Member-only story
As an author, I take my research very seriously. So, when two friends in Arizona told me they had female relatives or friends who had been scammed out of money — one of them for over $40,000 — by men on dating sites, I decided it was time to join a dating site and see exactly how this type of thing goes down.
I put up my profile with minimal information, and a fake name. Honestly, I didn’t spend much time on the site and had pretty much forgotten about it until one day I received a message from a man named Craig. I checked out his profile and he was incredibly good looking — much better looking than most of the men who had viewed my profile. That was my first clue.
His profile said he was from Billings, Montana. That’s kind of far for dating, I thought. When I asked him about Billings, he said a friend who lived there had put up his profile; he actually lived in New York City. That was clue number two. What in the world would a guy in NYC want with a girl all the way over in Washington State? It made no sense. Within ten minutes of messaging on the site, he told me he felt really good about “us” and said he was going to cancel his subscription. You guessed it — clue number three. Then he gave me his phone number to text offline since the site’s messaging platform was indeed cumbersome. I’ve heard of speed dating, but this was ridiculous.
