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Members: 11,810
Threads: 14,317
Posts: 106,188
Top Poster: Gentou (5,705)
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| Welcome to our newest member, itzdagodinme |
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» Love Scam Articles |
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Random Pics used by Scammers
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» Welcome to ILS |
We created this website in order to make the internet world aware of people posing as lonely hearts in internet chatrooms and on dating websites.
The internet is awash with men posing as women and then taking large amounts of money from unwary men who fall for them, the same is also true of women. Many of the scammers originate from West Africa, most notably Nigeria, which is also notorious for the 419 scams littering the internet.
Please feel free to browse the site and forum; some areas of the forum can be viewed by guests, but others will require you to register a user account - this is free and it only takes about 30 seconds to register.
By posting your story on this site, you help other new people visiting for the first time to perhaps recognize that they are being scammed and not just falling in love with someone who has the world's worst luck - such as being stuck in a country with no money and having no check or money order cashing availability, and wondering if you can help them out.
Or sending them goods, that they cannot get them there as they are "working" in a different country.
Or perhaps a sick child that is with them.
The scammers will use any excuse to pull on your heart strings for only one reason; to get you to send them money.
These are the worst of all the scammers out there.
Not only do they empty your wallet, they also abuse your trust and break your heart.
They will use any means to part you from your hard earned cash. A "normal" person wanting YOU, not what you can give them would not be asking you for money or goods. If they do, you are being scammed. They would respect your privacy and not try to get your personal information.
Welcome to the site; the moderators and admins of this site are here to help you - please don't hesitate to ask us for help in navigating the forum.
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» Support Is Relative, Not Material |
As of the writing of this post, the ILS membership roster has reached the staggering number of 3,926. Some of the members are ILS staff, but the vast majority of the people hidden behind carefully selected nicknames that make up this list are victims of romance scams.
I think we all know what it means to be scammed. The vast emotional impact of being on the receiving end of a romance con is often hard to describe, but never difficult to feel once you have gone through it. As much as our respective situations may differ, we all have one thing in common - we seek support.
Support can mean many things. For some of us it means reading about the experiences of other people and comparing notes. It helps to know that we are not alone in this. For some others, it's active participation in a community like ILS, and sharing their thoughts with others who were affected by the same emotional and\or financial turmoil. Sometimes, support means just coming to the forum, posting about what happened to us, and just letting our thoughts pour out in hope that someone else will read them, understand and offer a kind word. We all have our reasons for being here.
Reading about the experiences of others, and sharing kindness with those affected by the same crime that has hurt us shows that we have a lot of compassion. One only needs to take a cursory look at the forums to see how much relief and support one member can provide to another by just typing a few paragraphs in response. For many ILS members, that is all they need. Member support, backed up by the research abilities of the ILS staff has already helped many people and has demonstrated that communities like ours can be successful, and can render aid to those in need.
Support is a relative word - it means something different to each and every one of us. Alas, there is one kind of support that one should never attempt to deliver to anyone just for asking - financial support.
Requests for financial support come in many varieties - some are direct, some thinly veiled, and yet others are so well disguised that even veteran members of anti-scam communities have difficulty in classifying them on sight.
Not all of those requests are outright scams, at least not from the onset. Someone who is in serious financial dire straits may resort to pleading their case to you in hopes that you send them some money. Such requests should always be answered with a polite but firm 'NO'. ILS Staff is always willing to provide victims in need with government and charity resources in their locality, and all such a victim needs to do is PM one of the Staff with a request for aid. You, as a member of ILS, have no obligation to either aid anyone financially, or to even continue to communicate with the person after you receive such a request from them. Should you find yourself on the receiving end of such a request, please let the ILS Staff know.
Some requests do not come through as requests for money at all. Someone may approach you and engage in PM and e-mail exchanges with you, describing their own financial disaster in great detail and seeking your advice on what to do. While such a request for advice may be legitimate, it may also be a veiled attempt at feeling you out and figuring out if you're willing to fork over some cash. If you are engaged in such an exchange and you begin to feel uncomfortable at any time, please let the ILS Staff know.
Yet other requests do not appear to be pleas for money at all. Someone that you're in contact with may one day offer you the 'opportunity of a lifetime' that will solve all your financial problems. Someone may invite you to join in an investment scheme, put your money down for a new business or offer you insurance services. Those are just a few examples, but they have a common theme - you are the one parting with your money. Should you receive such an offer from anyone here, please let the ILS Staff know.
It is the job of the ILS Staff to make sure that members of our community are safe while on premises. We do weed out scammers as soon as we see them, and we've been quite successful at eliminating quite a few of those lowlifes from the ILS members roster. However, we can only react to what we see. We are not privy to the messages you exchange with other users via the Private Messaging system and\or e-mail\messenger outside of ILS. If another member makes you uncomfortable in private, please do not hesitate to let
us know - we can and will take action against them if one is warranted.
And one final word for the scammers and opportunists who choose to join our community: Try your tricks here, and you will soon learn an interesting fact about Internet Love Scams - We Never Close.
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Internet Love Scams