Because of the sheer successful nature and openness of scams and scammers, we present you, our daters, with the warnings, signs and symptoms to look for when considering a person to date online, as well as links to more information and where to go to make a report if you think you have been victimized.

Although most scammers will be from a country such as Ghana, the Philippines, Nigeria, Liberia, Russia, the Ukraine, and others from the general vicinities, new scams and scammers appear everyday. These scammers always think up of new ways and technology to lure in you, the dater, into their scheme.

Scams are prevalent online, no matter where you turn or what site you visit. Even sites that started out as innocent, such as EBay, Craigslist and even .gov sites, have now become the stomping grounds of internet scammers. Everywhere you look in the news, you will hear about someone new who has been scammed, or a new scam is brewing in the works and becoming a problem. So what makes anyone think online dating sites are immune or different in any way to this problem? THEY ARE NOT. As a matter of fact, online dating sites have become the epitome of the scam world. There is no online dating site unaffected. Successful scams have been so rampant on online dating sites, there is not one in which you will not find a warning as the one you are reading now.

You see, scammers make a life and a living out of what they do. Just as we have out 9-5 jobs to feed our families, they make a living scamming people for as much as they can to feed their families. For that reason alone, it will never stop. Scammers are aware of the difficulties some people who register to online dating sites sometimes have. They understand these people come to the online dating sites looking for love, and hoping to find someone to settle down with. They also understand the type of person they need to pretend to be to hook you and reel a person to their game so they can make the most out of it. And for them, because it is their life’s work, it Is easy to pretend to be who ever you want them to be.

SixSingles.com will not conduct any background checks into our members’ lives, as this is an invasion of privacy.

We suggest that you, the dater, do your own checking on the person you are considering dating. This includes using a search of all the major search engines including Google, Yahoo, Bing, Ask.com and others. In these modern days of technology and information online, it is very unlikely not to be able to find information about someone online. If the person is who they say they are, you should be able to at least confirm the information they give you online, and not just find their dating profile. With all the social networking sites, you are sure to find the person on at least one of them if they are really searching for love online, as thee are the first places online daters usually go. If you can’t find anything about them, do not date them and cut off communications completely and do not give them an explanation, as they are probably a scammer. Do not alert that you are on to them, and alert the webmaster of the site, This way, we may have a chance of catching them. Whether it be this site or any other, we strive to keep out dating site clean of all scams and one who intends to harm people in any way.

NEVER SEND MONEY TO ANYONE-NO MATTER WHAT THE SITUATION!
Many scammers will pretend to be widows or widowers with children. They play on the emotions of the daters knowing they will pull them I using the children. These children do not, and will not ever, exist. This particular scam entails a man or a woman, usually from over seas in a country such as Nigeria, Liberia or Ghana, claiming to have children whom they need to support and because of some problem they are having, cannot support the children themselves.

There are other variations on these scams, but some things must be known whether you are dealing with someone on a dating site, or just purchasing something on EBay. Some things to remember are:

NEVER DEAL (BUY OR SELL) OVERSEAS If you stay local, chances are you will not be scammed because you can meet the people you are dealing with. :

NEVER SEND OR GIVE MONEY TO ANYONE FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY-They are probably scamming you from the start. No matter what they need it for, whether it be to obtain a visa to come and meet you, feed their “children” or anything else, do not give it to them. If you send them money for anything, something will happen and they will tell you they need more. Plain and simply put never send money, period. It is a scam.

NEVER WIRE MONEY USING WESTERN UNION< MONEY GRAM OR ANY OTHER COMPANY FOR THE SAME REASONS ABOVE.

IF YOU CASH A FAKE CHECK, WHETHER IT SI PERSONAL, FROM ONE OF THE WIRE COMPANIES OR A CASHIERS CHECK, YOU ARE HELD RESPONSIBLE-PERIOD

NEVER GIVE OUT FINANCIAL INFORMATION TO ANYONE

AVOID DEALS INVOLVING SHIPPING OR ESCROW SERVICES-These will surely and happily take your money and are part of the scam themselves.

