Three days ago I reached age 44, officially marking 26 years since beginning adulthood. I really don't celebrate birthdays any more. It's only something meant for young children to enjoy before they become adults and life starts getting harder with increased responsibility.
On May 1st, I had an unexpected and ultimately unpleasant surprise from my account at Match.com. I garnered the attention of a 31-year-old woman with the screen name Lord211111 or something similar. Accepting her wink and message, she did something that happened to me once before - suggest we go to chat at Yahoo Messenger. Apparently scam artists don't want their conversations seen by Match's online content guardians, or so I've read. This happened to me before in January when contacted by a woman claiming to be from Austin, TX named Lisa Johnson (actually someone from Nigeria) who turned out to be a scammer I figured from one chatroom conversation at Yahoo. When I mentioned that nation's penchant for scammers, she left the chat in a hurry.
This new confidence artist was smoother at first, but seemed to be falling in love wth me at warp speed during our first conversation at yahoo. That was the first warning sign. The second was her poor grammar alternating with several sentences sounding like philosophical claptrap about love and trust (normal people don't talk that way in everyday life). The third was her later steering the conversation to a series of questions that sounded like something out of Cosmopolitan magazine regarding my views and attitudes about our relationship. The final warning that day came in her asking me to buy and send her a digital camera (having bought a couple over the space of nine years, the second one two months ago, I knew they weren't cheap). Our second chat had more flowery talk about love and trust from her sounding like scripted lines. She sent me a web camera image, even flashed her top to show a white bra underneath twice, but after several minutes of almost real time images the picture froze. Finally on that second day of conversation (May 3rd - yesterday), she asked me to send her a cellular phone claiming her's was stolen at college recently. She also claimed her birthday was May 9th.
I severed all ties with this either lonely psycho or inept scammer. Her last text messages today after my e-mail professed innocence and asked how she was a scammer exactly (possibly hoping she could talk me into believing otherwise). She tried sounding innocent, but I wasn't buying it. You don't ask someone you've just met for pricey cell phones or digital cameras, unless that is a test to ask for other things later on - plane ticket money for example to come to America from Ghana where she claims she's lived the past twelve years moving there with her father who was killed in a car crash seven years ago - or so she claimed - and now still there with a mother and stepfather and a older brother. The whole thing just smelled fishy from the start. If I've foiled a petty scammer, wonderful. Fool me twice, shame on me, Anita Nyarko. If I've wronged an innocent, troubled, love-starved lady desperate for romantic contact at whirlwind speed, and missed out on a wonderful opportunity, then shame on me anyhow. I just can't seem to meet anyone on Match but false profiles, scammers IMing me and women who are divorced or single mothers I do not want to date or marry. It was a mistake to sign up there for another three months back in April.
On May 1st, I had an unexpected and ultimately unpleasant surprise from my account at Match.com. I garnered the attention of a 31-year-old woman with the screen name Lord211111 or something similar. Accepting her wink and message, she did something that happened to me once before - suggest we go to chat at Yahoo Messenger. Apparently scam artists don't want their conversations seen by Match's online content guardians, or so I've read. This happened to me before in January when contacted by a woman claiming to be from Austin, TX named Lisa Johnson (actually someone from Nigeria) who turned out to be a scammer I figured from one chatroom conversation at Yahoo. When I mentioned that nation's penchant for scammers, she left the chat in a hurry.
This new confidence artist was smoother at first, but seemed to be falling in love wth me at warp speed during our first conversation at yahoo. That was the first warning sign. The second was her poor grammar alternating with several sentences sounding like philosophical claptrap about love and trust (normal people don't talk that way in everyday life). The third was her later steering the conversation to a series of questions that sounded like something out of Cosmopolitan magazine regarding my views and attitudes about our relationship. The final warning that day came in her asking me to buy and send her a digital camera (having bought a couple over the space of nine years, the second one two months ago, I knew they weren't cheap). Our second chat had more flowery talk about love and trust from her sounding like scripted lines. She sent me a web camera image, even flashed her top to show a white bra underneath twice, but after several minutes of almost real time images the picture froze. Finally on that second day of conversation (May 3rd - yesterday), she asked me to send her a cellular phone claiming her's was stolen at college recently. She also claimed her birthday was May 9th.
I severed all ties with this either lonely psycho or inept scammer. Her last text messages today after my e-mail professed innocence and asked how she was a scammer exactly (possibly hoping she could talk me into believing otherwise). She tried sounding innocent, but I wasn't buying it. You don't ask someone you've just met for pricey cell phones or digital cameras, unless that is a test to ask for other things later on - plane ticket money for example to come to America from Ghana where she claims she's lived the past twelve years moving there with her father who was killed in a car crash seven years ago - or so she claimed - and now still there with a mother and stepfather and a older brother. The whole thing just smelled fishy from the start. If I've foiled a petty scammer, wonderful. Fool me twice, shame on me, Anita Nyarko. If I've wronged an innocent, troubled, love-starved lady desperate for romantic contact at whirlwind speed, and missed out on a wonderful opportunity, then shame on me anyhow. I just can't seem to meet anyone on Match but false profiles, scammers IMing me and women who are divorced or single mothers I do not want to date or marry. It was a mistake to sign up there for another three months back in April.