Salon.com just posted an article about online romance scams, Facebook status: In a scam relationship, by Tracy Clark-Flory. The scams run like this:
- Perp finds a target online.
- They communicate via email, text and sometimes phone.
- Perp proclaims undying love.
- Maybe perp sends flowers and stuffed teddy bears.
- Perp suddenly has a dire emergency and needs money.
- Target sends money, and keeps sending money until there’s none left.
Apparently, romance scams—known as “love fraud,” according to the article—are a growth industry. The story quoted a man named Rob who lost $14,000 to a woman he never met. He is now a volunteer for RomanceScams.org, which has counseled 50,000 people who believe they were swindled.
According to Salon:
Many of the scammers are based in Nigeria, home of the infamous 419 email scam love fraud is a much savvier twist on that old formula. “Scammers search chat rooms, dating sites, and social networking sites looking for victims,” warns the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. “The principal group of victims is over 40 years old and divorced, widowed, elderly, or disabled, but all demographics are at risk.” The perpetrators investigate the target by doing a Google search on their name and scouring their online profiles. “Once they have all that information, they create a character that is specific to you and your desires,” Rob says. “In short, they create your dream mate, and they’re very good at what they do, unfortunately.”
The con artists frequently pose as soldiers serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. The problem has gotten so bad that the military has issued press releases warning people not to fall for soldiers asking for money so they can go on leave. Read:
CID warns of Internet romance scams, on Army.mil
Army stresses caution to combat scammers, on Military.com
The Salon article explains how the scammers hook the targets, and the process is familiar to all of us who have been snagged by sociopaths: “The scammers get the target to reveal their most delicate feelings and secrets; and a sense of real intimacy often develops.” And that’s the reason the scams work—people are looking for love.
Plenty of readers commented on the article. Most of the comments expressed this view: Anyone who falls for an online romance scam is a complete idiot.
Read the article and comments:
Facebook status: In a scam relationship, on Salon.com.
Why send money to Nigeria?
Lovefraud has heard from people who have fallen for these online scams. And even though I know how convincing sociopaths are, I must admit that these cases perplexed me.
Yes, I lost $227,000 to my con artist ex-husband. But he was physically with me. He looked me in the eye, made his promises, turned on the tears when necessary. He had sex with me, which released all that oxytocin, the trust hormone. He brought me around to his business friends, creating the illusion that he truly was an entrepreneur.
I know why I gave him my money. But why anyone would send money to a person they never met who lives in Nigeria?
I think the answer lies in the power of our own minds, and I’ll take you through my reasoning.
Fantasy
First of all, it is very possible to have accepting, positive thoughts about people we’ve only met over the computer—just look at all the friendships that have developed here on Lovefraud. Taking this a step further to romance isn’t difficult.
We may not really know what the person looks like or sounds like, because we’ve never met. But as I explain on the Lovefraud.com page about Online Seduction, we fill in any gaps in our knowledge about a potential romantic partner with fantasy:
When you meet people in the real world, you notice their height, weight, grooming, voice, mannerisms—and immediately form conclusions about them. All of this information is missing in e-mail correspondence. You can’t see, smell or touch the person. You don’t even really know if you’re communicating with a man or a woman.
So what do you do? You imagine the person is what you want him or her to be.
Essentially what happens is that in an online romance, we fall in love with our own fantasy. We create an image in our minds of what the person is, and how the person feels about us. And we believe it.
Oxytocin
I referred briefly to oxytocin above. This hormone is thought to be released during hugging, touching and orgasm in both men and women, and acts as a neurochemical in the brain. According to Wikipedia:
Oxytocin evokes feelings of contentment, reductions in anxiety, and feelings of calmness and security around the mate. Many studies have already shown a correlation of oxytocin with human bonding, increases in trust, and decreases in fear.
Oxytocin serves a normal and important function in the human bonding process—it makes us feel calm and trusting with our mates. Nature probably gave us oxytocin so that we want to stay with our partners to raise children, thus helping the survival of the species.
But because it fosters trust, oxytocin can also help us get conned. Paul J. Zak explains this in a post on Psychology Today called How to run a con:
Social interactions engage a powerful brain circuit that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust we have been shown—even with strangers.
The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable. Because of oxytocin and its effect on other parts of the brain, we feel good when we help others—this is the basis for attachment to family and friends and cooperation with strangers. “I need your help” is a potent stimulus for action.
So, oxytocin doesn’t necessarily require sex in order to be released. It can be triggered by other social interactions—perhaps even those conducted via electronic media.
