Love scam with real person that they actually met

I have a client, elderly person who met a women around his age a few months back in his home town. Actually went out with on quite a few occassions for dinners, drinks, walks, etc. She was here on vacation supposively and now had to fly back to africa. She left for africa and I guess he has been in contact via email and phone. They are looking to get married next month and she is tying up loose ends and she wants to transfer her wealth from her estate 10 million US to his bank account. He opened up a bank account for this and it has been about a month and no money. There are emails from lawyers and such and bank execs over there claiming there is a problem and they need to speak with his bank people but they won't for obvious reasons.. Now she discovered the problem and he has asked him to send her $8500.00 USD to bond the transfer and to get her affairs in order. This is the first time she has asked him for money during all this, all other communications have been stories about wires not going through right and such. This run around has been going on for a month and half. He actually met this person in the fall of 2008.

Do they travel to find marks? I know this is a scam of some sort, because everything falls into place now with the wires, a lot of money, bonding, etc, all this reaks of a scam however the person actually meeting this person in thie own home town has me perplexed.

I have done other searches and have not found any other scammers who actually met their marks prior, so without any other stories of this scenario it is kind of hard to prove my point to someone who is in "love". So many people have told him this is a scam but he will not believe it because they talk every night. The emails look scripted from the lawyers and bankers over there.

Any info would be helpful.

Welcome to Scamwrners.
As you say, love scams are usually done by email. What email addresses are the "bankers and lawyers" using? Free ones like Gmail or Yahoo?
It would help if you could quote a couple of the emails you think are scripted. Including the headers.

As Mr. Tambourine Man said, free email addresses for all the professionals is another indicator, and if we have some of the scripted emails and the names of the characters, we might be able to tie them to other scams. The storyline reads like a typical scam, and frankly, I would be very surprised if it wasn't. As far as talking every night goes and waiting a month and a half to ask for money--some romance scammers are very talkative and very patient, and will take this long to hit with the money request.

Most scammers prefer email, but on occasion we have seen some who actually have met their victims.

Here's a link to one, (though in this case the scammer flew her out to meet him)...
http://forum.419eater.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148979

It's possible you have a scammer who convinced another victim to fly her to the US, then took advantage of the situation to pick up a few more magas. Or, sometimes scammers are traveling for another reason and simply take advantage of any opportunity that presents itself. One thing we have seen time and time again is that some scammers simply can't stop scamming--it's so second nature, that no matter where they land, they end up scamming from there. Just look at some of the safaris over on 419 Eater and you will see what I mean.

The bankers and lawyers are using free email addresses. I don't have any of the emails in front of me but the emails are defintley free.

Unless this guy is lying to us about the whole ordeal of him actually meeting her to save face, so people won't tell him he is being scammed. He is taking a loan out to send this person the money and at this point there is nothing more I can do. Too bad, he is going to very upset in the coming weeks and in debt.

Thanks again.

The bankers and lawyers are using free email addresses.

That'aa sure sign of a scam. And if you think they may not actually have met, i think you're right. She is supposed to be elderly which I find difficult to believe. A young male is far more likely.
As you say, romance victims are hard to convince. Could you get him to join this forum?

Hi Storm,

This story has all of the hall marks of a scam and I have no doubt that it is one.

Most people who are scammed in this way are too scared to post their stories, I am actully going through some information right now in regards to a scammer who has been living with a girl in the US and using her home to scam from, once she realised what he was up to she called the police and the scammer fled.

After he fled he began to threaten the girl and recently told her to give him a large sum of money or he will slander her over the net.

I haven't had much time to look into this case as yet and cant openly give any more details than what I have but it is certainly not unheard of for scammers to be living with those they are stealing from.

I cant remember all the details but there was another where a fake minister had sucessfully tricked several women to give him both money and sexual favours, he keeps resurfacing too.

It would be unusual if the scam you describe involved the woman living in the US with him and it is much more likely to not be the case

Without having the details of the scam there isn't much we can do to prove it is one but trying to convince somebody once they are in love is very difficult.

Try to be supportive and mention to this man that scammers do travel and you would dearly love for them to live happily ever after but you are also concerned for his well being.
Suggest that you have found us and tell him that we believe it sounds like it may be a scam please dont tell him we believe it definately is just yet otherwise he will be more reluctant as we will be seen as being negative and not understanding that "all of this is real".

If we can get hold of email addresses, phone numbers and the emails from any of the people involved but mainly from the bankers and lawyers.

No detail is to small to tell us, sometimes the smallest details will get results while the obvious draws blanks so get as much as you can and we will try to find the truth

Just adding,
Last night I wrote to a girl who has just realised she was in love with a scammer, at the moment I believe she is being targeted by the same person who is now posing as a good samaritan trying to retrieve her money for her, of course, that is another scam, to get to the point I wrote this to show her the basics of a more typical love scam from a male scammer, obviously your friend has been through exceptional circumstances with the scammer living with him however many of the charactoristics will be the same, If enough of what I have written lines up with your friends experience than it may help to show it to him, go through it yourself first and jot down some points before you start with him, it will look much more like you know what you are doing if you can go straight to the bits that add up to it being a scammer, remember the only person in the world who believes she is real is your friend and it can be allianating to have nodody believe what he thinks to be true

Please keep us updated and let us know if you can get anything for us to search on. I will edit in a few things to make it more specific to both male and female scammers

A very quick rundown on a typical romance scam, please keep in mind that not all scamsmers operate in exactly the same way

The scammer will contact you on any website where people come together, dating sites are the most common but also myspace, addvertising sites, specialty interest sites and sometime directly by email.

