Re-Scamming

by Soraya Grant

You have studied the Scams of the Heart squidoo page, main page, and blog, and know that you have been scammed. It was tempting to lash out at the scammer by listing all the red flags that lead to that realization, but you know all a scammer would do with that information is take notes in order to craft a better scam next time, so you wisely said nothing more than "I know this situation wasn't real and I don't wish to communicate with you anymore." You also know confronting a scammer directly is a dangerous idea, so you simply began deleting all their correspondence and blocking their accounts from yours.

 

But wait...you receive a message through one of the accounts you haven't gotten around to blocking yet. It may even be from a new account the scammer has created. You were expecting some nasty, angry threats, but this is startling. It's a confession and an apology.

Things have been going so horribly for you lately, you may be tempted to believe a miracle has occurred. The idea that your love and influence has broken through and reformed a scammer is a beautiful idea. Sadly, that is not what is going on here. The scammer is only trying to re-scam you.

Nigerian Scammers

What Happens:

The message is from a young person in Nigeria, Ghana, or another nation in west Africa or the former USSR. They admit that they were part of an organized scam ring, and confess that they only wanted to steal your money and/or trick you into receiving and reshipping illegal packages for them. The person apologizes, promises their contact with that ring has ended, and tells you that they grew to love you during the scam. They may say they fell in love with you, or they might tell you they grew to love you as a close or best friend. The person may promise they can get your money back. They hope you will forgive them and start a whole new friendship with the real person behind the now deleted character.

What Is Really Going On:

This is nothing more than another page in the scammer's script. It does not matter how sweet or sorry the scammer sounds, they do not mean it. It is likely they barely know what it says, and it is entirely possible that some person you haven't even spoken with before sent you that message.

If you accept this gesture of attraction or friendship, the person will eventually begin asking you for little favors again. They may want you to accept and reship packages again, "promising" that it is just souvenirs for a family member. The person might hint or ask for more money, this time for school supplies or other items for their real children or other family members. They may also ask you for information about romance scams groups, claiming they want to educate other scammers about the harm they are causing.

The scammer may be using somebody's real identity and personality now, but they are still running a scam. The packages will still be illegal. The money is still for their scamming business. Any cell phones or laptops you send will only be used to run new scams. The information they ask for is not to reform other scammers, but to help their own scam ring craft scams that are harder to detect.

What To Do:

Delete any messages, photos or other correspondence you get from this person and block any new accounts they create from your accounts, just as you did the first time. Ignore them completely. Do not give in to this, no matter what the person says. Do not argue with them or challenge them. This is just another play in the Nigerian scammer playbook.

 

American Money Scammers

What Happens:

The message is from the American or Americans who scammed you and convinced you to send or offer to send money or do favors for them. They admit they were not the person they pretended to be online, reveal several more real details, and apologize profusely for the scam. They may admit that they routinely run copycats of the Nigerian scam, or they might claim that all other scam victims you have talked to are lying and say they've never done anything like this before. Like the Nigerian scammer whose methods they've adopted, this person will tell you that your love reformed them. They might claim to have genuinely fallen in love with you while scamming you, or they might insist they grew to love you as a close friend during the course of the scam, think about you every day, and wonder how you are doing.

What Is Really Going On:

The American money scammer has studied the Nigerian scam well, and is borrowing their "Plan B" for when their scam gets discovered. They will eventually begin asking you for money, gifts, and favors again. It may be the same things as before, only with a "real" reason behind it. For example, a scammer who was hinting for money to enable him to travel to your first date might admit he's really a married man, but claim his wife is pregnant or sick or lost her job, and he needs your help as a friend to get by. It might be different requests, such as asking you for money before, but now needing you to accept packages and reship them to business clients while they are "on vacation." But they will want some form of money, gifts, or favors from you. Like the Nigerian scammer, they may want to know all about the ways you discovered it was a scam, and like the Nigerian scammer, they are not doing this because they admire your researching skills or want to tell anyone else who gets the idea to run a romance scam for money how horrible it is. They are looking for tips and tricks to make their scam harder for future victims to detect.

If you accept this gesture of love or friendship, you will only be scammed again in the future. You will also unwittingly help the scammers go after other people.

