Greetings, Teeming Millions. Being a single guy, I have profiles on several matchmaking sites, such as Match. com and Lavalife, and I keep having a very odd thing happening to me. I get responses to my ads from women in Africa. These women are usually much younger than me (I’m in my 50s and they are always in their early 20s) and they always write about how much they liked my ad and true love and so on in very fractured English. It’s weird enough that these women expect me to consider starting a relationship with someone halfway around the world from me (and half my age to boot) but it gets weirder. The couple of times I replied to their emails just to figure out what was going on, another odd thing happened, which is that both women said they actually lived in the US but they were now back in Africa taking care of their sick mothers. I thought it very odd that these two different women would have almost the exact same story.
So, my question is this: what’s the game here? I’ve gotten my share of Nigerian emails promising to make me rich if I would just help them get their money out of the country, so I am naturally suspicious that this is along those lines too. But for the life of me I can’t figure out how they intend to profit from doing this. Any ideas?
Because they are going to need financial assistance so that they can afford to ensure care for their sick mothers and buy tickets to the US to see you.
Sounds like a setup similar to Russian mail-order brides, don’t you think? They probably mostly want papers–marriage, green card, visa, whatever, but any gifts and cash will be a big help too.
Thoses have been quite common in Europe (or at least in France) for some time. I assume some may be scammers, while others actually want to marry a westerner. And many do. As a previous poster said, it’s very similar to the russian mail order brides phenomenon (though, it seems, much less organized), with internet cafes and such becoming more and more common in subsaharian Africa. Maybe they only recently began to attack the potential market of american husbands (or gullible individuals, as the case might be).
I get so many emails from the Phillipines. I just don’t respond. How would you date someone you’ve never met, from that distance?
Scam. 
If they are in Africa then the chances are 99% that they are Nigerian
- and the chances are 99.5% that they are male
As with the other Nigerian scams, there are ‘form letters’ that they sell, or supply to those lower down the line (they tend to be highly organized).
A trip to: www.419eater.com would be educational
You can easily get them to show their true colours by asking them if they can help you dealing with a barrister who is getting an inheritance for you. That will get them salivating.
Best use a throwaway Email account and lie about all your details.
Here’s something a friend of mine here in Bangkok sent me. He wrote this for an article he published. The comments are all his own. He swore to me that each of these ads were real ones that he personally found:
In my sick, perverted surfing of international on-line dating sites - I do
this for research only, of course - I have recently come across the
following “personal profiles”.
Keep in mind the normal “profile” shit is: “I am nice and honest person. I
like people to know abt myself. 
I am looking for person who are serious in
married and have to be honest person. The most important in relationship are
trust, honesty and love.”
Then there are occasional gems like the following which I am not making up:
The first is from a Cameroon woman aged 25. Here’s what she says of herself.
“i am a simple honest kind openminded person i enjoy and love sex anal sex
the most i am very open to sexual life and i love when having some pains
while in sex actions i seek a kind caring honest and openminded man some one
i can trust and be submissive to a man that will know and understand a woman
with everything in him well ask me more. wese”
Well, Wese, you sound just the one for me.
The second is from "Member name: xxxxxx, a 21 year old woman from Makati,
National Capital Region, Philippines.
“Last year I discovered sex, and I wanted to fuck all the time, I mean like
everyday, and if I can’t get off with a guy I use my finger, and on my
doctors advice, last week I bought a rubber like penis that vibrates, it gets
me off in minutes. He suggested this as he put it, because I am a Nympho, and
should stop fucking these young guys as I would probably get pregnant or
catch something. He felt that the safest way for me to continue having sex,
was to restrict my sexual activity to older cacasian men. Who would be D/D
free and would always practice safe sex.”
Smart thinking… but what’s D/D. I haven’t had that one yet, have I?
And, my personal favourite is from a profile posted on the international
dating service friendfinder.com by a woman from Nakon Ratchasima. My
headline is: “I shit you not”. There’s also: “You get my gote”…
“I am lady from Korat. I think you dont know thai lady very well. I am good
lady and i go to school for long time but i still like sex very much. You can
come in my mouth if you want and even piss on me. Before man pay me to much
for me have a shit on tabel of glass and he can look up. I dont think many
western lady would do same as me. i will do everything, even with dog or gote
if you want. Next time you go thailand you can have piss on lady. i think in
western world you can’t do this. if you want to see me you can email me if
you want. maybe i can shit on tabel for you??
Noy.”
Thanks Noy, I’ll keep it in mind.
I suspect “gote” is goat.
Drop me a line if you want her 'phone number.
And they say romance is dead! 
I’m thinking drug/disease free.
Do a google search on “lonely hearts scam” and you’ll quickly learn whats behind the "responses. " The “girls” claim to be in their 20s because many men are attracted to girls in that age range.
In my romance addled youth (I’m much better now) I embarked on just such a relationship.
I’m pretty quirky but she seemed to respond in a like fashion to most of my odd ideas. After
some various ups and downs (she “broke” up with me then apologized 2 months later so
we “got” back together-quotes because the concept of breaking up with someone halfway
around the world seems…peculiar in retrospect). She was Caucasian BTW.
Anyway so I finally embarked on a trip to SA, and we did some traveling for a week until
it gradually became clear that there was no spark of any sort. Now it is certainly possible
that she was after my money somehow, but in retrospect I just think she was lonely and
trying to make a connection. If she was a scammer she probably would have been much
more seductive than she was (she really made no significant move and in fact was rather
distant for most of the time we were together). If she was truly nefarious she could have
rolled me in my sleep or something but obviously that never happened. So I got a wonderful
(if lonely) vacation out of the deal, none of which I regret. This was 6 years ago BTW.
99% probability of a scam. The “I used to live in the US” line is probably intended to reassure men that these women are not looking for a green card marriage. But the reality is that the women seeking an American citizen to marry are probably the more honest ones - it’s the ones looking for “gifts” or “loans” who are the real scam artists.
Funny, the three Nigerian women that constantly e-mail me are all living in a POW camp taking care of their sickly preacher/father. One even gave me two phone numbers and a bunch of personal information, which did make me wonder if it wasn’t a scam… for about 5 seconds -_-;
Btw, do you know Sandra?