So I decided to try OKCupid. Signed up and did all the things they want you to do.
Over the weekend I was contacted by a young woman and, while it may be my paranoia or insecurity, I suspect this is a scam. The reasons are subtle, so as I said, I may just be paranoid.
[ol]
[li]She is 17 years my junior[/li][li]She lives several states from here[/li][li]She tells me repeatedly how handsome I am. Not every exchange, but 3 out of 8 messages so far. (See my profile and judge for yourself…)[/li][li]Despite being born in the US, her English is questionable (examples later.)[/li][/ol]
The following phrases seem like english-as-a-second language:
Mind you, a few of my posts here have been so poorly worded that some have suggested that english was my second language too.
What do you think dopers? Am I being set up, or am I being paranoid?
Well granted, the age would normally be outside my scope, but I don’t think it has to be a deal breaker. If all else worked, I would not worry about the age.
I have cherry-picked the bad grammar - a lot of her text is fine. However, those phrases just didn’t quite ring true to me. Actually “Do this thing really work” could simply be lazy editing. I bet it wouldn’t be too hard to find examples of poor grammar in some of my posts that are just as egregious.
So it is the other two that stand out most for me. The “i will like” just screams non-native speaker to me.
I would flag her profile, in that case. There are occasionally users on OKCupid who are clearly porn sites or scammers; often, they have a plethora of photographs but almost no profile information (have answered few questions, if any; almost no data on what kind of relationship they would like, etc. Just flag 'em and move on.
So far she’s just bad at English and has a thing for older guys. She hasn’t asked you to sign up at such and such a site so that you can get more intimate. Yet.
She probably will, at some stage, but hey, you’ll know it when you see it.
:eek: Yanno, despite being told fairly regularly that I think like a guy, I am periodically reminded of the fact that I do not actually think like a guy.
Has she (or “she”, as might possibly be the case) been communicating with you via PM directly on OKCupid, or are you exchanging emails? If it’s the latter, you’re probably being scammed.
In the past few years, it’s not uncommon for scammers have pretend they’re living someplace less likely to trigger your scam-o-meter, like the US, and then mass-mailing as many potential targets as possible to see who bites. The key thing is that they’ll ask to communicate via email instead of PM on the site because it’s easier for them to monitor a single email account as opposed to umpteen fake profiles on various dating sites (most of which never get used after the first email blitz).
After exchanging the usual “I’m so happy that God has blessed me with a marriage-minded Christian” BS, they’ll hit you up for plane ticket money to come for a visit or ask you to bail them out of a bad financial situation by sending a money order… all in the name of love, of course.
I haven’t seen this so much on OKCupid, but there’s another site where I’d get hit up by a fake profile every time within the first ten minutes of logging in.
Actually, she has asked if we can chat via an IM service. She wants my Yahoo screen name. I don’t have one. I have suggested VOIP (skype) which would allow me to hear her voice, but she suggested Yahoo instead.
A similar scammer tried to hit on me on Facebook this past week. Mangled English message, bad punctuation, profile photo in a bikini, wants my email address. Sorry, MonicaCaro011, you’re not real. Go away. Also, I am not a woman. If you’d really checked my profile, you’d see that. Now if I could only figure out how to flag the user as suspicious and delete the message…
The Yahoo/Hotmail account is pretty typical of a scammer (they rarely use Gmail, though, for whatever reason). Combined with the fact that “she” decided to take communications off-site right away (on a free site, especially), odds are very very good that this is a scam.
Doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with it. It’s been a while since we’ve had a good scam-baiter thread.
Follow your gut. If you go over your exchanges with ‘her,’ you’ll probably unearth a few more things that raised red flags for you. How much does she seem to know about her own state or hometown? What kind of relationship is she looking for (and why’s she looking several states away to get it)?
Plenty of born-and-raised Americans have awful spelling and grammar, but you’re right, hers isn’t LOLs and their/they’re, it sounds like it’s straight out of a Nigerian spam message.
Continue on if only out of morbid curiosity – but make a deal with yourself to never, ever reach for your credit card. No matter how many pics she sends.
My first attempt at OkCupid got me a similar result within a couple of days. After getting on IM with this “woman”, she started sending me photos. Nude photos. BEAUTIFUL nude photos. She also professed her undying love for me, with the wish that we could always be together in our strong Christian relationship. (Beware of Christians in online dating. Believe it or not, this is usually a huge red flag.)
Unfortunately, she was stuck in Africa, and needed a plane ticket to get home. And then we could be together. Did she want me to send her money for the ticket? No. But she needed me to go someplace in town, pick up $10,000 in cash from someone, and deliver it to someone else.
I have no idea what the scam was, as it was at that point that the interaction went from mildly amusing to totally creepy. I never answered back.
This sounds eerily similar to something that happened to my older brother. He about 3 years ago started doing the internet dating thing and sure enough right away he got this hot girl to talk to him. About 10-12 emails into it she needed him to send some money, etc.
Never talked directly to him about this, but from what my younger brother tells me my older brother got dinged for a fair amount of cash before he got wise. He is much smarter about these things now.
Thus–I vote scam, just waiting for the hammer to drop. But now that you know that, if she asks for money, you can just drop her.
LOL. Oh, I wouldn’t send her money, no matter what. I’m not that guy. I’m not even that lonely. I figured I’d give OKCupid a shot, but I can’t imagine falling “in love” over the 'net.
Oddly, although this woman is cute, she isn’t “hot”. “Hot” would have been a tip-off though. (I have hesitated to say this, because it seems kind of rude and if she is for real, I would not wish to be rude.)
She isn’t in a foreign country, or at least her location is not out of the US. She claims to be in the US military service.
In that case, I’m sure there are a few Dopers who could supply you with basic questions to ask her that would weed out a con artist, without forcing her to give up too much personal information (because yes, if she’s legit that would be rude, and I fully understand why she’d be wary to do so).
