If I contacted him first, is it a scam?

I found a great profile on Ok Cupid. I emailed this man and he emailed back. There was nothing in the language of his message that made me suspicious. He has flawless English. After the second message on the website he asked for my email. We started emailing and his emails were lengthy and he shared a lot about his life. He's British, an architect, widower , lives in my town, has 2 adult children and wants a monogamous relationship. We had many things in common. I didn't have a reason to suspect because he would reveal first. My first red flag came when after the second email he told me he was closing his profile on OkCupid because he had "found what he's looking for". I wrote telling him that I wanted to meet. He did close the profile but I haven't heard from him in five days. I did check the IP addresses of his email. One email is from Cyprus. But the other is from Miami which is the city where he said he lives. He has not asked for any money. So I have some red flags but not all. I was thinking of sending another email. But I think I need opinions from this forum. I could really use some objective input. Thanks.

Welcome to Scamwarners Mcojeda,

Listen to your mind. The red flags sent you here for a reason.

I too see some red flags that are typical with romance scammers. Wife dead, deleted his profile on the dating site, lengthy emails and his profession. Then you have the IP address bouncing from Miami to Cyprus.

1. Scammers often tell their victims that they will remove or have removed their profile off of dating sites. This is because the scammer knows the site owner will figure out he is a scammer or other women will report his profile. Thus leading to the closure of his profile. He tells this lie in hope to continue his scam with women he massed messaged.

2. Scammers will tell victims that his wife is dead. In most cases she died of cancer or motor vehicle accident. Sometime during birth. This is because he is working on your emotions and taking another person out of his life he can ask for money.

3. The lengthy emails are a copy and paste. He has most likely stolen them from other sites. Google parts of the text and see what you find.

4. IP changes. He may be using a tool that changes his IP to the location he prefer to pretend to be in.

5. Scammers love to pretend to be Architects, Builders and etc. To them it makes women fall more in love with scam.

From what you posted I would say he is 99.99999999999999% scammer. You can post his first few emails to you with his email address and pictures. We will be glad to look into it. If he is not a scammer we will remove this thread.

For more information on Romance scams go here.>>>> viewtopic.php?f=13&t=3607

Thank you so much for your input. I did Google most of the content of the emails he sent to my email address and I did not find anything that matched. I don't have access to photos anymore now that he closed his profile.

I'm copying and pasting the header of those 2 emails. I removed my name.

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Thanks again for all your help. It's just hard to believe that I decide to contact ONE person and he happens to be a scammer.

The IP's lead to a proxy. Can you post the actual text of the first few messages he sent you and his profile "about me" information? It will help others to identify if they are dealing with a scammer as well.

It's just hard to believe that I decide to contact ONE person and he happens to be a scammer.

Not difficult at all when you start to realize the depth of the problem. On some sites, more than half the profiles for men over 45 and women under 35 are fake. Go to sites like fishmeetfish and the percentage of fakes in those categories can easily be 80% or more. In addition, scammer profiles are often more appealing, because they do copy descriptions and profile info that they know are effective.

I have a profile on one popular dating site that I use specifiically to get scammer information. It has been up since last summer, and it has gotte over 150 approaches. Of those approaches, fewer than 10 might have been real. There were only 3 that I actually know were real. Every other approach has been an African scammer.

Some scammers copy and paste small pieces from several different sites, interspersed with their own writing, to make detection more difficult. Sometimes it is not possible to trace the scripts, but other times it just comes down to experience in knowing what pieces to google.

I don't have access to his profile anymore because he quickly closed it so I can't provide that information. I remember the profile was lengthy, had 4 photos, all good quality, said he was 54, lives in Miami Beach, has kids, doesn't want anymore, 6'2". In his profile he said his adult children insisted he stopped focusing so much on work and start dating. He mentioned his favorite author was Robert Ludlum. He had even answered most of the very long questionnaire OK Cupid provides for "matching".

I contacted him first and we exchanged 2 messages there. Then he asked I provide an email address because he doesn't get on OK Cupid much (I know, red flag). All I have now are the 2 emails he sent to my email address. Would that help?

When you say "The IP's lead to a proxy" you mean the 127.0.0.1 on the full header? I thougtht that was a sure sign he is a scammer until I started looking at the full-headers of emails from family and friend and in some cases, I saw it too.

Again thanks for your help.

The IP starting with 31 traces to Cyprus. A quick search shows a lot of proxies in that general range, so undoubtedly that will be one.

Posting the contents of the emails will definitely help.

This is the first email i received outside of OK Cupid. I have removed my name.

Hi M,

How are you this evening? I hope you had a lovely day. My day went well. I had a couple of errands to run buying things for my new house here in Miami. I moved here about 5 months ago but I was away on business so I didn’t have much time to put things in place before I left. It was lovely getting a message from you. There was something about you that intrigued me and I will love to get to know you better.

