Romance scam?

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Not quite a Newb Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 72

I'm corresponding with this woman who gives a lot of signs of being a scammer, but there are a couple of things that suggest it could be real. I wonder if anyone has contacted this specific woman and can ID her as a scammer, or has seen the general approach.

The first several letters were very long and interesting, and gave no sign that she had read my letters. She tells lots of stories about what she's doing, her work, her dog, her friends, my questions and comments basically didn't get responded to. She sends lots of pictures. She looks nice, but none of the pcitures are a seductive pose, and she doesn't look super great. (Looks better than me, though). She's sort of showing her age a bit. Says 35 and looks it. Doesn't look like she has a lot of confidence being photographed, doen't remotely have the same kind of smoldering confidence a model might have. Pictures are in ordinary situations that fit in with the storyline.

Seems to be following a steady progression of being more and more interested in me, seems a bit quick, especially since she talks so much more than me; if I'm so attractive to her, why doesn't she talk about the stuff I've said that makes me attractive?

Scam, right? About 2 letters ago, I was basically certain it was a scam, and tried to move her along, talking about how much I liked her, how excited I was, how we should start talking about meeting. I wanted to send her on safari to God-knows-where, Russia, to a special WU office that won't talk on the phone and where you can't find out anything about the transfer unless you go there.

OK, she kind of waves me off a little bit, says it's too early, got to get to know each other. Not certain it is in response to what I said, could be just her own thoughts in her standardized letter that fit in with this part of the storyline. So, I think, maybe not a scam, certainly I'm not sure enough to where I'm going to send her off on a safari.

A couple of letters, no pics, I ask for pics and they're in the next letter. She doesn't explicitly mention my request for pics, though.

My last letter, I asked about talking on the phone, she asked for my number, said she can use her girlfriend's phone (it's true that not all of them have phones). I gave her an IPKALL number where I didn't give any real information in setting up the number.

My last letter, I asked details about her work, her last letter, she says she's going to tell me about her work in detail. She says she is a biologist, and she works for the sanitation office or something like that, checking the purity of alcoholic beverages.

So, my questions are:

Is she for real? Maybe she writes standardized letters to a lot of guys, because the great majority of guys don't ever show up? Maybe she doesn't write English that great and writes more or less standardized letters to overcome the deficiency? The letters are fine, a lot of Russian-isms, but reasonably fluent.

She's got SO many ordinary looking pictures of just the sort that a real woman would have, not seductive, not super attractive, would someone who's part of a scam organization have that many normal looking pictures and send them? Maybe she's a freelancer? Maybe she's real?

Email headers check out as being about where she says she is.

Anybody seen this general scenario before? Anyway, I'm going to keep writing to her; if she's real, that's great, if she's not, the letters are so great that it's worth it just to read them and get the pictures. I'm going to let it unfold and won't cause her to waste time and money unless I'm sure. I'm not sending her any money - she hasn't asked for any.

Final question, can these people be tricked into a safari? They tend to be pretty well educated. Can I get a good bait, or if she is a scammer should I just fade out when the money request comes, rather than try to trick her?

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 5:45 am

Hmm... badger? Did she state what her intentions were right off the bat? Could use some more details.

Might be a good way to score some free vodka though. Razz

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:00 am

I have a ladette right now that has a pen pal sort of game. She sent me 3 "real" pics with her in everyday sitations. She even waited about 6 emails into it b4 disclosing that she desperately needed my help and tryied to pass me off to some helpful Reverend. But now that I think about it, she never really directly responded to a lot of comments I made. It's not that hard to get ordinary pics...I have several pics of my character doing random things, I even have one of her in a hair salon. It was pretty easy to find those plus red carpet type pics.

Once your new friend hits you up that's when you know it's a scam...why run when you can waste her time?! Why not give her a nice hard slap for ignoring your comments and rambling on & on about herself. Maybe if she'd shut her trap for 5 seconds & bothered to read your comments she'd know you well enough to start talking about a meeting. Tell her she doesn't really seem interested in you as a person b/c she doesn't even have the decency to read your emails & maybe it's time to part ways. Or offer to pay for her 1st class flight to come visit, send her pics of your mansion, your cars, your private jet, whatever, once she bites, bait her brains out Laughing

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:22 am

@ trawler

Looks, sounds, and smells like a vlad,

Pictures can be stolen from sites on internet like myspace (normal looking pictures)

IP can be spoofed, Ask wayne Laughing

Many vlads use this OP it looks more normal and genuine.

Safari ??? vlads are smarter than lads but it is possible just difficult.

I bait vlads every day and I would say that is a vlad you have there Twisted Evil

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 8:51 am

Pictures: Vlads are pretty good on the psychology these days. They've obviously noticed that realistic girls with amateur snaps are much more likely to hook people in than super models in posed pics. Most of the ones I'm getting from Russia are in the former camp. The West African lads are a bit behind the times and still using the latter.

