Beenscammed:
I noticed that you have been choosing various threads, and linking the scammers behind them.
This person uses different names.It must be the same person because they have the same story.
There are THOUSANDS of scammers out there using the same storyline and very similar English. They are NOT all the same scammer. Some may be part of the same gang, but many are not. If you were to go through this entire forum, you would find hundreds more that are virtually identical.
The simple fact is, scammers have found a formula that works, and they tend to stick to it. It has been passed from person to person, sometimes freely, sometimes for money, sometimes just stolen, as scammers will not hesitate to copy or steal each other's scripts. Scammers use photos of the same models because they quickly learn which ones have a very large collection of available photos--and scammers also sell scam tools (which can include photo sets as well as the software to fake webcame, among other things) to each other.
These features exist in 90% or more of scams involving female characters used by thousands of different scammers:
-Scammer uses young, attractive female photos (often a porn model with video so they can fake webcam)
-character will be in mid twenties to mid thirties (even though half the time they are using photos of a younger woman)
-Scammer character is very innocent and naive, appealing to a sense of chivalry as well as sex
-Scammer targets men who are significantly older than their character
-Character rarely has children
-Character is all alone in the world, except for one friend or family member (who is often in poor health.)
-character has money, often gold, but it may be a bank account, that she can't access herself for some reason, but if you invest the money to bring her to you, her money will be there for the two of you as well.
-character typically is not highly educated (unless she is a nurse, or the occasional military "doctor") or exceptionally intelligent. She is typically going to be in a "feminine" job--nursing, hairdressing, modeling, possibly trading jewelry or antiques--if she is employed at all.
In fact, this format is so standard and so widespread in Ghana that the US Embassy in Ghana has a warning about it--even mentioning the gold or gems:
http://ghana.usembassy.gov/romance_scam.htmlThe same is true of scammers playing males, though the normal characteristics are different (male characters will be over 40, educated (most often engineer, architect, or businessman,) romantic but not naive, most often has one child, photos may be more "average." Again, it's just a formula that has been found to work.
As far as the language goes, the similarities are nothing more than a result of being in the same educational system. They learn English in the same system, and they make the same mistakes. It's like a dialect. I can almost always tell you from the English if the author is from Western Africa, because of the specific mistakes and/or peculiarities, but I won't try to narrow it down further myself. Someone who has specifically made a study of the subject might.
I do understand your frustration - wanting to find some way to catch the person who scammed you. We also wish these were the same person, as our chances of getting action taken would be much greater. But scamming is an industry in Ghana and Nigeria. There is not one, or two, or even a few dozen people behind these scams. There are thousands, using the same formula, the same techniques.
On occasion we are able to link characters--but that is usually through IP's (which are of limited value but at times help) or when the scammer himself does something stupid, like when switches email addresses in mid-stream,copies one of his other accounts, or my personal favorite--he signs up here to argue against a post about him, and he uses one of his other scamming addresses to create the account (this just happened yesterday--a scammer signed up to protest a post about one of his 419 scams, and he used an entirely different email address that he had used for loan scams!)
As to WU information leading to the scammer, more often than not, that information is fake too. ID is not required if the receiver has the right information, and even if it is, many scammers have fake ID or a contact within WU (e.g. a local agent) who is corrupt, and will let them pick up the transfer in exchange for a cut of the profits.