What To Do:

Delete any messages, photos or other correspondence you get from this person and block or ignore any new accounts they create from your accounts, just as you did the first time. Do not give in to this, no matter what the person says. Do not argue with them or challenge them. This is just another play in the American money scammer playbook. Notice that this paragraph is the same as the one above, with one word changed. That is because the scam is the same as the Nigerian scam, with one detail (where the scammers live) changed. It is dangerous to have any further contact with both Nigerian scammers and American money scammers.

American Revenge Scammers

What Happens:

The message is from the person who scammed you. The may claim they are deeply apologetic, or they may say "sorry" but tack on a flurry of excuses about having low self esteem, wanting to see what it's like to be someone else, or being afraid people would reject them if they knew the real person behind the scam. They swear they have stopped scamming people, and removed fake Facebook profiles, dating site accounts, etc to "prove" it. As with all other scammers, this person may claim they fell in love with you, or grew to love you as a close friend during the course of the scam.

What Is Really Going On:

This is a person who routinely lies to and manipulates other people online as a hobby the way most people play sports or read up on a favorite subject or garden. They are not sorry, and the shutting down of the fake account that you know about only means they have shut down that particular scam. This person may be playing the role of ten other people online and you would never know it. At this point, they are just hoping you will feel sorry enough for them to brush off what they did to you and avoid reporting them to the website or telling others in their online networks what they have been doing on there.

If you accept their offers of romance or friendship, you will be forever wondering if what they are telling you is true, or if it's just part of another scam. The person might even be using access to your photos or dialogue to run scams on other people.

What To Do:

Delete and block and ignore the person just as you would with any other scammer.

American Personal Revenge Scammers

What Happens:

The message is from the person who scammed you. They tell you who they really are and why they did what they did. Their tone may still be angry, but the person claims they have forgiven you and they are sorry for tricking you online. This type of scammer may not lay on the love and/or friendship talk, only because you already know who it is and what they think about you, though some scammers of this type claim they did it for your own good. They swear they will never do anything like that again, to you or anyone else. They might remove fake profiles or take the invented details or stolen photos out of their own profiles to "prove" their sincerity.

What Is Really Going On:

The scammer just doesn't want reported to the web site or to face any other consequences for what they did. No matter who you knew this person to be before, you have just learned that they are someone who would use brainwashing techniques just to get their own way in whatever situation inspired them to run a scam.

If you accept any excuses or take the blame for the situation, you are only telling that person that it is okay to handle disagreements or disappointments in a devious and cruel way.

What To Do:

Delete, block, and ignore this person everywhere they were ever able to get in touch with you, just as you would any other scammer.

Steps To Healing From A Scam

Here is an article written for us by a guest writer. it is very informative and may give you a new perspective on the whole experience of being scammed and what the writer did to help the healing process.

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Steps to Healing from a Scam

by Soraya Grant

Give Yourself Time, Energy, and Space to Process What Happened to You

Scammers engage in deliberately planned patterns of psychological manipulation. Many of the tactics they use are identical or very similar to those used by abusers in domestic violence situations, cult leaders, and unscrupulous multi-level marketing schemes. You may have lost, or come very close to losing a lot of money or find your finances in disarray because you bought clothes, electronics, furniture, or other items for what you thought was your new life with someone wonderful. None of this is something a person can just recover from instantly. Accept that for a time, you will dwell on the scam. The person you believed you were talking to either shared your religious and political beliefs or the two of you engaged in an enjoyable or enlightening banter on these subjects. The two of you had the same or perfectly compatible career, family, and financial goals, and spent a great deal of time discussing these issues. You were likely charmed by all the "little things" the two of you had in common. When you've just spent weeks or months discussing everything with someone, everything is naturally going to remind you of that person. You may find yourself clinging to tiny bits of the scam as though they reflected reality, even though you know they do not. Some scam victims become attached to videos or photos the scammer used. My own scam was a copycat of the Nigerian scam, run by one or more Americans who tossed in a few real details of the primary, possibly only, scammer's life to throw off anyone who researched them, and I found myself unable to let go of the town I had been made to believe would soon be my home. This period of intense focus on the scam will be incredibly painful while it lasts, but you are not doomed to a life sitting alone repeatedly watching the movie the two of you talked about or gazing at stolen photos or web pages of places you'll never see. Eventually, little gaps will begin to form. My first gap was a criminology book I purchased on a trip to a mall with some people who knew nothing of the scam. I spent about ten minutes picking it out and several hours reading it and pondering the cases it discussed instead of the scam. These gaps will slowly stretch, becoming larger and larger as you heal, until the scam is nothing more than a tiny thread at the back of your mind.

