It's been ten years this month.  Going strong.


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## bearcat (Mar 18, 2020)

Trade said:


> https://money.yahoo.com/romance-scams-cost-202205142.html




It's not difficult to evade email scams.  Create one "dummy" email account that you use 
for nothing but a heat sink, the one demanded by sites to 'activate your membership' via email.

Reserve one email account, give it out only to friends who are computer-savvy.
Even then, use Filters and Folders, to send email you want to one place, and just ignore the rest.
And we all have well-meaning friends who inadvertently spread a virus by sending attachments.
This works well:
https://virusdesk.kaspersky.com/


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## bearcat (Mar 18, 2020)

Leann said:


> A friend of mine who is a woman about 65 years old joined several dating sites after breaking up with her boyfriend. She was emotionally vulnerable, to say the least. An extremely handsome man about 5-10 years her junior contacted her from one of the dating sites. She was flattered and was immediately smitten with him. A group of her friends, including me, tried to warn her that this was probably a scam. The guy lived abroad, owned some kind of company that had 75 offices in the United States, was a widower with two adult children and was having trouble getting back in the U.S.
> 
> He slathered attention on her with emails and texts that made her swoon. This went on for months. Although she never admitted it, I'm almost certain she sent him money; money that she didn't have to give in the first place. Suddenly everything stopped. He cut off all communication and she never heard from him again. We had told her about a website called PigBusters.net which is a scammer awareness site. I suspect that she went there, realized she was being scammed and shut him down.




This is why this type of scam continues to work:  pride and shame.  The scammers count on the victim hiding the truth.
An opportunity is here to be filled:  market a background-checking service.
The trouble, of course, is that the persons who most need such a service are too shallow and gullible to use it.


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## MarciKS (May 11, 2020)

Trade said:


> The reason I posted this is because it seems to me we've been getting more suspicious traffic lately.
> For example the person that was using a picture from a Russian dating site as an Avatar. That's not the only one either.



It's nice that this got posted. Fortunately I'm not really at risk for this as I'm not looking for any kind of romance. But, some people don't know any better.


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## Rosemarie (May 12, 2020)

Lara said:


> I don't get any romance emails ☹
> 
> (j/k with the sad face...but it's true I don't get that type of email spam)


Nor do I. It could that they are sent to people who have visited a dating site. One reason to be careful about being tracked while on the computer.


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## Fyrefox (May 12, 2020)

Now and then I get a romance scam e-mail or private message usually associated with a forum membership from someone claiming that they had a special feeling about me after reading my profile.  They think they we could be the best of friends, life partners, etc.  The writing is usually in broken English, and often from someone in a part of the former Soviet Union.  The patterns are familiar and recognizable, and you can smell the scams from a mile away...


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## Marie5656 (May 12, 2020)

*I have never joined one of those sites, and have no interest in it. BUT, that being said, if I did, and a man said he lived overseas, I would be out.  That is a big tell. A usual ploy is he is an American, stuck abroad and needs money to get back.  Nope.  Or then, I could tell him I would send him cash, just give me his address. Then he would get some of that "fake" US money they use in movies and on TV. It is marked "movie money" somewhere on the bill.  Would love to see someone try to bank it.*


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## Em in Ohio (May 12, 2020)

Nobody is trying to scam little old me - guess I'm too poor!  But, I have seen horrific tales on the news of women who were taken for tens of thousands of dollars.

Women who get "dumped" in their senior years are probably the most vulnerable.  They need to feel desired, _at any cost_.    It is truly sad.


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## CarolfromTX (May 12, 2020)

I get Facebook friend requests from guys a lot. When you look at their profile, they only have one or two pictures. I accepted one once just to see and almost immediately got a message. Hi! How are you? I deleted that one quickly. 

I also play a word game on my phone that has a chat feature. Every now and then someone will invite me to play and immediately start chatting me up. One guy practically asked me to marry him before the game ended. So creepy.


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## Keesha (May 12, 2020)

Trade said:


> I don't know about a lot of people, but it sure worked out that way for you and me.
> 
> ❤





Olivia said:


> Yes, for sure.
> ❤


That’s what I thought too. ☺ Lol j/k

I never get any romance scams but I don’t go anywhere online for that to happen. No games, no facebook, no twitter accounts.


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## jujube (May 12, 2020)

When I first signed up with Match.com, I got several of the scam responses.  Most of them went like this:

"Hello, my darling.  I am man looking for good wife.  I have falling in love with you picture at once.  I want get married right away and have baby.  Waiting to hear from you, my darling."

Trolling 60-year-old women with a line like that?


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## Ruthanne (May 13, 2020)

I just had another "man" try to fool me on a dating site.  He had a picture of himself and yet said he was 62.  The picture did not look like a 62 year old man but that's not what gave him away.  He told me where he lived and then said it was such and such kms. away from a certain town.  We don't use metric here.  That's what gave him away.  I then told him he is not for real and we don't go by kms.  He never answered back.

