Maybe we could set up your friend with tesseract’s coworker. She would still use him for his money, but at least it sounds like she puts out for it.[URL=“Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.”]
Perhaps you could introduce these friends of yours to each other, if the friend who got fleeced is willing to share his story with him.
I really doubt any proof is going to convince him, but how about this:
Sign up for the site and write the worst profile you can imagine. Show him the responses from similar women. Hopefully, responses from the “same” ones?
Oooh…that might work!
I’m 5’3", weigh 275 pounds. I’m asthmatic and work as a pizza delivery driver. I live in my parents’ basement. Looking for a real woman who appreciates a fixer upper and doesn’t mind a guy with impotence problems!
Somewhere in there you should hint that you are sitting on a fortune.
Also, HoneybadgerDC, be prepared to lose this friend if you manage to humiliate him with the ugly truth. Being on the side of reality is no virtue to someone who prefers fantasy.
Maybe just let him keep on. He has his fantasy, real life girls don’t have him. Win win.
Play this for him: The Scammer Who Loved Me (Not).
Lemme guess - he divorced his wife because she wasn’t attractive enough for him anymore?
:dubious:
Sorry, but I think your approach to this situation couldn’t be worse. You’re setting him up to look like a fool and yourself as his tormentor.
So you keep on him and you keep trying to prove he’s being foolish.
What happens when one of these women asks for money and he realizes you’re right?
Does he suddenly flip the switch and hate her and love you? No, he sends her the damn money in the belief that she will eventually be with him and he will be able to prove to YOU that YOU’RE the one who is wrong.
I would agree with him. I would say that these are beautiful girls and he’s fortunate they’re interested in him. But I would also add that I would be afraid they might not be who they say they are and I certainly wouldn’t send them money for any reason.
You need to stay in communication and you need to stay a friend and getting adversarial with him… “proving him wrong” isn’t going to work and will most likely make things worse.
Another possibility is that the woman is real. But she’s interested in his citizenship and bank account, not his 5’7" with a 52" waistline body.
Some men have a genuine woman from another country show up at their door and they get married. Then two years later, the woman is telling him they’re getting a divorce because she’s an American citizen now. And she wants half of their assets.
Is there any chance the web site is just wracking up charges? That couldn’t be too bad for feeding his fantasy.
It’s pretty much a hopeless situation. I occasionally watch the Dr. Phil show, when I find some of his guests quite interesting, bizarre, gullible, etc.
He did the catfish thing again, and it seems nothing gets through to these guys and also when women fall for the same scam are ever bit as vulnerable.
Nigeria is still popular on where many of these are originating despite claiming to be somewhere else, although many countries are finding this is easy money.
First ask him, how does he even know it’s a woman? Voice changers are popular these days, get them on Amazon on the cheap. So, it turns out quite a few are just guys changing their voice to female. Their spelling and grammar is purposely made to be somewhat horrific, which they say helps get the easier ones on the hook. They figure if they can fall for that so easily, they will be an easy mark. They are.
According to his show, quite a few are also getting their pics off of porn sites, where often these same women will have quite a bit of pics where they have their clothes on.
One doctor was fleeced for nearly a million dollars. Dr. Phil’s showed him a overwhelming amount of data to show the pics were fake, and belonged to somebody else, and all of the data was false that was given to him. They did an update on that doctor recently, and he claims he is not giving them any more money (doubt it), but yet he still keeps in touch with this particular woman he has still yet to meet, because he says they just have a certain chemistry.
He doesn’t want to hear a word you are saying. IMO there is nothing you can say that will pull his head out of his ass.
Wait, wait, wait, we’re talking about more than one girl here? As in, he thinks several of these types of women are of course being enchanted by his online charms? My goodness, the male brain has deep, deep reservoirs of untapped delusions (and I say that as a male).
My stepfather recently left my mother after 26 years of marriage for a “younger” woman. My mother went on with her life and has discovered she’s actually happier now; he, on the other hand, is living in a trailer park and seeing his new flame on the weekends because they don’t want her husband to find out.
What the hell is it about middle age that makes men think they’re more attractive than they’ve ever been? That all these 20-year-olds would never find them creepy, nuh huh, not me. Jesus, look in the mirror. Ask your friend if he’s ever gotten so much play in his life, and to maybe look at it objectively and ask himself if it’s realistic that so many women suddenly can’t resist the urge to jump his bones.
There are about a dozen girls that look like Sofia Vergara in her prime. The most beautiful women you can imagine.
Why don’t you just set up your own fake profile, contact him, take all his money and give him 50% of it back? Win-win situation if I ever saw one.
I think this is really good advice. Post an unflattering photo with a profile which suggests a short life span. Brag about being financially secure. That should reel them in.
Chiming in - sadly this scam is rife everywhere. And guys seems to get reeled in in a manner that defies logic. Despite all obvious evidence to the contrary they will send money, and continue to send money. Even the smallest miniscule sense of hope keeps it alive, and probably eventually a desperate desire that it really just maybe might not be a scam and if they keep on it will all be OK after all. There seems to be a point where the scamee forces the delusion upon themselves as a defence mechanism against facing the appalling financial position they have created for themselves.
The scammers seems to be from all the usual places - Russia, Nigeria, Philippines as well. I know of one guy who thinks he is married to a Filipino woman and he has so far sent all his available money to her to cover the usual litany of requests - plane fare, visa, sick mother, etc etc. and has apparently been talking of accessing his superannuation (eg pension) funds which can be done here in the event of a significant crisis. It is deeply distressing to his friends and colleagues, but it is clear that he has past the point to where he is trying to avoid facing the clear reality of what has happened.
Searching for the pictures is not a bad idea. A while go in another thread I described how I had been getting “likes” of Facebook postings from an account that was clearly a fake account. The picture was the usual heartbreakingly beautiful genre, and the account had friended a lot of older men. Curious I used a Google image search on the profile pic and turned it up on a Russian commercial dating site that was clearly running the same scam. I looked around and found that an old acquaintance of mine from university days had had her Facebook account subverted (or just her identity details stolen) for much the same purposes.
Some guys have their brains wired in such a way that they seem to lose all sense of logic in the presence of even the remotest chance of making it with a women that is beautiful enough. You have to note that these sites don’t offer profiles of women that you might imagine are just possibly believable. Maybe an attractive somewhat older woman that you would really happy to realistically meet up with. No, they are insanely gorgeous, young, and beyond any logic. (This is probably part of the point, only guys that are so stupid and lovelorn to remotely imagine that such women exist and want to hook up with someone like them are of interest to the scammers. Rather like the usual Nigerian money scams - they are so transparent that only the most desperate or stupid will give them a second thought - it is those people that they want to attract. The unreality of the whole thing acts as a filter to winnow out those possible marks who are not so likely to take the bait.)
I would give it all back, it would be worth it to watch him squirm.