Truth is I am new to the online dating world. I joined about 2 weeks ago and it’s been quite a rollercoaster. I met a nice lady on the website on which we met for drinks and spoke for about a week. It was nice getting to know her and sharing our interests until she told me she was talking to someone else. I was devastated and told her I was looking for something serious, not just a fling. Immediately I ended whatever we started. It’s crazy how people come on here not looking for a serious relationship leading people on. Call me traditional but the way I was brought up is to be with someone you care about and give them all of your attention. My idea of a relationship is two people together as one, showing and making love to each other, being the first person you talk to in the morning and the last person you talk to at night before going to bed. I believe people in a relationship should be open, honest and caring. No matter how bitter the truth is, it should be told. No matter how hard the situation is, love and care should be shown. I am an open book and I like to start any relationship with honesty. How long have you been in the online dating world and what has it been like on there?

Well, I have been married once. My wife passed away about 9 years ago to cancer, this October will make it 10 years. It was hard losing her at the time and I would be lying if I said I don’t miss her. I had two boys to provide for all on my own. I had to be their father AND mother. I remember having to make them their lunchboxes and rushing to school every morning. It was quite an experience. Come to think of it, all of that made us closer and stronger. I am proud to say that they are both in the university and they are doing very well. My oldest son is 23 studying architecture in Newcastle University. I promise you I didn’t tell him to do that. My father was an architect, so I guess creativity is in our genes. My youngest son is 19 and studies Electronic & Information Engineering in Imperial College London. When I look back, I know it wasn’t easy but it was all worth it. When their mother passed away I sat them down and I had to tell them that the closer we are the stronger we are. They did everything a parent could ask for. The truth is we all made mistakes including me, but we made sure we kept going; harder and stronger.

Doing all of that with the boys I had to make a living to provide for them. I studied Architecture in the University of Manchester. I worked for my father for 4 years and decided to follow my dreams on being the man I wanted to be to my kids. I wanted to show them that you can be whatever you want to be without the help of anyone. I needed to show them that being focused and determined will make a man’s dreams come true. I started renovating residential buildings 6 years after working in an Architecture firm. I went on doing that for about 15 years. I enjoyed every single day doing that but I wanted more especially having two boys to provide for. I wanted them to get the best of everything they wanted and set out to do. So I spoke to a friend of mine and then he got me a corporate building to renovate. After that, I was hooked. I loved it. I preferred it to residential buildings because the clients were less demanding and the pay was much better. Four years ago I got a call from that same friend of mine saying he wanted me to do a project here in the states so I gave it a try and the boys and I decided to move over. Unfortunately for me the boys decided to go back home to further their studies. It was tough letting them go but I was confident they will do just fine.

Right now I’m working on a project in Turkey. I have my assistant and engineers over in Istanbul. I am building a hotel in the outskirts of Istanbul. I have been working on the project for about 3 months and I’m close to handing over the project to the Turkish government. I’m using a system called Tunnel framework construction system. It’s a quick way of building and very exciting. Another thing is Turkey is a developing country and I’m proud to be a part of it. To be honest, I like the way everything is going. I am very confident that when the project is done I will have a huge smile on my face and say I am proud of what I have done. In the meantime, I have been home for about 2 weeks turning my house into a ‘home’. Once the project is close to completion I will head back to Istanbul to roundup the project and hand it over personally which should be in about a month. Meanwhile I'll work on my home here in Miami.

Well, that is much about me and like I said, I will love to know more about you. It’s been a pleasure opening up to you and I’m glad I got a message from you. Have a lovely evening and I hope to hear from you soon.

Christopher

This is the second.

Good morning M,

I'm here reading your mail with my cup of tea and I can't stop smiling. The things you're already doing to me. How are you? I hope you slept great! I woke up this morning thinking of you. It's truly amazing how many things we have in common. Our boys being the same age, having to be there for them in every way possible and sharing the same values in many things!

So tell me, what do you do? You said something about being in media. How long have you been doing that? My cousin is a Video Editor at BBC and she complains it is time consuming. You have to be up to date with everything going on in the world. Same thing goes with my job because the world moves fast and new design techniques come up so you have to give the clients options for them to compare and contrast. Once a client has options it's the first step to completing your project because you don't want them coming to meet you half way the project and telling you what they want or not. I really haven't met anyone that works in the media here in the states. What is it like? Is it the same around that world? Because one thing I know is since I got back so much has been happening everywhere!

