So, perhaps you’ve been wondering where my blog has been. Well, I decided to take a hiatus for a while. First of all, meeting the amount of scammers I have sort of makes one question the possibility of ever finding a genuine mate in this modern age—and yes, yes, for all of those with the “love conquers all” attitudes and beliefs, I hear ya. I know it is possible and I’m not completely jaded; I question if weeding out the idiots is worth it. The second reason is that Tinder banned me. Yep, that’s right. Tinder bans people apparently. I was starting to question that since I reported some of the regular scammers, but somehow they always popped up again. But I wonder no more. You can get banned from Tinder, and when you ask for the reason, they will simply tell you to review the User Agreement. Sure, like I would ever read that thing. Anyway, no worries…I’ve got some good stories to share still. Plus, Tinder has lifted the ban and I’ve got a return or two of some old favorites. Oh, and Chao has surfaced briefly. (Don’t know Chao? Go back and read some earlier posts…he’s my favorite scammer because the dude does not know when to stop.)
Before Tinder decided to ban me without stating why, I swiped right on a beefcake named Michael Scott; my last swipe before the ban. He contacted me the moment we “matched”. Seemed nice enough, but I noticed he was quite a few miles away…like over a 1,000 miles away, which always makes me suspicious. Our conversation began just like they usually do…”What do you do?” “What brings you to Tinder?” “Tell me about yourself.”
Michael worked for DynCorp; specifically, he said that he monitored the movement of men on deployment. He was based in the UAE; I asked him if he could be a bit more specific and he shared he was at a military base in Dubai. He shared that he had two kids, ages 5 and 7. He missed them very much since they lived with his ex-wife in the US. I asked questions about how he enjoyed living in Dubai. He didn’t like it because “they retreated” he and his fellow teammates from so many things. Now, in full disclosure, I don’t know what being retreated from things really means, but I’m guessing it’s not fun. I told him I liked Dubai and that I had stayed at the Atlantis (which was a total lie—God forgive me). He had no idea what the hotel Atlantis was and he repeated about being retreated. I told him I had many family members that had been in the military and that they were allowed to leave the base on occasion. Poor Michael wasn’t allowed to leave though. His two-year contract was ending soon; he was planning on returning to the US to visit his kids after the contract but then he was going to come to HK to visit me.
I asked him about his life in California (he had stated earlier his ex-wife living in San Diego). I suspected at this point that English probably wasn’t his first language but didn’t want to just come out and ask. As I’ve said before in other posts, I don’t judge against people whose first language isn’t English, but own it and be honest about it; don’t try to be sneaky and lie about it. Anyway, he shared he grew up in Beverly Hills and that his parents were originally from Columbia. I asked if his family spoke Spanish at home or if he knew Spanish (trying to give his lack of English skills the benefit); he did not. In the next week or so, I asked him about working in Dubai. He told me they had shift rotations that lasted 24 hours usually. In one conversation, he asked me what I was looking for in a man. I gave my usual answer of “honesty”. He replied, “Nice.”
Finally, I asked him why his profile was set to HK if he lived in the UAE and planned on going back to the US after his contract. He called me babe (ugh) and then told me he was already planning on going to HK after his contract. Silly me.
During one conversation I asked Michael if everything was all right. He finally shared what was bothering him. I’ll let his message share for him…
It’s tough when you’re being retreated.
A couple of days later he started in on serious relationship crap. He wanted to be more than friends and I said that wasn’t possible until we met. He believed differently. He thought if we both worked at it, believed it would work, and trust each other that it would be fine because love was invisible. A few days later, he brought up the conversation again. He wanted me to be his forever and he was hiding those feelings “for long” (yes, need I remind you that the man said he spoke English growing up). Now, I’m assuming he mean that he had those feelings for a long time, but in reality, the long time was maybe a week and a half. My picture made his heart beat and he said “I wish you could my future wife”. I thought, let’s have fun with this…
In the coming days, he always asked where I was and what I was doing…like most scammers eventually, he became high maintenance and annoying. I offered to come to Dubai to visit him, but I was informed that “lol” I wouldn’t be able to see or visit him even if I did come. I tried to just limit the conversation at that point; I don’t like giving the scammers any real info about me—I’m sure you understand why. Anyway, the conversations stayed pretty simple over the next few days. Once in a while, though, he would mention his heart beating for me. He hated that I obviously didn’t share the same love with him.
