Emotions distinguish humans and animals. It’s an inherent part of us. Especially love. We all grow up hearing about how rare it is to find it, about romance being the best thing in the world and blah blah blah. Well, it’s true – partly. But beware, nowadays people are swindling money out of you in the name of love and companionship. A billion-dollar business has been crafted out of taking advantage of people’s vulnerabilities.
False Promise
Dating and match-making meetup are the areas where scammer groups mostly use online platforms for finding people and tricking them. They try to establish contact with you, typically through social media apps, email, and phone numbers, through different techniques like catfishing, web-scraping, and phishing. So scammers start by creating a fake yet promising profile. They present details that are false to lure you into their web.
Now, you may be wondering, how do people even believe such fake promises? You may be thinking that nobody is foolish enough to fall for these traps. Right? Well, sadly, the answer is yes. Plus, the surprising factor is women are more prone to fall for such scammers than men. That is what statistics have shown after researching and interviewing many such victims. There is no consensus about which age group is more prone. The victims’ age ranges starts from young adults to people of old age.
Individuals say they join such websites because they felt lonely, needed company, were looking for a soulmate, and so forth. All got conned by online fraud, each painting a different story of helping you find a partner, but with the exact motive of extracting money. Note that none of these people are dumb.
Such dating sites and companies are very cunning and convincing. They present a colorful premise that satisfies you and then tricks you. They know how to use your psychology against you. Before you know it, you get robbed, not only of money but of time, too. They have everything planned beforehand. So, beware!
Perfect Predator And Their Victim
Here, we tell you how they turn off your logic. Firstly, most such scamming profiles will depict them as people with a lot of money, status, friends, etc.
Often, profile pictures consist of photos of people from the military. We inherently trust the military. Here, the scamster scores the first point! They gain your trust. Other times, they depict themselves to be businessmen or women.
There are times when the profile picture is of a real person who has joined hands with scamsters. Part of whatever money you send gets shared with that party.
Both of these professions have two things in common.
- It makes sense that they might have to keep traveling.
- Military and business people are well-off.
Military personnel are taken care of by the government, and business people have invested money in different portfolios, so both seem to have fewer financial problems.
Money
Then, after a while, they start asking for small monetary favors by giving reasons and showing emotions that make you want to help your love interest. Those people will start giving reasons as to why they can’t take out money from their account and grant you a fake screenshot of bank details. Please don’t get fooled! Do your reality check by asking random questions or about experiences they’ve had. By doing so, you can pull down their masks and save yourself from monetary loss.
YouTuber Spencer Cornelia shows real clips, newspaper articles, and FBI interviews where people share real facts of online dating. The con person sends you personalized love messages, videos of them missing you terribly, and all videos are abstract. So, as a human, you feel as though they reciprocate your desires, and they hack you seamlessly.
That hired beautiful individual will start telling you convincing tales of how they dream about you and are thrilled to meet you soon. You start believing their white lies of their need to become part of your family and friends. They can’t live without you. Plus, agencies and companies lay out a syllabus for the person posing as your love interest. They act, talk, call as per the instructions mentioned in the rule book. Each day you get messages popping up with romantic lines, emojis, GIFs, clips of them loving you.
Love And Trust
Every act of the love imposter is paid for by the scamming agent or company. But there’s a problem. They get stuck again in some situation due to which they won’t be able to meet you. Slowly, once they gain your attention, they brain-wash you into not keeping touch with your friends as they are toxic and not genuine.
Gradually, steadily, they swindle money out of you with your knowledge. In the worse cases, some victims deliberately gave out their bank details in the name of love and trust. Within a week, the money vanished. What’s worse is that they convince you that your friends are jealous of you and don’t want you to be happy. They sabotage your relationship with your inner circle by isolating you. Countless individuals have lost thousands – up to a million dollars – due to this treacherous act.
Most of the victims were people grieving the loss of a partner or in some situation where they only wanted someone for a conversation. Numerous online websites and scammers pretend to be some guardian angel that is willing to help you find your soulmate. Sounds cool, right! But it is not. Tons of people get trapped in their “honeywebs” and lose a lump of money within a few months, and no angel turns up in their life.
These online dating conmen spin a web of convincing lies that make you believe them. Sadly, people only gained back their sense after the fiasco ended.
The Reality
Several victims, in retrospect, couldn’t believe that they had fallen for such a devious scam! It was apparent that the feeling of being duped and taken advantage of is what hurt them the most. From these unfortunate events, we learn that double-checking and being cautious is more beneficial. Not everyone on dating sites are fraudsters. But beware of predators! How?
- If you get an odd feeling at any time, then cross-check or better yet, just walk out of it! Don’t ignore your gut feeling!
- If the person tries to create or put a wedge between you and your friends, it’s time to rethink your choice.
- If they are invasive whenever you bring up the topic of the meeting, be aware.
- If they keep mentioning wanting monetary help, be cautious.
Conclusion
Try and talk about the things bothering you with your trusted friends. Always remember that virtual interactions aren’t equivalent to real-life communications. If you have lost someone close to you, don’t run away from the grieving process. Don’t try to distract yourself with someone else. Feel your emotions, seek help from real people, not virtual clones.
Lastly, never ignore your instinct. If you even get a whiff of a bad vibe, disconnect immediately. You will always find your love in real people, no matter how stunningly a website lays it out for you. Remember this.
