October 31, 2016

You may find yourself judging Sue--not her real name--as her story unfolds here today. But, keep in mind her situation at the time, which Sue describes, "Having lost my husband two years earlier, I was very vulnerable, lonely and easy pickins, just what scammers look for. A man manipulated me emotionally." 
 
Sue was on a site called Singles-Net when she met Edward Hayes, screen name "immortalhayes." He was on Yahoo and liked to be called Eddie. Sue and Eddie began emailing right away. 

October 02, 2016

For insight on Jack's Russian romance scam, described in an earlier column, I asked Maryland resident John, who had been married to a Russian woman, for his opinion on dating Eastern European women.

"Dating someone from Eastern Europe is not for everyone. Living in different countries and studying about the old Soviet Union during my college days, gave me a better idea of what to expect.

September 17, 2016

Internet romance scams are abundant. Lonely and naïve single men and women get caught up in scams thinking they’ve found someone in a foreign country who is going to be their lover. Last week, I had the following email exchange with a 69-year-old man we’ll call Jack, not his real name.

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Jack emailed: “I want to know if you think a 69-year-old man and a 30-year-old Russian lady could get along? What do you think of the age difference?”

December 15, 2015

Two weeks ago, we mentioned three romance scams to be aware of. I wrote that I didn't think the information would be very helpful to our group because most of you are too savvy to get taken in by a scam. One of our Champs bravely responded with how she got taken. She said:

"I was scammed a few months ago with a 'mystery shopper' scam. I signed up to be online (I knew someone who had done this). I was sent $998 in postal money orders which I cashed at my bank.