by whatascam » Tue Aug 29, 2017 11:27 am
i recently got divorced, and at a young age of 29, feeling a little playful so i decided to join a dating site. not looking for something serious, just companionship, therefore i guess i am not so sucked into whatever this dude has in plan for me.
so 2 weeks ago i was on this dating site when this guy who claims to be the same nationality as me (southeast asian) but working in america messaged me. told me he was working as an oil rig engineer (red flag #1), fiancee died 3 days before wedding (red flag #2), and after like 5 minutes of talking asked me to go on WhatsApp and leave the dating site (red flag #3). he then went on the profess love for me(red flag #4).
of course i stupidly gave him my WhatsApp so he has my private number, and also some personal details of me and my 2 young children. but after 2 days of talking i felt something was off and decided to research on him. i took keywords from his typing style and googled and the closest match i had was nigerian. so, with the little evidence i had i called his bluff by confronting him and pretended i had more information than i had. he didn't deny and quite readily admitted he was nigerian but insisted he is not a scammer. he explained that he was looking for love but with his country's rep he wasn't going to get any hits.
so, ok.. since i was feeling generous and playful, i decided to string him along and talked to him. met him on webcam as well. he revealed that he was a student in a nearby country and also told me about his family and surroundings. he didn't ask me a lot of questions.. i was the one asking most of them, and he answered. he was wary of me for about a week and even questioned if i was a detective. i managed to get him to email me. from there, i inserted an email tracker and got his location. through his email, i also got his IP address which pointed to germany. he then told me he was using a vpn.
fast forward 2 weeks into our chats and we are talking daily, his phone's screen got damaged and he showed me the phone via webcam. but he has not asked me for money. the only thing he asked was for me to meet him at where he is. i asked if i could bring friends and he said ok, sure, and to only come if i feel safe and not suspicious of him. during out webcam chats his room mates would pop up in the background and said hi to me.
he spoke in good english with correct grammar. i made him show me his room clock spontaneously and also the view outside his window, which he did. we talked about what he did in school that day, and about our views on current affairs, religion, friendship and culture. he talked about scammers back in his hometown, and also how his accounts always got terminated due to his country. most of the information i gave him were made up, so he doesn't really have much on me other than my number and face.
however, while searching his IP, i got a few hits of scammers, tied to the german IP address. i am wondering if this is a whole new scam (because he doesn't seem to fit much into the scam profiles), as he definitely has quite a few red flags. any advice if i should continue or run? he seems like a nice person to talk to or a time-waster for me, so i'm inclined to continue talking to him.