Internet dating scam - lucky escape

After getting over the shock of 1) finding out this stuff actually happens and 2) nearly becoming a victim I thought I'd offer some advice to anyone looking for love on internet dating websites.

Hot guy & I start chatting on msn 2wks ago, says he is in Melbourne, won't chat by phone. Few days later says he is going to South Africa. Turns up a day later in Nigeria. Gives out phone no.. its legit. Daily msn sessions, email and txt exchanges.. confessions of undying love from him. Alarm bells start going off.

Today I check Yahoo email.. which I rarely do and copied into an email to me send 2/4 is an email address for a guy. I googled and he came up on a scam alert site and he is in Nigeria. My hot guy turns up on another internet dating website same photo he tells me is recent is actually over a yr old. Like other photos, its of model quality.. he says he was a model.

Little bit of detective work and email exchange with a cyber crime website and my guy fits the bill entirely.. I was just lucky he hadn't asked for money yet nor turned up on my doorstep.

Never touching internet dating again.. never

Nigeria is a red flag. I'm sure there are plenty of decent people living in Nigeria, and one of my co-workers is a very decent guy from Nigeria, but the country is famous for certain kinds of internet scams and weak laws regarding money laundering.

Internet dating can work okay, but date locally, and meet up in person as soon as possible.

lol - his saying he's a model would have been a red flag for me. :D

there are reported cases of women being duped into becoming drug mules, caught and thrown in prison in south america ...

Sounds like what happened to this more mature lady at work, bless her, she's not the sharpest tool in the box, and we all knew what the deal was way before she even started piecing it together:

She's on this dating site and meets a guy who is English, has a son, and a dog and some kind of import/export business involving jewellery. They exchange emails back and forth, he's sending her some crazy-ass declarations of love despite the fact that they have only really 'known' each other for like two nano-seconds. He's reluctant to speak to her on the phone and when he does eventually ring she thought he was trying to disguise his voice - he sounded African apparently. Anyway, all of a sudden he's off to conduct some business in the States, next thing he's claiming that his hotel room was broken into and that they stole his laptop, phone, wallet, blah blah blah and could she do him a favour and transfer some money over to him? The cheek!

Still on the same dating site she meets another fella who is English, has a son, and a dog and some kind of import/export business involving, yep you guessed it, jewellery. They exchange emails back and forth, there are more declarations, he's not so reluctant to speak on the phone however she did say he sounded German. He then starts to get all demanding and says that to build their relationship and take it to the next level she should invest in him (??!?) - he wanted her to go halves on some business idea of his.

Yet once more on the same dating site (yep, some peeps never learn), one more English dude with a son and dog and, say it along with me, some kind of import/export business involving jewellery. More emails, more insane declarations, she conversed with him via web-cam, his was conveniently busted, and naturally he sets off for a business trip to the States, not quite sure what happened next, she didn't really tell us but one can only easily imagine.

It was all very entertaining at the time - I know, that's very bad of me! Were they all the same guy? Were they completely unrelated? Or were they part of a ring of con-artists operating together? And why the same background story? Is it just because they were plain lazy? Or downright unimaginative? Ah, so many unexplained questions!