Internet scams targeting those looking for love

-- Some stories of love on the Internet end with happily ever afters, but the story of Terri and Todd ends with a betrayal, an empty bank account and a single broken heart.

They met online almost two years ago. She was a widow in Hudson, Ohio, who wanted to ease back into the almost forgotten world of dating. He was a man who'd faced a different kind of adversity.

Chased from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, Todd described moving to Africa to run an orphanage. Life there was hard, he wrote, and sometimes, despite his best efforts, children died.

By the time she realized Todd's story was fiction, Terri had lost $110,000.

"We call them 'sweetheart swindles,"' Susan Grant, director of the National Consumer League's Fraud Center, said of the growing scam that exploits people looking for love.

Con artists working from overseas cruise dating, matchmaking and social networking sites for victims. Some operate sites advertising foreign brides or send provocative notes as spam.

"It's both men and women who are being approached," Grant said.

In July, the fraud center created a separate reporting category for sweetheart swindles. Grant said that, in just three months, that category had collected more complaints than some common frauds, like work-at-home schemes, had collected all year.

Unlike most scams, where perpetrators strike swiftly, dating scams are confidence games that unfold slowly.

Terri, who asked that her last name be withheld, said she corresponded with Todd for four or five months before he requested any money. "I got too comfortable," she said. "The flags didn't go up."

She met Todd through a Web site for seniors interested in meeting other seniors. She was 60 years old and missed her husband, who had died a few years before. "I was open to a conversation that would lead to something permanent," she said. Soon, they were spending a half-hour to 45 minutes a night sending instant messages, sharing details about her grown kids and his young charges.

They traded pictures. His showed a kind-looking man with a shock of white hair and an open smile. It was the face she thought of as she sat at her computer in Hudson, chatting with someone half a world away.

After months in which their romance seemed to blossom, he said he wanted to return to the United States to open a day-care center and be with her.

There was just a small catch.

Todd claimed two children at the orphanage - a 9-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy - had captured his heart. "He couldn't leave and leave those two kids behind," Terri said.

He asked Terri if she would adopt the children so that the three of them could come to Ohio together - a ready-made family. Even though Terri had grown kids of her own, she was willing to give the children a fresh start. She began sending adoption fees to the Nigerian officials Todd put her in touch with.

At one point, Todd called and put the girl on the phone. Terri remembers the girl saying, "I wish I was there with you."

It was supposed to cost $35,000 for each adoption, but there were endless snags and extra fees. Months later, when Terri counted it all up, she realized she'd sent $110,000.

She contacted Todd in a panic. His answer was curt: "You can't have your money back."

And that's when she realized it had been a scam.

Grant says the sweetheart swindle takes many forms.

Often the perpetrator acknowledges being outside the United States, although many claim to be Americans traveling or living abroad, usually for work. After developing the relationship over an extended period, the scammer asks for cash.

"They're in love with you and need money to come to the U.S. and visit you," Grant said. Or they're en route but are detained at an airport and need money.

Sometimes a scammer claims to be injured or claims he's in a place where he can't get access to his child, who needs emergency care in a third country.

U.S. postal inspectors first noticed scammers' move to online singles sites in 2004, when inspectors seized packets of counterfeit postal money orders coming into the United States. At that time, the scammers were asking their unwitting American sweethearts to mail letters for them in the United States. The letters, which contained fake money orders, were intended for victims of other scams.

It's not surprising that foreign con artists are moving from using their sweethearts as accomplices to directly victimizing them. Scammers are always looking for new ways to package old scams, and singles sites give them plenty to build on: The people who post are willing to read e-mail from strangers. They often share information about themselves ranging from their likes and dislikes to their income levels. And each one is hoping for romance.

Grant says the love aspect of the scam often blinds victims to the inconsistencies or improbabilities in the scammer's story. "It's human nature," she said. "They're just looking for confirmation it's real, rather than a sign it's not."

Terri even shrugged off warnings from her grown children, who were alarmed when they couldn't find Todd through Internet searches on his name, his alleged orphanage in Nigeria or the orphanage he claimed to have run in pre-Katrina New Orleans.

Terri said she was so wrapped in the web Todd spun that she ascribed her children's objections to jealousy over the prospect of having new siblings.

After Terri was ripped off, she began searching the Internet, looking for information on scams. She found a site that described Todd's scam and, through it, began corresponding with a woman who claimed to be another victim. When the woman said she was traveling to Nigeria to get her money back and asked Terri to help pay for the trip, Terri realized she was corresponding with yet another scam artist.

But since Todd struck, her rule has been to immediately sever ties with anyone who asks for money - a strategy Grant wholeheartedly recommends.

Besides, Terri said, she doesn't have any money to give a scammer anyway: "I'm totally broke." Nowadays, when her daughter brings the grandkids for an overnight stay, she picks up milk, eggs and bread because she knows her mother can't afford the extra expense.

From time to time, Terri still gets e-mailed come-ons that are replicas of Todd's story. She figures he sends it to so many people, he doesn't realize he's sending it to a past victim. That is, if he's really a single individual at all.

"I would never have imagined myself being in a situation like this," Terri said. "After being a widow, I was just too open. I think the problem was I was just too open."