I have been online chatting with people from all over the world for close to 10 years now. I have heard it all from a lot of the guys. Some try the line that they are right on the edge of becoming rich if only they could get this one last break. Some will try telling you if only they had x amount of dollars, they know they could make this plan work and become rich and famous. I learned to laugh them off and just ignore the requests to invest in their projects.
Basically they hand out a line of good old fashion BS. The sad part though is that they sometimes prey on widows/widowers or divorced women/men that are lonely thinking if they gave him the money they would be starting a new relationship with the man/woman.
A former Souderton, Pennsylvania man posed as a music mogul on an Internet dating site and ended up conning 13 people, mostly women across the country for over $100,000. He convinced these women that he was a Grammy Award-nominated music producer. He told them he was starting a company to manufacture DVD’s and CD’s and needed investors. The amazing part is that the man was actually homeless who used a laptop computer to get to his alleged victims and use their money to support a gambling habit.
Krueger was arrested May 20 in New Jersey, charged as a fugitive, and is in the Atlantic County Prison awaiting an extradition hearing. He was caught at one of the casinos in Atlantic City where he was nursing a soda at a restaurant during his most recent day of gambling. “I shouldn’t have stayed to finish this soda,” Ferman quoted Krueger as saying as he was taken into custody. He was charged with multiple counts of theft, theft by deception, deceptive or fraudulent business practices, Pennsylvania Securities Act violations and related crimes.
An investigation began in October, 2007 when a woman who invested $10,000 complained to authorities when Krueger had stopped returning her phone calls to her.
Personally I can’t imagine ever falling for people like this but I do feel for the vulnerable men and women out there that do. They end up losing the money that most of them worked hard to earn only to be conned by such a scheme.
Jan Barrett
5 users commented in " Beware of Internet Con-Artists "
Follow-up comment rss or Leave a TrackbackJan,
It always amazes me how many romance scams go on out there. A lot of the victims are harvested right off legitimate dating sites, also.
A pretty good resource for anyone interested on current and past information about them is http://www.romancescams.org/.
Very interesting post!
Thanks for the added link, Ed. I hope it can help prevent this from happening to someone else. I hate seeing this kind of thing happen to anyone.
Hi Jan,
Recently, i met three guys in the same time all from US, and all have something to do with going to nigeria and do business and they said that they are rich. They are hunting for victims through friendster.
All three told me that I am very pretty and they are in love with me. And, then suddenly, they told me that they are in so serious financial problem in Nigeria, and ask me to send them so money.
How do I report them?
Hi Jan,
My Mum has started using internet dating sites and has been speaking to an American man living in the UK about 100 miles from us,last week his sister was supposedly in an accident,so he went to the US,then for whatever reason went to Nigeria,this morning he got in touch saying hed been mugged in Nigeria,had no passport no money left and suddenly my Mum was going to give him £500,luckily she changed her mind listening to my warnings,she now feels guilty but im trying to prove she shouldn’t,what should I do now??
sweet lorraine: call the local police and they can direct you to the right peron to report them
noname: look online and find other cases where people have been scammed and show your mother. It is all over on the internet
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