Romance Scam Gang Out of Nigeria Busted

According to report out of Benin City, Nigeria, authorities have arrested 20 suspects who had banded together as a scam group targeting widows on various social networks using false identities and other scam tactics. Police raid confiscated 48 laptops, 20+ phones, 8 wireless modems, and one vehicle. When questioned, they confessed to primarily engaged in dating scams targeting foreign widows, and have them send money with promises of love and marriage.

http://naijagists.com/20-yahoo-yahoo-boys-internet-scammers-arrested-in-benin-city-edo-state/

This is a growing problem as seniors, especially widows, are starved for attention and some simply are too naive to realize that "On the internet, nobody knows if you're a dog" (or a scammer). At least one Australian pensioner was found dead in South Africa after traveling there to find her "true love". Another was stopped TWICE at the Australian airport trying to travel to Africa, which horrified her daughter and the police detectives working the fraud cases. 

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/police-rescue-woman-from-flying-to-africa-to-meet-online-scammer/story-fni0dpm6-1226648699654

What If Online Scams are Real People At Your Door?

Hapstance Film made this short film called "The Inbox", and it's absolutely hilarious.  Imagine all those online scams in your Inbox... except they're real people in your home... And this is what it would look like.

http://gizmodo.com/what-online-scams-would-look-like-if-they-were-real-peo-508003494

A Week After Valentine's Day... Beware of Dating Scams

There are tons of dating scams out there. While a majority of dating sites are quite legit, people on it may not be. There are plenty of posers, scammers, and fraudsters out to get your money.

The situation is serious enough that the FBI, yes, *the* Federal Bureau of Investigations, issued a warning about online dating scams on Feb 15th, 2013. 

Normally, dating scams are variations of the sweetheart scam, which is a variation of the Nigerian scam.

In a typical "Nigerian Scam", you're asked to help the perp transfer money out of where-ever the money's being hidden... by paying for bribes and fees and whatnot. In return, you'll get a split of the funds when it succeeds.

In a sweetheart scam, you were befriended online by this "sweetheart", who, after gotten you hooked, started asking for financial assistance of some sort. I need a gift for so and so, then it becomes larger loans, then outright gifts and whatnot. Though in some cases, the sweetheart scam can be merged with a Nigerian scam. I have a friend who was almost taken by one of these: the "girl" claims to be an heiress in the UK and needs about 1000 pounds to pay a barrister so she can get her inheritance so she can move to the US to be with my friend.

As people have gotten more sophisticated, so have the scammers. Now scammers have elaborate online profiles (all fake), generators that automates creation of such profiles (populated with randomly obtained pictures), and automated scripts for someone to keep up multiple conversations / marks without mixing up the references.