Oxytocin is released in the brain and causes feelings of trust. But that isn’t the only way in which love affects the brain. According to Dr. Helen Fisher, romantic love actually causes a rewiring of the brain. She also believes that romantic love is an addiction.
For more on the neurological processes involved in romantic love, read:
The drive to love: The neural mechanism for mate selection on HelenFisher.com.
Brain action
You’ve probably heard of the “placebo effect.” Physicians and researchers have long known that people in clinical trials of drugs frequently experience the benefits of the drug, even though they are taking the placebo. Because they believe they are taking the drug, they believe they will get better, and they do.
This is not just an imaginary improvement. According to an article on MSNBC, “research shows that belief in a dummy treatment leads to changes in brain chemistry.” In other words, belief can be just as strong as actual medication.
Read Placebo’s power goes beyond the mind on MSNBC.MSN.com.
And here’s another aspect of the brain: Research has found that the physical structure of the brain isn’t nearly as static as once thought. As explained in Time Magazine:
For decades, the prevailing dogma in neuroscience was that the adult human brain is essentially immutable, hardwired, fixed in form and function, so that by the time we reach adulthood we are pretty much stuck with what we have.
But research in the past few years has overthrown the dogma. In its place has come the realization that the adult brain retains impressive powers of “neuroplasticity”—the ability to change its structure and function in response to experience.
Read How the brain rewires itself on Time.com
The point, therefore, is that the brain is changeable, and it doesn’t necessarily require drugs or a physical incident in order to change. Thoughts and beliefs have the power to change the brain.
Power of imagination
So where am I going with all this? Here is what I think may be happening in romance scams:
- The perp contacts the target, gradually building the target’s love and trust.
- The target believes that the perp is real and they are in a romantic relationship.
- Because of the target’s belief, oxytocin is released in the brain, even though there is no physical touching.
- The belief in love also rewires the brain, just as it does in a real relationship.
- The target may even become addicted to the relationship.
- The target is primed to be conned.
My theory, then, is that in an online romance scam, we believe we are in a true romantic relationship. Our belief causes all the same brain changes that a real world relationship causes. Because of the power of our imaginations, we may be just as susceptible to online scams as we are to real life scams.
Come to think of it, this is probably why we fall for the real life scams. We believe the love is true, even though it isn’t.
OH, and Sky – she only PRETENDS TO BE A GROUP.
In her real life she has a grown child, a mother, a husband and 2 friends (one who seems rather dumb dupe and the other who i think is probably a spath or spath like creature).
she could make money from the way she writes – but she doesn’t want to (although she does tell lies about doing so) SHE WANTS TO FUCK WITH PEOPLE AND HURT THEM. DOING SOMETHING USEFUL IN THE WORLD IS NOT WHAT SHE IS ABOUT. IF SHE WERE A WRITER AND NOT A SPATH I WOULD BE FRIENDS WITH HER. OF COURSE I WOULD….I LOVED THE BOY. …WHO TRULY IS HER BEST CHARACTER.
HAVE SAID THIS BEFORE, BUT IT BEARS REPEATING – HER WORST WRITING? IS WHEN SHE IS ‘BEING HERSELF’ – EITHER JUST HER FACEBOOK BLAH BLAH OR HER LIES TRYING TO COVER UP HER SPATHY ACTIONS.
sorry about the caps – the key got stuck. okay, really i want to think about this for a minute: when she wirtes as herself she writes spath word salad full of innuendo and convoluted logic and weird syntax. i guess lying AND NOT BEING ABLE TO TELL THE TRUTH AS EMPATHETIC PEOPLE CAN (AS IN HAVING NO EMO CONNECTION TO THE WORDS SHE WRITES) makes her writing so odd.
taking care of myself – man, that has been drilled into my head since i came here. i want to stand in front of this ‘clown’ some day. but first and foremost, taking care of myself must be about reducing stress and PTSD – in the past my first thought would be to stand in front of her. but the expereince of her changed everything.
self protection is the new bravery.
that’s so obvious in your posts Oxy – you write more about the pleasures of your day to day and there is a lightness in your words, and more ease in how you approach some things. it’s like you have exhaled another 30%. 🙂
One,
I know what you mean about standing in the light and not always looking into the darkness. But that’s how I used to be and that’s how I got duped. I didn’t want to look at the darkness, I buried my head in the sand because it was so horrible to contemplate. I’m not just talking about the spath, but about all horrible things. I would not go see scary movies, or anything with too much violence.
