Re: FN-FORUM: OT: Your help is desperately needed

date posted 12th February 2008 10:54

On Tuesday 12 February 2008 12:41:55 Martin Wheatley wrote:

> No this was a different type of scam, it was to do with online dating,
> the scammers pretended to be interested in a relationship, they built
> this very real seeming relationship up over several months, then

Ah. That sort of confidence trick.

> Yes we have seen it before, it doesn't need to be forged - Steven could
> have been building up a trust relationship with us pretending to be

Somewhat improbable! If a scammer was going to go to those lengths
he would choose something with a better chance of a pay-off. Like the
eBay scammer that patiently built up a good trading record over about
12 months, then scammed a large number of people for the price of
an ipod.

> someone, it looks real, that's the whole point, you then dig deeper and
> notice discrepancies.

Domain registered by proxy and no "proper" website? Lots of people
do this. Lots of individuals have very good reasons for not wanting
their real-world addresses published on the web. Lots of people have
a domain that they use for email and nothing much else. Look
at latter.org for example. It's a crappy redirect from uk2.net to
freebie webspace at NTL / Virgin. (note to self: *must* sort this out).