Almost Scammed

I wasn’t sure I should share this, but maybe it will serve as a lesson to other people out there, so here goes.

I can’t believe I almost fell victim to a scammer.

That’s what happens when you give in to your emotions!

What happened was I decided to check an online dating site. Yes, despite kissing it goodbye last time. Weak!

I got a message from some dude who asked for my email add.

So I gave it and he sent a very lengthy email. I emailed him back just as lengthily.

On only his third email to me, he called me “honey” and said that he was already thinking of me as his wife and that his mom sends his regards to me.

Whoa there, cowboy. Too fast, too furious.

That’s when I started to suspect that something was off. (I know, why so late, mate?)

So I googled romance scams and was surprised at the huge number of articles about it, including one that gave tips on how to spot an online romance scammer. A lot of them rang a bell!

But what made me 100% certain was when I took the photo he sent me and reverse-googled it.

His photo was up on a scam site! He had used the same photo with different names. Even his phone numbers start with the prefixes used by scammers in UK & Malaysia.

I’m annoyed that I had given him my name and phone number, but luckily that was it. No other important information was given away.

I’ve blocked his email address and didn’t reply to his last email. (Or maybe I should? Lead him on, be a scam baiter?)

I’m not the only one naive enough to trust these bozos. I have at least 2 friends who also got these kinds of emails. But like me, they stopped when it became suspicious.

But I read many articles about women who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars or their life savings to people like him. It’s quite heartbreaking.

As Mad Eyed Moody would say:

I’d rather be a lonely single woman than a ruined one.