Romance Scammers Are ‘No Different From Batterers’
By Jim DeBrosse Staff Writer
FAIRBORN — Less than 10 minutes after signing into Yahoo Messenger, Mary Leal has three "suitors" online with whom she has been trading messages for weeks. It’s all part of her research for BIT Consultants LLC, a security consulting company near Wright State University.
All the cyber mates have posted profiles with pictures of white males who claim to be from the United States, although they are now living in Lagos, Nigeria.
"Tony Adams" proposed to Leal that morning and now he wants money for air fare so he can visit his betrothed. Leal has suggested she’ll send him a plane ticket but Tony insists that if she really trusts him, she’ll wire cash.
"Lonely George" is a widower whose wife was killed and son badly injured in a car accident. He needs $15,000 for medical expenses before they’ll release his son from the hospital.
"Maxwell Stone," the smoothest of the three, sent a plagiarized love poem that morning (Leal found it on lovepoems.com) he claimed he penned just for her.
Welcome to the world of Internet romance scams, where those who profess their love will sweet talk you for days on end, then ask for personal information, money, even bank account numbers.
Refuse their requests, Leal said, and they turn ugly — withdrawing their affection, unleashing a stream of demeaning insults or, worst, threatening physical harm.
"They’re no different from batterers," said Leal, who spent 20 years in the vice division of Dayton police before going to work for BIT Consultants, which does vulnerability assessments for businesses. "It’s the same cycle of violence. They groom you, sometimes for months. They set you up. And then they move in for the kill. And if they don’t get what they want, they push you away and come back again."
Leal said she wasn’t aware of how common romance scams have become until she discovered a friend of a friend had been swindled out of nearly $18,000 over an eightmonth period of Internet romancing with a scammer in Lagos.
Lagos may be the world capital for love swindles, where groups of men gather in Internet cafes and dispatch messages to the lovelorn, sometimes sharing the same victims, Leal said. A consumer Web site, www.romancescams.org/, has documented the operations with hidden cameras.
"Still, you can’t tell (the victims) that this love is any less real than if they met in a local coffee shop. They are so desperate for someone to care for them," Leal said.
Leal warned that wiring money isn’t the only way to get scammed. By giving out personal information, victims open themselves to identity theft.
Even downloading a photo from a scammer can have dire consequences — often they are encrypted with spy viruses that can capture the user’s keystrokes for passwords, bank accounts and other financial information.
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