Take Back Some of the Little Things You Gave Up to Please the Person You Thought You Knew

Did you used to love to tend your flower garden, but gave that up to spend time online talking to the scammer? Buy new plants or seeds if you can afford it, and if your finances are depleted, organize your gardening tools or shed or spend some time online learning about the latest trends or techniques for the type of gardening you enjoy. If you love to read, but never got to finish many books due to waiting for the scammer to IM you or log into chat, buy or check out something new for yourself. Have a video, movie or television show marathon featuring that celebrity crush you always avoided mentioning so the person you thought you were in a relationship with wouldn't get jealous. Listen to music you gave up because it was part of a painful story the scammer told, or an artist they claimed not to like. The scammer who victimized me played on my sympathy by insisting that he broke down crying because the song "Drops of Jupiter" by Train was "his song" with his wife who died. While the ringleader or sole copycat scammer did indeed have a wife who died, I have no idea if that was one more detail of his deceased wife's life he was heartless enough to use in an internet romance scam, or if that was an invented detail he or they stole from some former victim...and it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that Train is my favorite band, I've loved that song since it first came out, and I stopped listening to it so I wouldn't ever slip and tell "my boyfriend" that I had it playing in the background. That song has never sounded better than it did the first time I listened to it just because it was a song I liked.

Get Rid of Everything You Added to Your Life for the Person You Thought You Knew

Scammers craft the characters they play into the ideal partner for each victim, but they also manipulate people into making major plans they can use as an excuse to ask for money. Planning to marry or move in together as soon as he gets back from his business trip to Nigeria is a common ploy west African scammers use to set up the "I'm stuck in the country and need your money to get out" scene. If you experienced this, you may have started picking out furniture, looking at houses, or putting money away for a down payment. The American scammer who manipulated me planned a special first date and vacation for the two of us that would require him to travel a great distance, then complained incessantly about being broke until I offered to send him the money for his plane ticket and pay for the hotel rooms. I closed the account I set up for this purpose. Getting rid of realtor's cards, furniture catalogs, and anything else you obtained in preparation for your life together with this person will probably feel just as freeing. Another common scammer tactic is applying subtle pressure to see what little things they can get you to agree to do. You believe you are making compromises for the sake of a relationship, or doing something special to please your man or woman, but the scammer is really giving you a little test to see if you will do what they want. The American scammer had me convinced I should attend a school whose philosophy strongly contradicts my own beliefs, purchasing clothing items in colors and styles I don't care to wear, and changing my grooming and beauty routine habits to fit his stated tastes. I even took out an expensive cell phone plan in order to communicate with him. The process of informing that school I would not be attending, finding a place suited to me, donating those clothes, and getting rid of that phone was the process that finally ended the lasting pain.

Embrace Those Things That Have Always Been True to You Once Again

Sorting out what was you and what you took into your life because of the scam can be a complicated process. Mixed in with all those grand life changing plans and little tests the scammer gave you is a lot of your own thoughts, feelings, tastes, and interests that have been reflected back to you as belonging to the person you thought you knew. It's one of the primary methods they use to make you think the two of you have a lot in common or are compatible. Take your time with this, and be honest with yourself. The American scammer had an "ordinary guy" persona with me. He liked the simple life, in a small home with no designer or name brand labels or need to have jewelry or the latest gadgets. . He even sang me a song he claimed to have written years ago about being "an ordinary guy." Being more Sears and Applebee than Dior and country club myself, I embraced this enthusiastically and was inspired by "my man" to simplify even more. The day I discovered the scam, I first found a marriage announcement in his local paper for the man I thought was my soon to be live-in boyfriend and possible fiance and another woman. Not realizing it was a scam, I told someone else who claimed to be just his friend in the chatroom where we met that this man and I had been dating, but he demanded I keep it a secret. I then went on to tearfully tell the person the relationship was over because he had been cheating on me and had married the other woman. His "other friend" and I discovered it was a scam together, as we traded stories detail by detail, and realized that he had been pretending to carry on nearly identical relationships with both of us, including wanting us to arrange special meetings and dates that required him to travel. The only major difference was...the man she believed she'd been dating had a very different background, a slightly different appearance, and lived a very different lifestyle than the man I believed I had been dating. Her "boyfriend" had already bought her diamonds, lived in a huge house, and had just purchased the latest model smartphone. My initial urge was to start looking for five jobs I could hold at once, so that I could afford to live in a manner that was the exact opposite of the life we discussed, even if I would have to hold my nose to swallow that fancy food and own one outfit because it cost more than a whole wardrobe of clothes I actually wanted. But that would only be an act of cruelty to myself. That person who would rather have a DQ Blizzard than the Golden Oppulence Sundae at Serendipity 3 wasn't the scammer or the person the scammer was pretending to be...that was...and still is...me.