Well, about the house. Things are going very well and I'm confident at the end, it's going to turn out to be very nice. I'm not used to living alone and I know it's going to be quite an experience but hey, I've got you so hopefully I won't be doing that for long. In Maryland I had the boys with me so there was so much activity around but when they left, it was like going around the world in a plane all by myself. Do you live alone? If so, for how long? When I was getting the house here, my sons insisted I got a house that could fit all of us. I think on my profile I stated that I am claustrophobic so I got quite a big house that's one of the reasons why it's taking this much time to put everything together.

I’m sorry to hear for your loss. It’s always hard losing someone you truly care about. If I may ask, what happened between you and your ex-husband? My wife and I went through some hard times as well but I’ve always been a man to never give up. I tell my kids “once there is love and passion, there is hope everything will get better”. I have held that close to my heart in everything I do till date. I have been in two relationships after my wife passed away but at the end of the day, we found out we wanted different things out of the relationship. I am still friends with them but to be honest I cannot remember the last time we spoke. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. Having that friend you remember when you see them. I have a hard time keeping in touch with people I don’t have any business with.

I’m glad you sent a message because you are one of a kind and getting to know you has been a pleasure and I know it will get better as time goes by. I am looking for someone that will be my best friend. Someone I will run to when I need to talk. I want to be with someone that I will take care of and show how much I love her. I am a one woman type of guy because I believe one woman is a handful and two or more will drive you nuts! I’ll like to believe I am ready to give that woman all of my attention and it will be her and only her in my life. I want to share my life with someone that has an open heart. Someone that will look me in the eyes and tell how she feels. Someone that isn’t scared of expressing how she feels about anything. No matter how hard it is to say. I am looking for a woman that isn’t behind me but with me in everything I do. I want to be involved in her everyday life and I want her in mine as well. I want a woman that will be up in my business. Lol. The truth is I know how it feels to be in love and I want it. I lost it a few years ago and if I get it, I will never let it go.

Well M, you have put a smile on my face today and I’m happy about that. I look forward to hearing from you and I hope you have a beautiful day. Just so you know I'm taking myself off the dating site. I think I've found what I'm looking for and I'd like to focus on it. Again, have a beautiful day.

So, what's the veredict? Scammer or not?

Thanks!

100% pure scammer.

The signs are subtle, but they are there. Definitely African.
You can also see the standard tactics of trying to more the "relationship" at warp speed, and even the beginnings of the direction he may take for the first money requests.

I especially love the claim that he talked to a woman for a week and was devastated that she was still talking to others...If he were actually real, I'd be seriously concerned about him being a stalker if that were really his attitude.

Yes, the expectation of "monogamy" after one week of speaking to that woman was a huge red flag.

You say "African". I would have never guessed. I guess since English is not my first language and since he says he is British I could not see the language subtleties.

Any suggestions on how to avoid this situation again? I do plan to move to a paid online dating site but I know there's scammers there too. I don't want this situation again.

Thanks again for all your help. I am glad I reached out to this site before I continued communication with this guy.

The English used by African scammers, even university graduates, is usually very poor and they give themselves away very easily normally, but this scammer is very good, but he is a scammer. I can normally tell from spelling, grammar and syntax alone but he gives himself away in other ways.

Yes, the expectation of "monogamy" after one week of speaking to that woman was a huge red flag.

You say "African". I would have never guessed. I guess since English is not my first language and since he says he is British I could not see the language subtleties.

Any suggestions on how to avoid this situation again? I do plan to move to a paid online dating site but I know there's scammers there too. I don't want this situation again.

Thanks again for all your help. I am glad I reached out to this site before I continued communication with this guy.

When you say "The IP's lead to a proxy" you mean the 127.0.0.1 on the full header? I thougtht that was a sure sign he is a scammer until I started looking at the full-headers of emails from family and friend and in some cases, I saw it too.

First off its good a red flag went off. One of the major red flags is to keep you moving so fast you forget to think.

Secondly, yes, he probably is an African. Even though that English was good, he probably has templates he uses for his victims, adding in very slight changes from victim 1 through victim 100. Its the style of the letter that give it away as scammer.

Unfortunately, the scammers are worse than mold in a wet location. You can't avoid them, you can only learn to recognize the signs.

The sender's IP is almost always going to be the first one above the receiver's email address. In short they stamp things on top of each other so the one closest to the bottom is the first one used.

Received: from [173.44.34.195] by web120603.mail.ne1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:23:00 PDT is one, it is a proxy from Miami. The scammer probably knows he is using a proxy from that area, so if you double check him, it checks out.

Received: from [31.209.102.249] by web120605.mail.ne1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 03 Apr 2014 07:19:12 PDT is the other one. Like Dottie said, this one is from Cyprus. Depending on what part of Turkey, Cyprus is right next door and not out of the question as an IP address, this scammer knows that, too.

a tool like http://whatismyipaddress.com/ or http://www.ip-adress.com/trace_email/ can help you translate the #'ed IP address into a physical location. the latter of the 2 can help you figure out which line in the header is the important one, until you can get it without the help. Note: not all headers are honest, some are forged and take a lot more digging into than a fast glance offers you.

