Kissing Frogs

Continuation from the last post....

The snake enticed me with sweet compliments and what appeared to be romantic promises. We talked (chatted by email) about getting together for the first time. At the moment, he was out in West Africa with his daughter, working on a contract. (Supposedly, he had his own contracting firm.)

Finally, the suspense was too great and I decided to give him a call to hear his voice. He made some excuses about it being expensive to call overseas. I rallied with, "I have a phone card". The next excuse was, "I have a thick British accent". I rallied with, "I love accents!" Finally, he relented and gave me his phone number.

His voice was....scary. It wasn't a British accent at all. It was a Nigerian one. Not only that, he was supposedly in his hotel room with his baby girl sleeping soundly, yet, there were sounds of forklifts and warehouse echoes. I asked what the noise was and he replied, "The tv." Of course, he never turned the tv down, even with his supposed daughter sleeping. I knew I was had the moment I heard his voice. I hung up with him and immediately wrote him an email telling him, no blasting him. He replied back that he was disappointed in me for not believing his story. I refused to go back and forth with a liar. But, one last thing, I asked for his Los Angeles home phone number so I could hear his voice on the answering machine. His reply was, "I'm so offended that you don't believe me. I can't give you my home phone number. It would be wrong to have to prove myself." That was it. I blocked him, his email and his fake profile and then reported him to the online dating service.

He wasn't the last Nigerian scammer that I heard from. But, I learned to spot them according to the way the grammar was and how the emails usually went. The pictures were always "posed" like they were taken from a magazine or from a website. I didn't give them a time of day...then I met Boo.

To be continued....