One day I asked about his ex-wife. He informed me that he did not want to talk about “that bitch”. I accepted that and then asked about his kids. He gave me their names and one thing that each of them liked. I questioned if there was anything else he’d share about them but then he disappeared for a day. When I heard from him again, I told him he could tell me about them then. He confessed he didn’t know too much about the kids since he’d been gone for so long. He then tried switching the topic to the relationship and beating heart stuff again. It had only taken him about 3 weeks for him to say “I love you”. I think he was starting to catch on that I was getting bored, so he tried some flowery messages (not new in the scammer world). I questioned him a lot and would not return his words of love, which I’m pretty certain he did not expect.
At this point, I was really hoping he would just ask me for the money soon.
Eventually, he started sharing about the state of work he was in…his boss and the lack of decent food; he was tired of the Arabic food in the mess hall. He wasn’t allowed to have access to his accounts until returning to the US. I’m not in the same business he was claiming to be in, but a lot of it just never added up to me. And his one friend that did send money through agents was deployed, too, so he didn’t have any money while stationed in Dubai. He asked me to help him financially (it would be his honor if I did); when I asked for details he had to get it from his boss. He finally said to send it via Western Union or MoneyGram. I should have asked how he would be able to get the money from either establishment if he was not allowed to leave the base, but hindsight I guess. I was told to send as much as I could afford and that he needed up to $1000.
Once again, I asked about his base. Apparently I was wrong, it was not an US base, but rather a base owned by the UAE. I asked more questions then about the base before he suddenly had to go back to work…
He did send the MoneyGram details to me. It was being sent to a person by the name of “Osarumwense Edionewe” in Dubai. I asked who this person was, but that was ignored at first. I told him I couldn’t do the MG thing from China and Michael told me to go to the bank. So, he said go to Western Union. He was starting to be a jerk about it (which, again, was normal for scammers when their intended victims don’t act as quickly as they’d like). I decided to annoy him, though…I told him my financial advisor couldn’t send the money without additional information (ID, the company’s name and title of Osarumwense), but once I had the info that the transfer would be easier. He did not like this.
For the next day or so, no money was mentioned in our conversations. I finally brought it up by asking why he wasn’t able to send a picture of his ID to me. He started accusing me of not trusting him (he was right); I said that he didn’t answer my question. I told him not to message me again until he was ready to provide evidence of actually being stationed in Dubai and his identity. I was told to calm down. And then he told me he loved me… I love when scammers do this.
I finally told him I didn’t believe a word he had said. He wanted to know why. So I told him I’d met a lot of scammers before him and they were all similar. I guess he thought I was joking because he had the nerve to message me the next morning as if nothing had happened. I told him, again, not to contact me again until he was ready to be honest. I even shared that my hobby was to write about scammers I meet on dating sites. He played dumb and told me he had nothing to worry about. The next day he messaged to see if I’d written anything yet. I told him I was planning to in the next few days, and then he wanted to know what I would do next. I told him I’d publish it to my blog. I guess he thought I wouldn’t do it if he was encouraging. When I didn’t cave, he turned a wee bit snappy and angry. I’ll let Michael share how he felt with these screenshots:
I will say, Michael has certainly been the most upset of the scammers when he learned that he was “caught”. I also admire his use of emojis; he may not be fluent in English, but he is in emojis. He told me he wasn’t going to block me because he wanted me to send him a copy of my blog, but I think we all know that that’s not going to happen. Anyway, be on the lookout for Michael! I would hate for anyone to be retreated on.
Scammin' for Love 