Examples of some general scams are as follows:

• NIGERIAN 419 SCAM-A person receives a message in the form of a request for help of some kind, be it a request for assistance to transfer money to someone abroad, a notice of inheritance or opportunity to donate to a charity. No matter what the request, they all have the same characteristics, and this is how you can tell it is a scam and to stay away.
• First, most all of them will come from Nigeria, or a similar country, hence the name of the scam.
• There is a political or legal issue that prevents the person requesting assistance from accessing he money they are “entitled to” or was given as a gift in a foreign account.
• Your last name is the same of the deceased who owns the account and the scammer wants you to act as the next of kin to access the money on the deceased behalf and claim the finds.
• A rich businessperson with a terminal illness needs help to distribute their money to charity.

All of these scams, and there are many more than possible to list here, have one thing in common. They offer a large sum of money to the person who helps them as a reward for helping them. This is how they lure the victim is, as many people who are not aware of these scams can not resist the lure of a substantial amount of money.

Once the victim is lured in and the scammer knows it, the scammer will start requesting extra money that needs to be paid upfront to cover various forms of fees. They will claim legal fees, taxes, claims processing fees, or a bribe to pay off a local official to turn their heads. These fees are how the scammer makes their money, not with the large amount they are “giving” to the victim. The things is, these fees need to be paid or both the scammer and victim will lose the large sum of money they are after.

ONCE THE FEES ARE PAID, SOMETIMES TWO OR THREE TIMES, THE SCAMMER IS NEVER TO BE HEARD FROM AGAIN.
Or, the victim finally catches on and asks for his money back and the scammer is never heard from again. Either way, the victim is out sometimes thousands of dollars.

Examples of all known Nigerian 419 scams and their variations can be found by visiting this site: http://www.hoax-slayer.com/nigerian-scam-list.shtml- This is a trusted and verified virus and malware free site.

THE PRIZE/SWEEPSTAKES SCAM started out years ago with the postal mail. A person would receive an official postcard or an embossed letter in the mail stating the recipient had won a car, a huge sum of money, a new house, etc. These days, people may still receive letters like that but most of the time they are received in the form of an email. Here is how it works: You receive the post card, letter or email stating you won something. The thing is, it asks you to pay a processing fee/shipping and handling/taxes etc., before they can deliver the prize to you or you can pick it up. Therefore, you pay the fees because you either called or searched on the website, both pieces of information, which was provided to you by the email or post card, and validated that, yes this is a legitimate company sending you the mail, and yes you did win. So you proceed to wait. And wait and wait some more. Then you finally get a package with a worthless tape recorder inside. Yes, an entertainment center could be construed as a tiny, worthless tape recorder. So you call because you are completely outraged at the massive fees you paid for something that probably doesn’t cost more than $10 itself and the phone number is disconnected or the website is down.

Another ending is you wait until you have waited for about a week after they said the prize would be delivered. So, because the prize still hasn’t arrived, you call the number in the email and they apologize for the delay, but to expect the package within a few days. So you wait again. The allotted time passes again, and again you call, but this time you get a disconnected number and finally figure out that you’ve been had.

In both cases, the outcome is the same. You contact the people you talked to who validated the prize’s existence and the phone umber is disconnected or the web site is down, never to be seen again. The usual amount of money defrauded from the victim can be anywhere from $500-$5,000.

For more information on these scams and others currently circulating on the internet, and in the mail or on the phone please visit http://www.scambusters.org/victims2.html. This is a tested and verified virus and malware free website.

THE MOST COMMON ONLINE DATING SCAM: This particular scam is known throughout the world. As always, there are variations of every scam, but this particular scam plays with the emotions of people and therefore makes these the hardest hitting of them all. Here is how it plays out:

The scammer will join a site, or many sites to up his chances at success and upload a photo of a very beautiful woman, usually a white woman and when they fill put the profile, will claim to be from the US, Canada, the UK or any other European Nation. These people usually claim to be well off, working abroad, usually in the Middle East or Nigeria. They start to correspond with you and a relationship of sorts is established between the scammer and victim. Then, the relationship quickly progresses as the scammer is ”falling in love” with the victim and about a week to two weeks later, is completely “head over heels in love” and wants to come “meet the person of their dreams”. They commence the “asking for money” games.