Scripted e-mails: No, real women don't use them; at least none I've chatted to in the past fifteen years. You might get a standard "hello, this is me" one to start off with, but anyone sending subsequent messages that are obviously pre-written is bound to be leading to a scam. If you're not sure it's scripted, accidentally send an e-mail from another address to them and see what you get back.

Safari: Good luck trying. Vlads are typically ten times shrewder than lads and ten times lazier. You'll be lucky if you can even get them down the WU office without a valid MTCN number that's been checked on the internet. My guess is that they'll be scamming dozens of people at once, so will drop the awkward ones.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:07 pm

Quote:

The first several letters were very long and interesting, and gave no sign that she had read my letters.

Sounds like a vlad so far

Quote:

She looks nice, but none of the pcitures are a seductive pose, and she doesn't look super great.

They're going more for stolen pics of ordinary looking girls nowadays as people are wising up to the model pics.

Quote:

Email headers check out as being about where she says she is.

Where does she say she is? Scammers from different parts of the FSU tend to use different types of scam. Can you post the headers? And the pics too in case we recognise them. It might be worth asking one of them nice mods to move this to the romance/dating section too.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 72

wayne wrote:

Where does she say she is?

Says she's in Cheboksary. If I post the pics, is there a risk that she'll find them? Anyway, I didn't notice that there was a romance/dating section, and shouldn't have cluttered up this section. So I don't want to continue the thread until it gets moved to where it belongs, except I would like a reply to the question how do I ask a mod to move it, or will they see it and move it in the normal course of things?

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:48 pm

I guess they read your mind and moved it. The chances of them finding the pics here are virtually non existent. Post away. We see Cheboksary a lot with scammers btw.

Posted: Mon Apr 30, 2007 2:48 pm

Trawler wrote:

how do I ask a mod to move it, or will they see it and move it in the normal course of things?

In some respect mods are like ordinary people: if you want to ask them something send a PM. Alternatively (and that's the reeeeaaaally secret way) you could use the "report this post to a moderator" link to alert them to your request.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 72

And in some respects, mods are like uebermenschen, who, as wayne noticed, can read your thoughts and do what needs doing without your asking!

Not quite a Newb Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 72

OK, well, now I'm convinced she's real, because she said that her feelings for me are very strong, and I'm the only man in the world she wants to communicate with. That makes sense, because we've been emailing back and forth for over 3 weeks already, and certainly women make lifetime commitments based on that kind of experience all the time. So now I'm sure I'll be getting very detailed and specific answers to all my questions and comments, since she's writing only to me.

I asked her if she has an advanced degree. Her degree is in biology, so I asked her if she has published in any journals. If she has, I'm sure she'll come back with a citation to her articles. I asked her to describe any research project she might have done in getting her degree.

I'm so happy that she's only writing to me now and no one else, so there won't be any incongruities, like when she said she'd talked before about playing basketball, when I don't remember her saying that before now. Maybe she mentioned it to someone who has fallen by the wayside, now that she's made her decision to focus exclusively on me.

Once I get her detailed, specific answers, full of descriptions of her scientific work, I'll post summaries of them here, and then we can all say, well, it seemed like a Vlad to start with, but it wound up being very genuine.

Posted: Tue May 01, 2007 8:05 am

Post the email addy and get the headers from the mails. Also, remember google is your friend, search the email addy with AND without the @whatever.xxx. It is amazing what you will find.

Not quite a Newb Joined: 16 Feb 2006 Posts: 72

Are there tips somewhere here about looking through headers? I want to be sure to avoid putting up anything that points to me. How should I put up her email address to make sure it doesn't show up in a search? I did what you suggested, and searched on her email address minus the domain, and astonishingly it didn't come up. Maybe she's new at scamming, or maybe she rotates through addresses?

She didn't answer my last email, I saw in another thread that this is a bid drinking and partying day over there, and so expect that she might be incommunicado for the next several days. When she gets back, I'm going to give her a little slap, tell her how she declared her feelings for me and then just dropped out, if I'm important to her, is a letter a day too much to ask? In the meantime, I think I'll put up another letter asking some more questions.

In the incredibly unlikely event that she really gives detailed answers to the questions, especially about the science stuff, I'll definitely put it up here and ask about it. But I don't see that happening, what I expect is more declarations of her feelings and discussions of activities calculated to appeal to the generic male. (No, not THAT activity!)

I asked her about stuff you could do on the Volga, could you rent a boat, could you bicycle along it, could you fish. See what she says.

She's going to call me, she says, I gave her an IPKall number. Why does she want to call me? To get all excited about hearing my voice and decide she's got to see me right away? And then move into the endgame? Or is this just another phase of the game? But she can't possibly engage in a lot of phone calls can she, that takes time. Don't they count on small scores from numerous victims, unlike the lads who look for big scores from relatively rare victims?