Scammer lovable meeting lasted hearts

It seemed like a match made in heaven for Angeline, 52year old Filipino working in Hong Kong. Markus, a widowed 55year old doctor living in London, and he said that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with Angeline. They both met on the social networking site tagged.com. Within days they were messaging each other frequently. He said her how he dreadfully lost his wife in a car accident leaving him to bring up his teenage daughter alone.

He told her, God has brought us together, my angel and my Tiffany needs a mom like you.

Angeline was obsessed. She thought Markus was the real thing. But she learned her lesson the hard way.

Markus was a romance scammer where he was not likely to be British, not a doctor, and not looking for love. He was perhaps Nigerian, and living in Malaysia and his name was one of aliases he used and the photo he posted was of an alien stolen from the internet.

Angeline learnt the truth; she was $1,000 poorer. Markus claimed he was on his way to marry her in Hong Kong in September when she received a call from somebody claiming to be a customs officer in Kuala Lumpur. Finally Angeline transferred $1,000 to a Western Union account, never heard from Markus again.

It is a sad but a very common story. The scammer pretends to send an expensive gift to the victim, who is then asked to pay the courier charge. Certainly, the gift never arrives. The Nigerian 419 scam which gets its name from the section of Nigeria law which outlaws it.

In other, dating scam uses dating and social networking sites to pull in its victims, building up a relationship of trust with sweet-talk, declarations of love and promises of marriage. Dating scammers come often from West African countries like Ghana, Ivory Coast and Senegal and Nigeria.

The site warns there is a huge Nigerian operating out of Malaysia and targeting Asian women. All these white engineers allegedly from the UK, but appearing in Malaysia, are in reality Nigerian scammers. Between January 2009 and June 2010, police received reports of 180 men and women were conned by romance scammers.

Angeline is one among them. She said: I know I'll never see the money again. I m still on dating sites, but I'm much careful these days.