Day by day Online dating and romance over the web has become very popular. So scammers are taking advantage of vulnerable users both male and female. Every day, scammers target hundreds of online daters, and many have fallen as prey to scam that cost online daters, their valuables or giving them heartbreak and maybe getting them into some extra troubles. They do it by posing as men or women overseas or in the same area and send you a message through an online dating service. They pretend to be interested in you and give you their ”IM or email address” so that you can continue communicating with them both online and on phone.
Online dating scammers use IM or email to try to build a relationship with you and they eventually confess their love for you, when you click with them, the scam kicks into a high gear. making you committed not knowing its a romance scam. The scammer’s main tool is affection, devotion, and eventually love, which he displays to victims in a series of daily letters. The level of affection grows with each letter, and people who are lonely or unhappy soon find themselves dependent on these letters, which they think are addressed exclusively to them, but in reality are templates with their names inserted in proper places. Dispersed among the paragraphs describing how the sender is rapidly falling in love with the victim, there is usually a light description of a business venture as if the sender is describing intimate details of his business activities so the victim feels that her role is to support him. This gives some mobility to what would otherwise be fairly abnormal love talk from a stranger. It also diverts the victim’s attention from the unnaturalness of the rapid falling in love. At the same time the degree of clear confidentiality shown by the scammer makes subsequent questioning about his business by the victim seem impolite. Subsequently the ‘business venture’ so developed is linked in chats to the enormous wealth and influence the scammer claims to have.
Scammers use chats primarily to determine if the victim’s financial position warrants developing them as a target. This is normally presented in a fairly casual and caring setting. For instance the scammer wants to know if he is using too much of the victim’s time, or if all the victim’s needs are taken care of. Frequent discussions of the victim’s financial situation don’t appear so suspicious after the scammer divulges his successful business career to the victim. The interest in money and numbers appears as natural traits of a business person.
Scammers compensate for poor English with excellent psychological reading of the victim. They know how and when to evoke pity, jealousy, duty, guilt, trueness to one’s word and, in the end, fear of losing this magical love which is paramount in all. The victim feels unable to do anything which will place in jeopardy this world of magical love, which she may believe can occur only once in a lifetime. In effect, the victim nurtures this love and feels extreme happiness, although nothing in her life has actually changed, because the scammer never addresses reality in the letters, but only exudes cheap phrases expressing love and care. This addiction clouds all reason, and the fear of losing the scammer’s love leads victims to agree to financial favors for the scammer.
For the scammer, the desire of victims favor him financially equates with proof of love. For the victim, financial favors are nothing, compared to losing the chance for a love of a lifetime. Victims misinterpret the situation because they have difficulty distinguishing devotion from predation. They fall prey to an illusion of love created by flattery, attention, and evocation of feelings of pity and jealousy.
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Cover of Falling in Love
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Theology of love 