Internet romance scams: 'I realise I was being groomed'

Could you ever be tricked out of money by a stranger posing as a potential romantic partner?

On Thursday, we spoke to a Swedish woman who was tricked by a Nigerian man posing as a Dane seeking love.

Following that story, we received many emails from people saying they had been lured into similar traps. Here are some of their stories.

I was scammed some two months ago by a Nigerian man posing as an American, from Boston, Massachusetts, calling himself Thomas Crane.

He sent me a friend request on Facebook, and I just accepted it, partly because I wasn't used to Facebook and also he looked quite nice.

We very quickly started chatting on Facebook Messenger and he started phoning me. Looking back, I realise I was being groomed. I'm an intelligent woman, but he was clever enough to find a vulnerability in me as a divorced woman.

He got close to me quite quickly and sent me a whole series of photos of himself, all the way back to his childhood.

He said he was going to work on a multimillion-pound contract in Spain, and so would soon be in Europe.

Then he phoned me and said he was actually short of $4,000 - I was the only one who could help him out. I came within seconds of giving him the money, but then I told a friend and she brought me down to reality.

At that point I blocked him.

But then a week later he sent me an email saying he had told me some lies, but he really was Thomas Crane.

I unblocked him and started talking to him again. Why did I do that? I wanted to believe it was real, even though there was a voice in my head saying it can't be true.

Then I decided to play him at his own game, which was dangerous, but exciting. I wanted to teach him a lesson so I kept in touch, but kept him hanging on - making excuses for not sending him money.

I was then out of the blue contacted by a Romanian lady on Facebook who saw the picture of "Thomas Crane" and said she too had been scammed by him.

At that point I stopped - I told him I knew he was a scammer, and stopped communicating.

I never heard from him again, but the whole experience traumatised me.

I was scammed last year and I confess I completely lost my sense of reality to the elaborate web of deceit and lies.

I was in a peculiar place - married but looking for something else. I'm an artist, and was actively seeking a "muse", and trawling various dating sites.

I got an email saying I had a match - and that's when the trouble started.

After two or three days, the lady asked me to get instant messenger on Yahoo. From then on for a three-month period I was messaging her and emailing literally her all the time.

She said she was American, an ex-Playboy model and was now working in Saudi Arabia, doing deals on gems. Later she ended up in Nigeria.

How did I fall for all this? Somehow I wanted to believe it was true. And she supplied enough information that it was hard to prove her story completely untrue.

As soon as I started to get suspicious, she would act like a girlfriend I had treated badly, and lure me back in.

After a few weeks she said she needed help with this and the other. I was really cautious - I asked her what hotel she was in, Googled it and rang the reception. But they might have been in on it.

For three months this was the situation. I was checking facts but ultimately I wanted to believe the romantic fantasy.

Some two months after it started, she said she was having trouble with a deal in Nigeria and needed some money to help grease the wheel of the transaction - £300 or £400.

I did end up sending the money. But the whole thing stopped quickly after that as my wife warned me if I sent any more money there would be serious consequences.

The affair was incredibly harmful to my marriage but thankfully with faith and forgiveness we are now in a much better place.

Maybe I am another victim of scamming and have learnt a very expensive lesson - but I am not sure.

I have been writing to someone who I met online in August. We hadn't met because he said he wanted to get to know me as a person before we met.

He said he had been awarded a civil engineering contract in South Africa worth £3.6m.

He was trying to buy a phone to take with him and the iPhone 7 was launched days before he left. He asked if I could get one for him and ship it over. He would pay me back when he got his first payment.

At the time everyone said that I should get the money from him first, but I felt he was genuine.

In the five weeks that he has been in South Africa he said that he's hit some problems and needed to "borrow" some cash.

I had no doubt that this was genuine so I wired over £2,000.

We had discussed his return to the UK - I was going to be meeting him at Heathrow. He was often talking about buying a property near to me. We were planning our Christmas together.

Last week he hit me with the next crisis - that the job has been shut down and he needed to pay some taxes upfront, which worked out as £200,000. He asked if I could get a loan to go towards the payment of outstanding taxes.

My heart believed him, but in my head alarm bells kept ringing.

I was in the process of securing a £100,000 loan and then I saw the BBC article about scamming. There are a number of similarities and it has really scared me.

I've asked him to FaceTime me or send a current picture - he said he would but hasn't.

I feel such a fool - I really thought that this was something special and I totally ignored everyone's warnings.

by Nathan Williams, UGC and Social News team