Internet dating scams using american soldiers
24-Apr-2020 01:00
After being matched with an interested party, these con artists slowly reel in their prey with affectionate messages of passion and desire.Once the target is hooked and believes he or she is in a real, full-fledged relationship with an American service member, the scammers goes in for the kill, asking for thousands of dollars at a time to help address a personal crisis or material need.After all, every fake profile is created using a real soldier’s picture.According to Grey, this not only harms the reputation of the individual service member, but the reputation of the military as a whole.They also use many aliases, emails, photos, gender, age and sexual orientation in order to cast their net to catch as many victims as possible.Often the scammers use attractive female photo profiles because lots of men will respond to an attractive woman's personal ad based on the photo alone.They also tend to target middle-aged people looking for stable relationships.The rationale is that this type of person is likely to be more desperate, gullible and financially stable.
Some of the sophisticated scammers send cheap presents such as flowers or candy [from stolen credit cards] to capture the hearts of lonely women. They either advise that their employer pays them with Money Orders and they can't cash them in Nigeria or are having trouble cashing them.
The photos are usually stolen from modeling sites with reports that 90% of them are being taken from Focus Hawaii.