i telling my story because i didnt was him to scam others

I telling my story because i didnt was him to scam others how to#
I telling my story because i didnt was him to scam others tv#

When I imagine where Owen is sitting as he is having this fraudulent conversation with my mother, the most likely scenario is that he is in boiler room surrounded by other men all staring intently into their computer monitors and having dozens of similar conversations with other innocent women all at the same time. You’ll be surprised by how quickly information pops up that will detach you from acting on a really bad idea. If you’re too embarrassed to ask a person for help, then visit myth-busting sites like or simply copy a chunk of text from the chat session, paste it into Google and hit “return.” If you’re too embarrassed to do this, then you probably already suspect that the person who wants the money isn’t who he claims to be. It’s easy to get wrapped up in somebody’s story, but if you find yourself tempted to send money to a stranger - even if it’s just a little - ask for help.Ĭall your best friend or your skeptical relative and ask, “does this seem legit to you?” If you’re tempted to send money to a stranger - and you shouldn’t do it - ask a friend or family member for a sanity check. Never send money to people you don’t know.ĥ. So far, nobody has tried to scam the pup.Ĥ. We then changed Mom’s profile picture to one of my dog, an adorable Pembroke Welsh Corgi named Ace. I helped Mom change the profile picture to one of just her, but the new picture functioned as bait for the scammers, who seem to presume that older women playing WWF are lonely and susceptible to pretended attention and affection. (I admit that I’m biased.) That picture provoked many WWF players to flirt with my mother, as they were hoping that the player was the granddaughter rather than the grandma. The more questions a stranger asks you - flattering though they might be - the more suspicious you should become.Īt one point, my mother’s profile picture showed her standing next to my 17 year-old daughter, who is very pretty.

I telling my story because i didnt was him to scam others tv#

If you do play with strangers - and you shouldn’t - then don’t share personal information.īe skeptical: don’t tell a stranger where you live, how old you are, what you do for a living, what music you like, what TV shows you watch. Don’t play online games with people you don’t know in real life.Įven if, like my mother, you’re a skilled WWF player who is running out of challenging opponents, if you don’t know who the person on the other side of the screen is in real life, then don’t play.Ģ. Here are some simple best practices to follow in order to keep scam artists at a distance:ġ.

The WWF scam is newer, but it has already claimed at least one victim: a New Zealand woman lost $60,000 over the course of months to a con artist.

It might seem beyond belief that anybody would ever fall for this, but innocent people have been falling for the Nigerian Prince scam for years and to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Owen then asks the woman player for money. His daughter needs an operation that costs $20,000, but Owen is stuck aboard a ship of the coast of Turkey, or some other remote place. As time and many matches go by, Owen tells the woman player his life story, asks dozens of questions about her life and tastes, and talks romantically with her.Įventually, after months, catastrophe strikes Owen. “Owen” (or whoever) strikes up a casual conversation with what he hopes is a lonely, older, female WWF player. Then we put our deerstalker detective hats on: a few minutes of energetic Googling turned up a long thread on the Zynga user forum about this scam.

I telling my story because i didnt was him to scam others how to#

I showed Mom how to block a player on WWF. So even without the red-flag repetition of the same script across three different people, she was skeptical. The conversation turned creepy the moment Owen asks my mother how tall she is. Here’s a stitched-together screenshot of one such conversation: As each match proceeded, the man (often named Owen) would share that his wife had died in childbirth, and that his daughter was being raised by a cousin or a nurse while he worked aboard ship. In separate matches over a few weeks, not one, not two, but three different opponents claimed to be widowed engineers working aboard ships on the high seas. Players of WWF can trade instant messages with opponents during each match, so there’s a social component to the game. She is also such a fan of the online Scrabble knockoff “Words with Friends” (WWF) that I might use the word addiction to describe her relationship with the game and only be exaggerating a smidge.ĭuring a recent visit, Mom shared an odd experience she had while playing that turned out to be a new kind of scam. Here’s how to protect yourself and your family. New predators are stalking older women via chat in online games.