The scammer will usually try to lure you away from the site they first contacted you on fairly quickly, they do this to help avoid detection and usually continue to find other women using the same profile while they are writing to you

Each scammer is different here but they will often begin by sending you prewritten scripts that could last between a few days and could go for as long as a few weeks, the more professional scammers dont use scripts at all and every email from the start will be written exclusively for you.

Their level of english will vary from one to the next, again, the more professional scammers will use much better english and have fewer mistakes in grammer, most scammers however and even the better ones will slip up sometimes with their grammar, their common mistakes are as follows

am rather than I am
a lack of a space after using punctuation,much like I have done here
poor grasp of past and present word association "the brown fox jump over the dog" rather than jumped
Poor use of capitalisation and often using all caps

Male Romance scammers often love using instant messaging and they love for you to call them and will try to avoid having to call you
Female love scammers on the other hand will often avoid the phone all together, in most cases the girl is actually a man pretending to be a woman so to get a girl to speak with you means they will have to find one to talk to you, at the same time they may not know as much about previous email or message chats and therefor run a higher risk of slipping up, some scammers to get women to talk to you and can be quite sucessful but they are less common

A typical male romance scammer has a professional occupation such as an engineer or acrhitect and art or antiques dealers are also common
The female's favourite occupation is normally a model, or aid worker if not a wealthy mans daughter

The male scammers will often have a young child, somewhere between age 5 to 10 is very common
The girls rarely have children
The males will normally be aged between 30 and 50
The girls are typically aged 20 to 30

Their dating profiles will state that they dont drink or smoke
Their ideal partner range is very broad, I often see that they are after ages 18 to 99
The pictures they use are often pictures stolen from modelling sites and look very attractive although this is something they are getting wiser to and now you will also see many pictures of normal looking people

The males are often widowed or divorced after their wifes left them and the child
The girls are single, never married, they may mention a previous boyfriend who cheated on them or that their family died in an accident or murder

They will usually travel a lot and will normally come from the same country as the person they are scamming but they will be travelling for business, travelling to West Africa is very common but there is also a growing trend for them to tell you they are living in the UK

Often their phone numbers will back up their UK storyline by use of a "redirect number" these numbers typically start with 4470 they can be set up by people living in any part of the world and a phone call to it will redirect to the scammers location, these calls are generally quite expensive a hint that most victims miss. You can find more about these numbers in this google link http://www.google.com.au/search?source= ... meta=lr%3D

Scammers will often be unusually quick to show their devotion to you and will fall in love quickly however, we have also seen cases where the scammer is more patient and may wait months if they feel they need to.

Scammers will often refer you to another email address to write to somebody else, this could be a child, relative, business parter, lawyer, doctor or banker, this person will be part of the scam and if not the same person it will be part of the same group, they will back up everything the scammer has said and in some cases they will confirm that they have received money from the scammer as part payment to further convince you that they are genuine

Once they believe that you are hooked they will begin to start to set the stage for the money requests, these come in many forms and every week we see a new excuse, the more common excuses include;
being mugged, arrested or detained
Urgent medical problems for themselves or other close members of their family that require urgent money transfers
business deals require immediate injection of funds or a short term loan
Lost wallets or passports
Help with visa applications
There is also any excuse immaginable that requires their victim to send money
Detained at an airport while trying to meet you is another favourite i am seeing more of

Once the money request begin, everything will be more urgent and regardless of how much money they receive, they will always ask for more, sometimes for a new excuse just as urgent as the first and often a larger amount than the first amount of money they received.

Eventually, their victims will realise that the man or woman they love is starting to have too many problems for a normal person and begin to suspect something is wrong, eventually the victim realises that they have been scammed and will either begin to ignore the scammer or question their honesty, once the scammer believes he will receive no more money from his victim he will either devote more energy on his next victim or begin to try a new approach on the same one.

New approaches can be another romance scam but more typically it will be a recovery scam, we have a section devoted to recovery scams at Scamwarners and you can find loads of information on them here viewforum.php?f=14

A quick run down on the recovery scam is below

You are contacted by somebody who says they would like to help you
They will tell you a little about the person you were scammed by and suggest that they may be able to retrieve your money
Many promises will be made and you may be refered to yet another email address, again, to add legitimacy
Eventually the scammer will tell you that they have recovered your lost money and that they are ready to give it to you except that before you receive it there are fees to be paid
If fees are paid, new fees will arise
this will continue until such time as you again realise that you have been scammed.

Thank you for all the replies, I will try to get him to join the forum. He is not really computer savy except for email..

His claim is he met this women here in his home town while she was on vacation and she was a lady in her 60's, he is around 70, they talk every night on the phone. See I have never seen this part of the scam in actually meeting / dating in person and the age of the person throws me. He also knows she is in africa because he is calling africa, it shows up on his phone bill.

The other parts like the emails and africa and story she is using about her wealth sounds just like a scam. Her lawyers don't want to send him the money unless it is bonded. He isn't worried because he believes in the big payout with all her money of 10 million so the small bond is nothing.

Still I have not been able to pinpoint another exact case like this, I mean I have heard of the scammers who actually live in the US and borrow money from women they "fall in love with" on the internet and such and most are actually US citizens and can be prosecuted but this paticular case is nothing like it. A South african citizen in the states, finds a mark while on vacation, she is elderly also and waits a month and half and then asks for money. As I said in a previous email, I have an inkling that he might be lying and has never met this women before and got taken over an email but he will not admit to it when he was asked this. He gave the story I originally posted. Lots of things do not make sense.

I will do what I can to get him in this site and keep an open mind.

Storm