When I realized that I was in the middle of living my own personal horror film, and surviving, it was a revelation. So now I can open my eyes and peer at the machinery behind the evil. There is so much to learn about them, which reveals to us more about ourselves. They really are a mirror, in every sense of the word. Shallow, reflecting, 180 degrees the opposite, lacking in reality. Only a mirror.
They are truly an example of how not to be and studying them is so useful for that. The other thing that they reveal to us is how sick our society has gotten. How sick our lack of values makes us because the shallowness of our societal values shift like desert sands, leaving us unanchored. It’s no wonder there is an increase in spaths, our society won’t allow for any values to take root – there’s no money in that – there always has to be something new to chase after in order to keep up with the Kardasians and keep the tax revenue flowing so the machine can be fed.
Well, I’m off to get my bikini wax done on national TV!
🙂
Oxy,
yes I was projecting for a minute there. It’s a natural tendency for humans who have empathy and although I know not to do it with regards to spaths, it takes a rigorous mental discipline and I slip up on days like today, when I’m feeling kind of dreamy in general.
sky – i said to let some light in, not TV set lights; you got it SO wrong! LOL
I am not saying not to look sky, but their darkness cannot feed us. i don’t want you to not look, but i want YOU to be fed. we need to feed us with joy and lightness, humour, love and engaging with others with compassion (who deserve it)….i do not want to live in this darkness any longer. i want to be free. and i am still imprisoned. i try to be more like i used to be and it doesn’t really work – i am harder, more callous, more frustrated…..
but….i am meditating again, and i did something spontaneously today that i know happened because meditation changes me. proof. i always get proof with meditation.
Skylar,
I was much like you were. Even though I grew up in dysfunctional home, I never saw the bad in anyone. Couldn’t watch scary movies or I’d have nightmares etc.
I think even at the age of 49 (two years ago) I was naive about people. Like I told the detective; I’m just now learning about how people REALLY are. It was quite shocking! I’m getting used to it now tho. Thank God for this place 🙂
SKY, I WANNA GET CABLE SO I CAN WATCH YOUR BIKINI WAX!!!! WHOOOOO WHOOOOOO! Wow! LOL ROTFLMAO I really did laugh out loud! I wasn’t expecting that! 🙂
Well, One, today I will biatch! It was 104 yesterday, not much cooler today and I have been to town FOUR times this week. Normally I go to town about every week or 10 days! Ouch, it was terrible to get out in that heat! Son D is gone house sitting for some friends who are out of town….people whose Psychopaths are as bad as mine. The woman’s husband was murdered by her BIL (who got off) and then he burned her house….and now she is building a “house” with her own two hands, started with a garden shed (literally!) and she is making it a home. she has donated herself and her time to Scouting for 15years, as well as the DV shelter and to so many other people. She and her two sons were going to her 25th high school reunion out of town and her SPATH-family is on the rampage again and she was afraid to go leaving her new home unprotected with the family knowing she was out of town.
You know, as bad as my situation is I can look around and I know of two other women whose husbands were murdered and the guys got away with it…one whose husband was burned to death two weeks after my husband died in a fire, and so on. So you know, no matter how badly we think we have been screwed, there are others who are in our same shoes or worse. It makes me sit back and COUNT MY BLESSINGS for a roof over my head and clean water to drink and relative safety.
While I admire both of these women who have SURVIVED and THRIVED as well, it also makes me know that I have STRENGTH as well. We need to honor our own strengths we have to have over come. We need to be GRATEFUL for those things that we DO HAVE, and whine LESS about those things we don’t have. Mostly I think we need to be GLAD we are NOT LIKE THEM. That ALONE is a wonderful blessing.
I visited last night with a neighbor I haven’t seen in a while, she is a couple of years older than me, was married to a NASTY DRUNKEN DRUG COOKING PSYCHOPATH for 40 years, and she also has a SON who is just like his father…and has three wonderful daughters….She is a couple of years older than me, so she would be 65-66 and at age 60 after being a stay at home mom, working on the farm with her psychopath, being embrrassed in the community, she had to go out and get a job for the first time. She is thriving in her job, loves it, has with her own hands remodeled her small house into a really beautiful place…and is THRIVING. She wouldn’t know what a “psychopath” was if you told her the word, but she KNOWS because she lived with one for 40 years. LOL This woman is a “plain country woman” without a lot of education, but she had managed to over come the culture of “until death do us part no matter what” and finally got enough courage to toss him out on his sorry arse and to tackle life outside the home and make a GOOD life. She is admired in the community, and her family is close. I’ve known this woman since I could walk. Our families have lived “next door” for four generations. By golly if she can do it, ANY ONE CAN! “We” here at LF have the educations and the emotional and intellectual support and the “community” support to do it, while this woman pretty much had to do it by “pulling her self up by her own boot straps.” So we can look around us and see those people who DO, or as Yoda says “there is no try, there is just DO or not do.”
