The Many Faces of Advanced Fee Fraud – Online Dating Wealthy Men
There’s an old quote which states that “everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.” Everyone wants success, but no one is willing to do what it takes to get there. People want to be rich, but they don’t want to work hard for many years in order to attain wealth. Instead they opt for get rich snappy schemes, such as playing the lottery, and falling for overnight infomercials about how you can acquire rich with real-estate with very little grief. Some even more desperate to become wealthy become victims of scams in which they believe they will come into a broad amount of wealth, and end up being bamboozled out of their money in the process.
The scam is one of the oldest ones in the book, it’s called approach fee fraud and it’s pretty remarkable everywhere. Wikipedia states that it’s a “confidence trick in which the target is persuaded to advance relatively small sums of money in hope of realizing a much larger gain.” You will be told you have one some sort of contest, lottery, or they need your bank account to transfer money out of a foreign country, and will be charged all sorts of fees to get the money released, only to find out the money was never there in the first place.
There are so many types of advance fee fraud, you need to be on the lookout. The most common of course is the Nigerian money scam in which the scam artist attempts to convince the victim that the scammer has a gigantic amount of money which needs to be transferred out of the country and needs the victims bank sage to do it, and in response the victim will get to maintain a percentage of that money. The scammer asks the victim to pay relatively small sums of money for bribes or a transfer fee, and then takes the victims money and runs.
Another variation of this scam involves romance. Often men on online dating services will be approached by a woman and they will develop a “relationship”, and then the woman asks the man to give her some money to come visit him, and then takes the money and runs.
Lotteries and contests are another haven for these scams. The scam artist will tell the victim that he or she has won some sort of contest or lottery and the prize is a huge sum of money. The victim is told he or she needs to pay some sort of fee or taxes to secure the money transferred to them, and they pay the fee and the gigantic sum of money never comes.
Ebay and classifieds are another source of an advance-fee type scam. People will win an auction or agree to pay for the item, and will receive a deceptive check or email from PayPal or another site stating that a payment has been sent, only to earn out the email or the check is counterfeit, but the victim idea he or she was paid so they sent the item, and lose the money.
The “Black Money” scam is a rather recent twist. Usually the scam artist will tell the victim that some money has been died black to sneak it past customs and in order to get the money usable again, the victim will have t o pay for some expensive chemicals to cleanse the bills.
These scams are everywhere. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. US Citizens lose over $100 million a year in these advanced fee scams, so be a wise consumer and don’t fall into these traps!
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