I’ve been internet dating for 2 1/2 years so far. I was so naive when I started out in March of 2019. Right away I got catfished by two experts. I had no idea that there were men out there waiting to nab women like me in the hopes of getting money or my personal identification materials rather than my love and affection. When I had tried it a number of years before in grad school, it was much easier to meet people. They were more open about their intentions and proclivities. Usually the most likely thing they were hiding was a wife. And even then, they usually disclosed it fairly quickly.
But back to my story about the two catfishermen. One, claimed to be from Italy originally and worked for a firm in my hometown as a financial advisor. He had a teenage daughter and was a widow. We chatted online for a bit and then switched to email and hangouts on Google. Before we could meet in person, he flew off to California for a meeting. While there, he got a call that his mother in Italy was very ill. So, off he flew to Italy to be by her bedside as he was her only son. He was only there a few days and tragically, she dies. But in the meantime, he had been called again away to business in London and wasn’t at her side when she passed. Oh, so sad. And out of all the people he has helped through the years in business, the only person to bother to attend her funeral is some Irishman he had done some deals with through the years. The heartbreak of losing her only sister puts his elderly aunt in the hospital. While he is still there in Italy, he is offered a huge business opportunity with some oil barons from the Middle East that is set up through his Irish friend. The sad part is, he needs someone to co-sign on these papers with him but his aunt is too sick and his daughter is too young. So, he wants me to sign with him. Me a woman he has never met before but has been carefully wooing by email for a month and telling me how much he loves me (which I have been denying because I know he is full of bolognese sauce) and he wants me to co-sign on some huge business deal! I said, uh, no, I don’t think I will be doing that. Do you know what my brother, the retired policeman would say if I told him I was going to do something stupid like that? Then he got kinda cranky and nasty and said some mean things and of course that was the end of our relationship.
On to catfisher #2…this one got me because he said he was a gemologist. Ladies, I am here to tell you right now. There are certain professions on those websites to watch out for that say scammer right off the bat. They are: gemologist, almost anything that says to do with gold or mining engineering, oil and or gas engineering/exploration, if they say they work out on a rig or do oil platform design, and almost anything related to geology, which pisses me off because I have a degree in geology. Now, I can catch most of them in a lie, because they don’t know the answers to my questions. But you just pass them by. They are out to scam you. This guy said he bought and sold gems for people. Same deal, went out of town before we could go on a date. Went to Belgium to buy a bunch of stones at an auction. Then told me he didn’t have enough money to pay the taxes he needed to bring them back into the States. His bank was refusing to authorized more money and for some reason his lawyer couldn’t act for him, nor his also teen-aged daughter (he was also a widower) to get him the money he needed. If he didn’t come up with the money, they were going to put him in jail. I circumvented him from even asking me for the money by telling him I didn’t have it nor even if I did would I give it to someone I didn’t know and hadn’t even met. He said he understood, but again, quit talking to me shortly after I told him that and I never heard from him again. I reported both of these guys on Plenty of Fish, but later saw this one’s photo in the line-up, so it did no good.
The funny thing is I told both of these guys that I was talking to the other yet they both continued to try to scam me and hope they were better at it than the other. Mr. Italy was the over-the-top, full-on, flowery speech, lovey-dovey romantic in his approach until he didn’t get his way. Catfish #2, who claimed to be Dutch, was more reticent in his approach and actually more successful because he was more believable until his end game of trying to get 5,000 Euros from me, which I think was about 7 or $8,000 at the time. Like I had that kind of money! What a hoot! He was certainly barking up the wrong tree! LOL But I have heard that there are many women that fall for such approaches because they are so desperate for the attention they get from these men that they will do anything to keep it coming. Please don’t do that. Don’t give these scum anything. First, they are not who or what they say they are. They are a gang of thieves. Out to steal whatever they can get and use you however they can. These two were very good at what they did. Most are not even that good and you can tell because their English is very bad or broken. Another clue to watch out for.
Internet Dating at 66 - A Woman's Perspective 