Ran into a Professional Romance Scammer

This past year I met a man in a game app of mine. He seemed very nice talking to him within the app, and asked if I was married, to which I replied no. He asked if I was on Facebook and I told him I was and from there we became 'friends'. I didn't think too much about it when finding out he was from Nigeria because as I've come to find out I did have all of his real information, including real cell number, address, and email. I am older than him by a big margin, and was surprised when after a couple of months he started to tell me he had fallen in love with me. At first I was reluctant to believe him but soon started to fall for him too, and fall hard I did. I want to say here that he never asked me for anything. I was prominate on his Facebook timeline and he on mine. I even went so far as to contact other women friends of his to see what they had to say. Two of them have become very good friends of mine, one of which was never more than good friends with him and the other a past girlfriend of all things. The past girlfriend however wasn't so past at the time I contacted her, now this is a big joke between us, but at that time she asked how long he and I had been involved, when I told her how long she told me that just the prior week he'd been still telling her he was madly in love with her. She proceeded to tell me that he talked to a lot of women and had multiple accounts on many sites to meet women. She then said that she was deleting him from her life for good, that she'd had enough. When I told him that I'd been talking to these women he seemed unconcerned and told me that he had broken up with the girlfriend and she was being jealous. He never knew that she and I continued to talk and I mean talk about him hahahaha. She finally decided that he must really love me from what I told her about us, and I did tell her all. When my guy started back to University, he's in post grad in his line of study, he and I didn't get to talk as much and it left me with lots of time to think. That's when I first posted here on Scam Warners, I just had something telling me to get advice here, but that I didn't think I was being scammed, I was advised that I probably was. Even with warnings etc. I continued to love my guy, I'm still brought to tears over him even now as I write this. A very good person here sort of took me under his wing and really gave me time and attention, that was Bryon Williams, thank you Bryon. During Bryon's and my communications I was advised to cut off communication with my love, and he referred me to 419eater as he thought I might like to scam bait myself, to help keep others from being taken in by scammers. This I have done and am now a member of that site too, only I didn't quite follow Bryon's advice and kept in contact with my man, thank God I've got a wonderful mentor over there who understands and has done his best to break my addiction to my guy, which has just killed me, so I can understand anyone who gets taken in by these scammers and has fallen for them. It's something you just don't want to believe, that someone could talk to you so sweetly and beautifully and is really only after your money. Most of you will never run into a real professional as mine is said to be, but I've found out that romance scammers can be very patient when it comes to getting their "women" to to love them and eventually send them money, as I said before mine never asked for anything, but I knew that Nigeria is a very poor country by doing web searches, most of the people there are lucky to make $10.00 USD a week and I did insist on sending him money for books and expenses even though he said his brothers pay for University and I had come to realize that his family was better off than most. So you see he gained from me even without asking. I end by saying if something doesn't seem quite right about someone you're talking to, then go with your gut instinct, something probably is wrong. If I've helped even one person by this posting I'll be happy that one person won't have to go through what I have and still am grieving over, these romance scammers, be they male or female are, after all, criminals making money by playing on emotions.

nothing its ok i wanted to delete this post but it wont

I'm going to be blunt here, Crusader.

Unfortunately, when scammers get hold of someone who believes their lies, they consider that person to be a good maga, an easy mark for a future scam.

Because you have fallen for scammers in the past, the scammers have put you in this category. They consider you to be a good target for new scams. They will approach you with new names, new stories, and new photos.

That means that there is a far greater chance that ANY new woman you meet is going to be an invention of your scammers. They may use names that they haven't used with any other victim, in order to make it harder to detect them, and they will use photos that you haven't seen before and that may be difficult to trace.

If you give us more information, we can help you to research this one, and may be able to give you an answer.
Ultimately, the only way you are going to be able to be sure anyone is real is to:
a) see her on webcam. When she is on webcam, you need to ask her to do something that could not have been pre-set. For example, ask her to write on a piece of paper and hold it up on the screen in front of the camera, or ask her to pick up an object that is in the background. Do NOT send her an expensive phone or camera to do this. In this day and age anyone can get access to a webcam. If you absolutely MUST send a camera, make it a very cheap USB webcam. You can get one on amazon or an electronics store website for under $20.

b) do NOT send money or items of value, period! If you want to arrange a meeting, do NOT send any money to her. If you want to pay for her to travel somewhere to meet you, fine. Arrange for a NON-Refundable plane ticket that she can pick up at the airport. Find a suitable hotel and pay for it directly. Do not send any tickets, or anything else that can be re-sold for cash. If she's applying for a visa, request proof that she has really done so, and then contact the embassy to verify that the proof is real. In many African countries, a small amount of money is the equivalent of a major windfall, and what seems like a small amount to you can be enough to encourage a scammer to continue to pursue a fake relationship.

I just wanted to ad, paying for travel directly does NOT mean by Western Union or MoneyGram or Bank Wire.....NO REAL HOTEL/AIRLINE/TRAVEL AGENCY takes those. We mean if your paying use expedia.com or hyatt.com or delta.com or whoever...the big box travel companies where you can use your credit card and be safe

crusader37 Wrote:

i dont know.. but i just want to know if anyone knows of a person who has the name mary jane kademju
the pictures i cant put here yet because she could be legitimate and if she said them i will never hear the end of it but if the name might be familliar to anyone let me know but if not still let me know.. but the place she is supposed to be is in nairobi if anyone thinks they might have any pictures show me and i can try to confirm it with mine.. i will give more of a story out as time goes by... but it was along time ago... last yr in 2012 when i knew her and the thought just came up to check it out

I would have to agree with Dotti on this.