There’s a sucker born every minute.
I recently received a text saying something like “Hi Bob! I received the case of wine, but it was the 1987 Chardanay instead of the 1989 Burgandy. Please get back to me.”
I replied “Wrong number” to it. Then thought - oh crap. And did a search. Turns out it is a scam and then they use it to “befriend” you and bring you in deeper.
About two hours later I got the reply from the “wine guy”. “Hey - sorry about that. Yeah, they won’t refund me saying it was my mistake. You want a case of wine for cheap!? I can’t stand white wine.”
I blocked the number.
I have dealt with people in my law practice who have been sucked into these online romance scams. They send hundreds of thousands of dollars that they do not have overseas, before ever meeting or speaking with the person they develop an obsession with. There is probably not a single person on the other end - just a group of scammers in Moscow, Nigeria or the Caymans, who are particularly good at crafting a scenario that fits gullible victims. The ones I have encountered are lonely retired women, and the stories that seem to have believability with them have in common Syria, American military personnel, and threats of danger that can only be mitigated with transfers of cash.
One retired woman took out as much in cash advances as she could manage (nearly $150K), purchased Apple gift cards at Target, and then sent images of the gift cards front and back (with silver stripe scratched off) by Google Hangouts to the ostensible romance interest.
Crazy, but I have seen three instances of this kind of scam in the last 3 years in FL alone. The Syrian element is that the romantic interest is an American military member, who is in Syria and needs money to get out. Preposterous - we do have some military advisers in Syria, but the number is small, and whatever resources they need, they get. No need to resort to this source of funding.