First, it is some thing small, like money for food. Or maybe someone in the scammer’s family needs an operation of some kind. Then the day comes when they ask the victim to buy a plain ticket so the scammer can come to where the victim lives to meet them. The victim proceeds to send the money for the ticket and that is usually the last time they hear from them. In some cases, they might actually get on the plane, but then have a layover in some other country and they then are robbed of everything they have and ask the victim for more money to get to the victim safely. No one is going to leave someone stranded in another country after being robbed, so of course the victim sends the money. This may or may not go on for some time, depending how quickly the victim catches on to the scam. The victim may catch on relatively quickly, or the scam may continue until the victim is either out of money (which usually doesn’t happen because the scammers target people who have pockets deep enough to pay for anything), or the scammer disappears.

Other variations on this dating scam include the scammer asking the dater/victim to take part in a transfer of a large amount of money. This money is supposed to be helping someone open a store, pay for a house, or is owed to someone else in the US, or whatever country you happen to be in at the time. They will send you a check that you are to deposit into your bank account to cash it and then send the money to the specified person in the US and send the leftover money to the person requesting the transaction. Another version of this scam entails the money coming from the dater themselves and sending the money straight to the person requesting it in return for a cut of money being sent to the dater when the person requesting it comes to the US to “meet the dater.”

When trying to protect yourself from becoming the victim of dating scam, there are a few things to consider and even more things you can do. First, most scammers obviously do not use their real names or pictures. This begs the question, from where and how do they get their pictures? There are numerous stock photo sites in which photos of just about anything, including photos of people, are available. For free. This includes photos of beautiful women and handsome men. There are also modeling sites in which some scammers steal their pictures from as well. Also, to go with this fact, if, under the photo, or anywhere on the profile, there is a reference to the person’s looks being in the league of a model, or has “model good looks,” this is usually a tip off to let other scammers know they themselves are scamming. By using these types of phrases, it stops other scammers from interfering or wasting their time on them. These pictures will usually come from one of the modeling sites or stock photo sites.

One in particular, http://www.focushawaii.com seems to be victimized quite a bit, as many scammers seem to be utilizing photos of many people who populate this site. One of the most basic ways you as an innocent dater can protect yourself is by comparing the photo of the person who are about to start a relationship with and see if they are located on any of these sites. If they are, you can then be 100% positive the person you are talking with and considering a relationship with is a scammer.

In addition, if you come across a photo used as a dater that comes from one of these sites it will serve you well to remember these people have been victimized as well. Their photos are being used without their permission. As a common courtesy, if you happen to find one of these photos, alert the place where it came from so they are made aware they have been victimized as well.

Another tip off to a dating scam is a person’s age difference. If a dater on a site is really a scammer, the age difference will be from 15-30, with the innocent being the senior of the two. This is because scammers know the older a person is, the more they have saved. Besides, what older woman/man is not going to fall for a man/woman so much younger than them? That is exactly they target innocents I this manner, as an older person usually feels flattered and is more susceptible to a younger person showing interest in them. So, if this person showing interest in an older person disappears after you tell them you are jobless, it was a definite scam. Or you could tell the younger person that you recently switched jobs and are making quite less than your portfolio states. Either way, it will serve the same purpose, to see if they are there for your money or not.

There are many more ways to protect yourself and we here at SixSingles.com suggest that when you finish reading this page, for more information, visit the site http://www.stop-scammers.com/, as it gives exact information of who to look for, complete with photos, of online dating scammers. This is a trusted and verified safe from malware site. It also explains, more in depth, the extent of the scams, ad how to protect yourself.

For any scams you believe you were made a part of, please alert the webmaster and file a report at http://www.ic3.gov/default.aspx. This is a government response unit and all fraud and scam reports are encouraged. They will investigate and direct you to the right place if necessary, as well as help the victim recover losses if at all possible.