Steve (not his real name) was a buddy of mine from college back in the late 1980s/early 1990s. We both graduated with EE degrees, and were roommates for a while. Though he was extremely liberal, and I was more conservative, we got along great.
We’ve kept in touch over the years via email. He lives in Oregon, and divorced his wife five or six years ago. He visited me last year. Over a few beers, it was apparent he believed in all kinds of right-wing conspiracies. Was even wondering if he was QAnon. Wow, what a change.
Steve emailed me yesterday, and attached a photo of us when we hiked & canoed for a week at the Boundary Waters in MN in 1992. Here’s his email:
Yes I think a canoe “hiking” trail is one of the coolest national parks I have ever been to.
I am doing pretty well considering that I live the woke capitol of America second only to San Francisco. LOL.
I have been “dating” a woman from the Philippines for a few months and may go over there to meet her if China doesn’t invade Taiwan and take over the Philippines to remove it as a stepping stone to Australia.
The Philippines is really a paradise. I don’t know what visiting there would be like but I need to do something different to break out of my routine.
How are you doing?
Steve
It sounds to me like he has on online girlfriend who lives in the Philippines. So here’s my question: what’s the probability this girlfriend is legit? What do you think will happen if he travels there?
Who contacted who first and why? If he did through a dating service, there’s a chance she’s real. Otherwise, it’s almost certainly a scam. Totally a scam if it was out-of-nowhere from “her”.
Meeting a girlfriend online is certainly a thing that happens. I know of a few couples who have met online (some on this very messageboard) who have gone on to wedded bliss. But they’ve all lived in the same country.
Meeting a girlfriend in the Philippines…comes with a lot of red flags. Not saying she couldn’t be legit - because why not? - but you are likely already well aware that there are a lot of women in Southeast Asia either looking for a green card or to scam someone out of their cash.
Don’t know what will happen if he goes there, but he had better go with eyes wide open. And if he’s a QAnon guy, the odds of him being able to rationally read the situation go way down.
Not sure what if anything you can do about it though. The QAnon thing suggests an immunity to reason or persuasion away from his preferred beliefs. I suppose you could find some examples of scammers of this sort to show him, but I suspect you’ll get a “she’s not one of those” responses. Still worth a try, I guess.
With the context that he’s active in conspiracy spaces, I’d say he’s advertising himself as a gullible mark for all kinds of shenanigans, and the odds this is some sort of catfish go way up.
Since this is the internet and there will be no repercussions for bold claims, I’m gonna go ahead and say there’s a 0% chance this is legit.
The scam is that he met her through a “dating” service. He pays a fee for each message he sends or receives, ostensibly to “translate” but this is where they get their money from. He’s actually been talking to a guy who has dozens of “boyfriends” and is using a model’s pictures to catfish them all. The guy works in what’s essentially a call center with a bunch of other professional catfishers.
They will do everything they can to drag this out and making it seem like “any day now” she’ll be able to get on a plane and they’ll be together forever. If he goes to visit the Philippines they’ll trot this poor model out for a few dates and then make up some reason why she has to disappear again.
There are a lot of other scams out there, too. She could try to talk him into criminal activities, like being a drug mule, he could end up kidnapped and held for ransom, or she could fake her own kidnapping and ask hm to pay the ransom.
This guy was in college around the same time I was, so he’s likely mid-50s as I am. Unless he’s the hottest divorced 50-ish MAGAt in the world, it’s a near certainty that he’s going to get taken in some manner.
Targeting guys like me is absolutely a thing that happens, because so many of us are just pathetic losers when it comes to women. Several times a month, I get random hot women liking my posts on Facebook, and sending me friend requests, when we have literally nothing in common - no mutual friends, no mutual hobbies or groups, we don’t live in the same city, province, or even country. It’s clear to me that these are all scam artists of some sort, but to someone slightly stupider and less self-aware, I can see how they might fall for it.
And… he’s not. He’s overweight and has long, straggly hair. He’s also had a couple strokes, which has left him with limited mobility on the right side of his body. (When he visited, I noticed his right hand was bent at a sharp right angle, due to a stroke I would assume.)
Even though I don’t agree with his (delusional) conspiracy theories, I would hate for him to be scammed like this. Not sure what to say to him at this point.
Yes she could be legit. And she could be a scam — not an insignificant chance of that. Where in the PI does she live? Because if she lives in the southern provinces, travel there can be dangerous, and that’s a general warning and nothing to do with whether she’s a scam or not. Buyer beware. Traveler beware.
If she tries to get him to invest in cryptocurrency, it’s a scam. Sometimes they string the marks along for quite some time before they start talking about how much success they’ve had with cryptocurrency.
How did he meet her? If it was a wrong number text and they got to chatting, definitely a scam.
Even if legit, why would she be interested in an over weight 50+ schlub? Green card, of course. To him, that might be worth it as a trade, but love it ain’t.
My red flag, other than the reverse image search, was them trying to get me to install something – ostensibly an alternate way of texting – on my phone.
About 3-5 years ago we had a Doper who had a “GF” in the Philippines. Who launched a thread about his great good fortune in meeting this chick online, how they’d grown close over the last months despite the distance, and how he was going to go over there and meet up with her.
I recall our response was about 90% full-on “SCAMMMMM!!!” and 10% “Might be real, but probably not. Have a fun adventure in any case. Just don’t get murdered.”
I don’t recall the Doper’s name or whether we ever heard on how his visit(s) went. This was about the time I took a sabbatical from here, so others may recognize this story & know who I’m talking about.
Their experience may be instructive to our OP & his pal “Steve”.
My best friend met her husband (they’ve been married over 20 yrs now) on Craigs List. She never told her parents – they’re conservative Chinese immigrants – they wouldn’t have understood.
More like “It’s a cheap place to live where Men are Kings and women are their slaves.” And oh, yeah, it’s tropical.
That’s not nearly as true as certain men would like to believe convince themselves. But for some US demographics it’s an easy sell for the scammers.
Plus the fact they elected a Trumpier-than Trump president in Duterte six years ago followed earlier this year by the son of the late klepto-dictator Ferdinand Marcos. It seems the general public likes living under folks like that. That’s got to warm the heart of any Q-American.