[bag_boy]

I am happy to share my mom's story, as tragic as it is.

My stepfather passed away just before Covid. After he passed away, my mom was isolated and started spending time on Match.com.

Eventually she found her match - a total scamming operation.

She proceeded to liquidate my deceased step father's retirement savings and also took out high interest loans to send her match money.

She wired the scammer well over $100k. The high interest loans totally ruined her life.

They were using a US bank. She was using Wells Fargo.

She is/was:

1. Desperate for attention 2. Prone to deception 3. Tech illiterate - some of the photos the scammer sent her were so obviously photoshopped

Happy to share more if it's helpful. It's been one of the most difficult things to deal with throughout my life, but I hope that our story can be helpful to someone else.

[busterarm]

You don't even have to be tech illiterate.

A former roommate of mine who is extremely tech-savvy but just fat and lonely was constantly wiring women he'd never met money.

He was constantly getting catfished on dating apps and talking all day to fake facebook profiles 2-3 hours away and they'd always have an excuse to not meet him and have their hand out for escalating amounts of money until reality hit him and he'd start over and do it again with another catfish. I moved out partly because he would miss his mortgage payments because he wired some scammer money.

[Anthony-G]

If it kept happening like that, it kind of sounds like he was subconsciously willing to pay for the “privilege” of chatting with a “hot online friend”, similar to how some lonely people pay to chat with a famous pornstar on Only Fans – even though they (should) know they are chatting with a random call centre employee.

[ahazred8ta]

https://xkcd.com/632/#-chat-suspicion

[os2warpman]

I think I understand. Thank you and I'm sorry.