The above article was based on the path to healing taken by a romance scam survivor. It is not a therapy plan, nor is it recommend or endorsed by a mental health professional.

 

Taking Care of Me

One of the things we have been talking about in the chat room lately is that no matter what we are going through, we still need to put some focus on taking care of ourselves.  For one thing, after a scam, after a broken heart, it is so easy to fall into depression.  Depression can mean different things for different people.  For some it may involve isolating oneself.  For another it may involve loss of sleep or too much sleep.  Others may overeat, or not eat at all.  There can be many ways depression manifests itself in one's life.  
Lack of sleep is a big problem for many victims of romance scams.  For some it may have already been a problem before the scam, like with me.  For others, it is something they never dealt with before the scam, but because the scammers use sleep deprivation as one of the methods to help gain control over us, the sleep deprivation can become a serious problem.  Lack of proper sleep is one of my issues but it was a problem for me before I was scammed.   For me, not getting enough sleep makes any kind of mental, emotional, or physical problem I am dealing with even worse.  Luckily I can usually get some sleep during the daytime, but nights are the hardest for me.  One reason is that I have always been a night owl and my brain seems to function better from the late afternoon until an hour or two after midnight.  But if I could go to sleep then, I would be okay.  This week I had to go to the doctor to see if I could get a change in prescription because the sleep aid I was taking was no longer working.  Tonight I try something new.  Hopefully it will do the trick.

Besides solving sleep problems, we need to take care of ourselves in other ways.  We may need to take a serious look at what we are eating, if we are eating, and how much we are eating.  We might need to see if we are avoiding social situations or time spent with family.  If we need to take care of physical conditions that we are neglecting, then that should be put at the top of the list of things to do to take care of ourselves.  

It's not easy for me to always do the right thing to take care of me.  I have a lot of physical issues I am dealing with.  The physical issues effect my social life at times, as well.  If I am not eating properly, meaning the kinds of foods that are healthy for me rather than those that are harmful for me, then I don't feel good physically.  Add that to lack of sleep and I can shut down physically as well as emotionally and mentally.  Everything is connected.  We need to get our lives into a healthy balance, physically, socially, emotionally/mentally, and spiritually.  Once I had a counselor who had me draw a circle and divide it into quarters like a pie.  Then I was to label each part as follows:  physical, emotional/mental, social, spiritual.  After I had done that she had me list the activities in my life that fit into each quarter.  When I was done, if there was anything off balance, I could readily see where I needed to do the most work.  This is something I have not done in a long time and think it would be a good time to do it again in the process of taking care of me.  I already know I am off balance in a few places. (Ha ha, those of you who know me, no comments here please.  LOL)  


The main point here is to look at your life and see if there is something that you might need to do to get yourself back into balance so you can take care of you.  When you go through something like a romance scam you are going to come out of it a little lopsided in some way or another.  Taking care of yourself is of prime importance now.  Whether you are new to having been scammed or it's been awhile, it's never too late to start taking care of you.  In AA and Alanon it is said that it is a "selfish program".  That is because to heal, to recover, you have to put yourself first at least for awhile.  Just like a car can't go anywhere until you put fuel in the gas tank (or plug it in for these new electric cars), you can't be expected to function properly without being fueled and refueled as needed.  Waiting until you are on empty while you expend all your energies on others does not help you or them.  Sometimes we all need to take a little time to take care of ourselves.  Daily, weekly, monthly, annually.  When we neglect ourselves, we end up not working properly at all.  We all need our batteries recharged sometimes, just like our cell phones and other electronic gadgets do.


What is it that you need to do today to take care of you?  
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