Romancing The E-Scam

from the lots-of-suckers-in-this-world dept

It’s fairly impressive what scammers can trick people out of. A man in Minnesota has been arrested for tricking two women out of over $300,000. He met them both in “romantic” online chat rooms, and convinced them to give him money to invest in various real estate deals that apparently didn’t exist. One woman was scammed out of $36,000, but the other forked over $280,000 before she realized that the real estate deals didn’t exist. So, here’s the question: you meet someone in an online “romance” chat room and they start asking you for money. At what point do you stop and do a little due diligence before just sending them checks? I would think that most people wouldn’t even bother to speak to the guy again, but if you can get past that, you’d at least try to find out a little more about what you were investing in. Some people apparently have too much money on their hands and don’t seem to care what happens to it.


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Comments on “Romancing The E-Scam”

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6 Comments
Greg Nelson says:

Re: stupid!

I would never say that a person ‘deserved’ being scammed out of 1/3 of a million dollars.
It is soo easy to say how dumb and stupid these people are. Simple fact is, some people Are dumb[not everyone is average – it’s a fact!], some people are born with learning disabilities, and some people [because of sheltered upbringings] are notoriously gullable.
It is not hard to imagine that perhaps the women who were scammed were desperate for someone to care about them, or maybe for some someone to care about – and so would do anything to feel the way they did. Maybe they have been alone their entire lives.
To make judgement on such a small amount of information is absurd.

Greg Nelson says:

Re: Re: Re: stupid!

To say someone deserved something because they were not aware or considered a certain piece of wisdom is overly harsh.

Does a person deserve the be a quadraplegic because they were not sensible enough to check the waters depth before diving in? Stupid decision? Definitely. Did they deserve to lose all quality of life as a result? No.

I do not believe people DESERVE to have their lives ruined because of an innocent absent minded decision.

Nobody has perfect judgement.

alternatives says:

As soon as the blush is gone.

So, here’s the question: you meet someone in an online “romance” chat room and they start asking you for money. At what point do you stop and do a little due diligence before just sending them checks?

1) how lonely you are
2) how much you trust ’em
3) how much of that ‘first blush of love’ still exists

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