The sender's IP is almost always going to be the first one above the receiver's email address. In short they stamp things on top of each other so the one closest to the bottom is the first one used.

Received: from [173.44.34.195] by web120603.mail.ne1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Wed, 02 Apr 2014 18:23:00 PDT is one, it is a proxy from Miami. The scammer probably knows he is using a proxy from that area, so if you double check him, it checks out.

Received: from [31.209.102.249] by web120605.mail.ne1.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 03 Apr 2014 07:19:12 PDT is the other one. Like Dottie said, this one is from Cyprus. Depending on what part of Turkey, Cyprus is right next door and not out of the question as an IP address, this scammer knows that, too.

a tool like http://whatismyipaddress.com/ or http://www.ip-adress.com/trace_email/ can help you translate the #'ed IP address into a physical location. the latter of the 2 can help you figure out which line in the header is the important one, until you can get it without the help. Note: not all headers are honest, some are forged and take a lot more digging into than a fast glance offers you.

HillBilly Thank you for the info! Very useful!

HI Mcojeda,
Up until you posted the emails I was going to suggest it was probably a scam, after I read the first paragraph of the first email, I know for certain it was a scammer.

As others have said, he's better at covering his tracks than most but the structure of his conversation is a giveaway, along with his move to make things so intense, so quickly. One little telltale sign is that a romance scammer nearly always opens a message with vague small-talk about how your day was and how his was. Of course we do this in real life too, but read a few more scam emails and you'll see the little red flags in the way they express it. It always has a slightly "strange" feel to it.

Another warning sign of a romance scammer is when he tells you he is away in some other country on some very professional assignment. It's a setup to tell you later he is stranded for some problem or another and needs you to send him cash, which of course he'll pay back tenfold later.

I understand it seems bizarre that you contact someone and they turn out to be a scammer, the odds might seem off at first but Dotti is so correct. These lads (that's a nickname for scammers) carefully set up profiles that are attractive and likely to receive more attention. So while your contact seems random to you, in fact it's because this scammer "sold" himself so well in his fake profile that you contacted him at all. And sadly, romance scamming is big business these days. The number of fake profiles is large.

Good luck finding the right person out there and give yourself a pat on the back for being astute enough to catch this scumbag out. Keep applying the same caution and you'll find Mister Right soon enough

Others have mentioned some of these things, but I'm going to list out some key points that may help you to identify other scammers.

The English really is excellent on this one, and as Terrance said, it is far better than the average scammer's English. But there are a couple of very small subtle things that don't align with him being British. If I were only looking at the words, I would probably flag that there were some questionable spots in the English, but wouldn't necessarily be comfortable going further than that. But when we get to the scenario and the tactics, they are 100% textbook African romance scam. The emails very much remind me of some that have come from from South African scammers.

-Architect--as already mentioned it is in the top 3 career choices (I'd actually put it at #2)
-Single, dedicated father - standard scammer claim. Scammers have learned through experience that pretending to be dedicated dads tends to make women trust them more.
--Widower- again, standard scammer fare, intended to elicit sympathy and also establish himself as a loyal, dedicated partner who did not give up on his relationship
- new to online dating: again all part of the image he is trying to establish. If he told you he had been dating online for a while, you might wonder why such a great guy hadn't met someone already. Plus it makes him seem more innocent.
-That warp-speed relationship is another textbook scammer tactic. It's not about love--it's about money. The faster he can establish an "exclusive" relationship, the sooner he gets you to the point where you feel some kind of obligation when he is faced with an emergency. Women aren't going to give money to some guy they are casually dating, especially if there is any chance that he is dating others, but if they think there is a future, it's a different story.
-The new house, including the not-so-subtle reiterating of its size are deliberate, to make sure that you believe he is well-off, so when he gets to the money demands you will trust that he is going to pay you back. It also helps him if you decide to check him out and discover that there is no listing for him in Miami--he can just claim
that it's because he just bought the place and the directory sites, etc.haven't caught up yet.
-The project in Turkey and the upcoming trip are all part of the standard setup. The scammer can't meet you because he is not the man in the photos (and of course he isn't even in the US.) But if he stalls for too long while claiming to be in Miami, you will start to question why he isn't meeting you. The upcoming trip will give him a reason to stall that meeting, and if necessary, he will push the "trip" up. In addition to giving him the excuse for not meeting, he is also preparing for the scenario where he is alone in a strange country, facing an emergency that only you can help with.

Today I was contacted by another guy and thanks to all the input and advice, I was able to do a reverse image search and quickly find out he was a scammer. I posted his info on another thread. I am very grateful to everyone that has responded to my questions and comments on this forum.