1. The Origins of Scam

The widespread use of the Internet has given rise to a variety of new social phenomena, which appeared only because of development of this new kind of communication. The world has gotten to know a new kind of fraud called “Romance scam” since the end of 1990s. Scammers feign that they are people who want to make the acquaintance of somebody for building serious relationship. As a rule, they write very romantic letters, make a declaration of love, promise to meet you soon, and make plans for your common future. But something happens with them after a while: robbery, some accident, serious disease or something like that. And, of course, they need money, so scammers ask for your help. Romance scam is becoming more and more widespread from year to year, because more that 10 million people connect to the Internet every year! Communication through the Internet allows people to stay anonymous and easily pass themselves off as someone else. You have very few chances to find a man, using only his pseudonym or nickname, and that is why the number of scammers is rising in leaps and bounds.

There are several potentially dangerous regions:

Former CIS Countries
Stable criminal groups, which specialized only on internet fraud, appeared in Russia (Yoshkar-Ola, the Mary-El Republic) and Ukraine (Lugansk and Odessa) at the beginning of 2000s. The problem of internet fraud was solved in Russia and Ukraine only after these countries had joined Interpol and special cyber crime police had been created.

The whole Africa!
All counties of the African continent can’t solve the problem of cyber crimes. Total poverty, unemployment, and corruption of law-enforcement agencies allow criminals to carry on business almost openly.

Malaysia
There are gaps in legislation of this country, so scammers can live a carefree life in this region. As a rule, Malaysian scammers specialize on Asian dating.

2. Scale of the world-wide fraud

More than 200 people were taken under arrest by Russian police officers on suspicion of participation internet fraud in Ioshkar Ola in 2006. Business, based on fraud against men from USA and Europe, brings profit of about $500000 per month.

After Nigerian scammers had started sending their “chain letters” in the name of the president of Nigeria, Mr. Obasanjo, the police organized a raid in the market at the Oluwole region (Lagos), which is the center of sale of fake documents, used at so-called “419 crimes” (article 419 includes all kinds of Internet fraud). The police found thousands of foreign and Nigerian passports, 10 000 ticket blanks of British Airways, 10 000 American traveler’s checks, different forms of customs documents, fake university degrees and 500 new computers.

Asishana Okauru, the head of financial intelligence of Nigeria, said within two years that they had confiscated about 600 million dollars, earned by means of “419 scam” crimes. Currently only 15 sentences have been passed concerning these cases.

U.S. Secret Service believes that such schemes allow to gather hundreds of millions of dollars every year all over the world; besides, victims are often ashamed to inform authorities about their financial losses.

There are a lot of articles about special-forces raids and billions of dollars, earned by scammers. However, unsuspecting residents continue feeding rogues of every stripe, thereby, provoking new crimes. Let’s try to estimate the scale of Romance scam. Google has an interesting service called “Google Trends”. This service shows the rating of words, for which residents of different countries search. So, let’s make several requests, related to dating sites.

Residents of first three countries do not speak English. They can’t obtain a European or USA visitor or tourist visa. So why would residents of the African continent input requests with the word “dating” more often than other people? Do you remember words of Mr. Asishana Okauru about 15 sentences within 2 years? Now we see the result of corruption and failure of law-enforcement agencies to act. The impression is that every resident of Nigeria, Ghana and Senegal considers it his/her duty to cheat silly Americans.

3. How to Check a Man through Internet

Many Antiscam websites offer a service concerning check of a person for participation in internet fraud. Such service is quite expensive (50-150 US dollars). If you check any new pen-friend by means of these services, you will have to work only to pay such Antiscam websites. We will tell you several effective ways how to recognize scammers at once.

a) Check the email

It is enough to input an email address in search bar of some search engine, for example, Google.com, to see where this email have been spotted. If you find this email in scam lists, you will understand at once who your new pen-friend is. Many experienced users might smile, because this method is old as the hills and, probably, inefficient, because scammers know about this method, too, and change their emails very often. This check method of a man is quite effective. But you need some proof, don’t you? Here you are! Guys from RomanceScam.com used exactly this method for finding real photos of scammers in various social networks like facebook and then uploaded these photos to their website. Look: REAL faces of scammers

b) Check the IP address

Every country has its own IP addresses. Choose “message header” or “show original message” in your e-mail client (except Gmail, it doesn’t show the sender’s IP address) and find there the sender’s IP address. It looks like that: 41.208.134.148. After that you should open a free service MaxMind.com, enter the IP address, and press the button “Get Location”; as a result, you will see the place of residence of the man, who sent you a letter. In our example the result will be “Country Name – Senegal, City - Dakar”.

c) Check photos

You can easily check photos of a man, too. Save a photo on your computer. Then open the following service TinEye.com. Upload the photo and press “Search”. You will immediately see the list of websites with the same photo. It can be profiles of dating sites, pages in social networks, magazines for models, scam lists, etc. Click on the links to check what about this man is writing and draw conclusions.

d) Gifts Services

There are a lot of gifts delivery services in Internet. For example, you may send a rose to your girlfriend. A courier delivers the rose at the specified address, checks documents of the recipient and makes a photo of your girlfriend with the rose. The photo will be sent to you. Everything is simple and elegant. However, all gifts delivery services work only in Europe and Asia. As far as I know, there is no support of delivery to Africa.

4. Conclusion

Each Internet user faces scammers sooner or later. It is quite possible that you face them at this website. Don’t pass by indifferently. Contact the website administration and inform us about your suspicions; we will take all necessary measures to keep our users from scammers. Happy acquaintances and be careful!

Useful sites

FTC online complaint form www.ftc.gov

Internet Fraud Complaint Center www.ic3.gov