Online Dating Scammers Profit $10 Million a Month in Australia
(October 31, 2011) An investigation by 60 Minutes Australia discovered that online daters in Australia are being taken for more than $10 million a month from online dating scammers based out of Nigeria. They spend hours wooing the unsuspecting person online then when they know the person has fallen in love with their persona, they create an “emergency” and ask for money.
Tens of thousands of Australians fall for the trap.
The scammers will continue to milk the person for money until the person has no more to give. Then the scammer “disappears”. Even after the scam is done, some people still don’t want to believe they’ve been scammed.
From the report:
“LIAM BARTLETT: Rosalie is 53 – divorced and terribly lonely. For romance scammers, the perfect mark. Looking for love online, she met Benjamin Walthol – a handsome, American businessman, working in Malaysia. Ben wooed her for hours at a time – he even sent flowers. Rosalie believed she’d finally found true love. And when the man of her dreams asked for loans to help his business, she happily handed over thousands.
ROSALIE: $90,000 plus what I still owe in phone calls and I have a debt of fifteen thousand dollars.
LIAM BARTLETT: You’ve given away your entire life savings and you’re in debt?
ROSALIE: Yes.
LIAM BARTLETT: But even now, Rosalie clings to the dream that Ben will repay the loans and they’ll begin a new life together as he promised.”
For years, Online Dating Magazine has warned about online dating scams, also known as “romance scams”. By playing on matters of the heart, scammers have discovered a gold mine of money because once a person believes he/she is in love, they will do anything to help the person they are communicating with.
Nigeria scammers are well trained. They know what to say, when to say it, and don’t mind spending hundreds of hours cultivating a perceived relationship before striking. Online Dating Magazine has even opened a site dedicated to awareness of scams – Online Dating Safety Awareness.
Some ways to avoid being scammed:
1) Only communicate with people that are local.
2) If the person says they are “overseas” on business, it’s likely a scam.
3) If the person has an excuse for not meeting, they are likely a scammer… or married.
4) If the person ever asks you for money and you have never met, then they are a scammer.
Scammers bank on one thing – your emotions and the time you invest in communicating with them. Because you’ve invested so much time communicating with the scammer, before they ask for money, your guard is down. You are likely to believe the person, what they say, and in the potential relationship they’ve been cultivating. This psychologically causes a person to want to help even though they’ve never met this supposed boyfriend/girlfriend.
Also, scammers don’t just use email anymore to communicate with online dates. They use the phone too. So just because you’ve been chatting on the phone, doesn’t mean the person isn’t a scammer.
Click here to view the Australia 60 Minutes report titled, “The Love Trap”
Related:
Online Dating Scams (Online Dating Tonight)
Online Relationship Scams
Nigerian Online Dating Scams
Woman Loses $400,000 to Online Dating Scam
$10 million a month? Wow! There was some press here in the UK a few weeks ago that said 200k people had been caught out in online dating fraud so there definately looks like there is an issue here. The question is what will address this issue? If we know you are who you say you are and could provide a level of trust like seeing someone’s drivers licence or passport – then would that be enough? Is the issue about impersonation or fraud?
The show was about a girl who runs datescreen which tracks down the scammers. I met a guy who was in malaysia and wanted me to send money so she did a check and confirmed it was a scam. all aussie woman should use her and she has a website you just order off online
It’s all too easy, I’ve scammed people to get a green card to the USA, laptops paid, and money transferred to my account. People are so gullible and Australians are the easiest prey!
That’s insane, 10 million a month! Those Nigerian scammers work out of internet cafes in Nigeria. I saw it on 20/20 once on ABC here in the USA. All they have is time, and basically scamming people is their full time job. They sometime spend months and months building up trust with victims, to make them as comfortable as possible..
I have been in Dating industry 30 years. I lead these scam artists on and have made friend with some of them, when I told them how they worked. Young girls and boys work after school to earn a few dollars and have minders telling them what to say when they hood a sucker. Many Australians are gullible. I have several friends now who still think they are talking to real people, I’m having trouble convincing them not to send money.
Some people, when confronted by friends or family about a scam, are so far “invested” (time and heart-wise) in the online “relationship” that they refuse to believe it. It’s amazing how far these scams have progressed too, even to the point of Web cam conversations being convincingly “faked”. We issued an alert on the Web cam scams in early 2012 that you can read here. Romance scammers are very good at what they do, which is why so many people fall prey. We have greatly increased our efforts to educate people about romance scams, including a new special Romance Scam section dedicated to informing others on how these scams work and how to avoid them.
It’s a shame that some of your friends have to learn the hard way. When the reality strikes, hopefully they will work to educate others too on how these scams work.
Thank you for your post.
Sincerely,
Joe Tracy, Publisher
Online Dating Magazine