He blocked me after that.  And I was glad...I don't need some phoney baloney!


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## Ferocious (May 13, 2020)

*Hmmmm..............for about 10 seconds I considered joining one of those sites, but my honesty and good sense stopped me in my tracks.............   Well, can you imagine throngs of beautiful, Gina Lollobrigida lookalike, women queueing up around the block to come and meet a penniless, Shrek, lookalike like me......oh, you can, now there's a surprise?  *


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## Keesha (May 13, 2020)

jujube said:


> When I first signed up with Match.com, I got several of the scam responses.  Most of them went like this:
> 
> "Hello, my darling.  I am man looking for good wife.  I have falling in love with you picture at once.  I want get married right away and have baby.  Waiting to hear from you, my darling."
> 
> Trolling 60-year-old women with a line like that?


And the next line would be “ Would like to see you but my missionary work doesn’t pay enough for a plane ticket. If you could send me $10,000 we could meet and be together forever”


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## In The Sticks (May 13, 2020)

jujube said:


> When I first signed up with Match.com, I got several of the scam responses.  Most of them went like this:
> 
> "Hello, my darling.  I am man looking for good wife.  I have falling in love with you picture at once.  I want get married right away and have baby.  Waiting to hear from you, my darling."
> 
> Trolling 60-year-old women with a line like that?


Have you ever wondered why those "_Your rich Nigerian uncle died and left you a fortune I need $500 to retrieve for you_" emails are so crudely written?  It's for the benefit of the sender.

They know that if they try to sound legit, they'll get a number of skeptical respondents who will only follow through so far, and then leave.  This would be a massive waste of the scammer's time.  So they write the letters in a fashion that filters out those who know better.  Anyone who responds to something that others can see right through has a higher degree of likelihood of following the scam all the way to conclusion.

I suspect those responses you got are [sadly] along the same lines.
They filtered _you _out.


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## Autumn72 (May 30, 2020)

Trade said:


> https://money.yahoo.com/romance-scams-cost-202205142.html


It's happening to me and I had to do a factory reset no way to sign in to cancel..everything is wiped out.


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## Autumn72 (May 30, 2020)

CarolfromTX said:


> I get Facebook friend requests from guys a lot. When you look at their profile, they only have one or two pictures. I accepted one once just to see and almost immediately got a message. Hi! How are you? I deleted that one quickly.
> 
> I also play a word game on my phone that has a chat feature. Every now and then someone will invite me to play and immediately start chatting me up. One guy practically asked me to marry him before the game ended. So creepy.


I don't do chats ses these dating sites want you to chat with a stranger. I went through this long long ago and the results was rape. Not me, the neighbor across the street. I always move to a place with security doors. This one has two before you can enter the elevator. It happened on R.I., I was first time in chat rooms and there was no one in any. Except one named WIThersPOON as in the movie star. I guess later on. As the report came the name as WIThersPOON did the dirty deed. Turned out it was a African American young man.
Happened on Vine Street. My daughter had been staying with me for a few days and was in the driveway with her bf...said to me after the fact that someone was outside my parking lot. She thought seemed strange. Since she was talking with her bf for a while and noticed him out there where no others would be the area is known for families. 
Found out later it was the person on the chat rooms as they call flaming me. I argued with that person...then I looked out my picture window and saw a crime Van at the one family cottage the husband was a postal delivery man who left early in the morning for work. Still dark out ....I guessed. She had three children toddler, baby and Catholic school first grader.  The name is what was the giveaway. Read in the paper he was from North Carolina.....came all that way to rape a white woman who was a young married woman with her children there. I remember....the house went up for sale. So....chats are not good . yet this site mentioned they do not screen for criminal convictions. Says a lot.....It seems some have been raped on these dates.
Dating for Seniors. eHarmony which may be safer. There are all kinds of low life animals out there. No class what so ever.


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## Autumn72 (May 30, 2020)

Lara said:


> I don't get any romance emails ☹
> 
> (j/k with the sad face...but it's true I don't get that type of email spam)


I applied on three. This woman was telling me of her dating lineup with several men. Seems she may meet them for a drink and if she likes him she will stay and drink more to the point of too much. I don't believe she is really interested in a ongoing relationship. She is younger and pretty very pretty blonde. I think she said Match.com. She told me of each as in right. Though may only date two. Other states,  careers I think her father was in politics. She never married. She's on her late fifties.
Anyway she seems to have it down to a system. She only started After bring solo for a while. Signing off for now.....


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## hellomimi (May 30, 2020)

Rosemarie said:


> One reason to be careful about being tracked while on the computer.


I use duck duck go search engine all the time to avoid getting tracked.  So far, so good.


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