I am determined to DO!
Oxy,
I wanna see the public waxing as well 🙂
What an uplifting post! Yep, be grateful for every little thing. I think my porch, which is small12x14 is the best thing to happen to me in a while! It’s sooo relaxing. I watch birds and the clouds, trees, neighbor’s cats lol. I love it.
My therapist said I’m 50% better than when I first saw him. Hmmm good news : ). Oh, Oxy he saw my husband reading Vicktor Frankl…and asked about it. So I told him! He never read it…I told him he HAS to!!
Oxy – there is a Buddhist practice called Tonglen and I thought of it when I read what you wrote about having compassion and drawing strength from the struggles and success of others. I am not on my own computer – or I could send a really good description and the ones i am finding on the internet are all missing bits and are a bit esoteric and not necessarily completely accessible to non buddhists), but this one is pretty good (when they say flash on Boddhichitta – the instructions i would use is to think about something that opens your heart and makes you feel happy/ joyful): http://www.khandro.net/practice_send_receive.htm
(and i like the poem, Wage Peace, at the end of the page!)
In Tonlgen you start with opening your heart within yourself, then thinking of the pain of your own situation and breathing that deeply into your own heart, with the complete understanding that your heart can stand it and transform it. so you draw in that heaviness and breath out the opposite of what ever it is. Tonglen is very different than many techniques wherein you breath out the heaviness – here you KNOW you have the space and inherent ability to change the nature of the experience of pain, thus transforming pain for all intents and purposes). then you think about the person down the road who is feeling the same damn pain you are, or one of the people on Lf, you breath taking in their pain, and breathing out what you wish for them. Then you expand this to everyone on lf, and then to all the people worldwide who have this pain or who have had a certain experience (like being spathed).
it is a powerful practice for transformation. the path of my practice didn’t include tonglen, but i have done it. it is crazy powerful.
♥
the heat was bonkers here last night – 100 at 11 pm. today is better, and i am sitting in an AC coffee shop. i could feel the heat coming off of cars and buildings yesterday, so thought of that immediately when you talked about having to go to town.
one last thought – many years ago i came home for a visit and went to a county fair that i showed horses at as a kid. I went with a firend who was staffing a DV outreach table (we were right beside the mini trailer that was doing ‘puppets for god’ puppet shows – juxtaposition always blows me away!). A farm woman came up to us, she was in her early 70’s, and she said to us: ‘I got out after 50 years of abuse.’ no comment needed.
Ana,
Your post is unclear…your therapist saw your husband reading Frankl, and you told the therapist about Frankl and told him he has to read it?
I agree Frankl is a MUST READ for anyone healing from a psychopath….Frankl’s experience with the Nazi psychopaths is the ULTIMATE P experience for sure. I also read Corrie ten Boom’s “The Hiding Place” about her experience in the Nazi prison camps and it is almost as good as Frankl’s book. I just finished another one that is a “novel” but based on the stories of two little girls from Poland who were taken to a slave work camp, and they survived, but lost their parents and rest of their relatives. They ended up going to Canada to live, and the book was written by the DIL of one of the girls.
I met some people when I was about 19 who had the camp tattoos on their arms. I worked with them, but never talked to them about their experiences, but have been fascinated by the stories of the camps since that time. I didn’t realize just how profound Frankl’s book was until I got into it. Stories of others who survived the ULTIMATE Psychopath attacks….Jaycee Dugard, etc. are fascinating to me and humble me as well. Makes me appreciate my own blessings. Frankl’s description though of PAIN and how all of us experience TOTAL pain so that though their pain was total, so was mine, and I don’t have to feel “guilty” for feeling in total pain from my own experience.
People talk about “survivor’s guilt” and I can related to that for sure. Sometimes I have felt guilty for feeling such pain even though I wasn’t physically beaten the summer of 2007, but I was emotionally and mentally raped and beaten and there is no difference in the effects it has on our minds and hearts. So each of us is “equal” in the totality of our pain. I will always be grateful to Frankly for that point that he made, it was salve to my spirit and my soul.