by Julie Bergher

Online dating is unquestionably the most popular way to meet people with similar interests.  The more it gains in popularity with legitimate singles, the more prevalent the incidents of scamming become.  Scamming?  In dating?  
We’ve all heard the warnings to be careful when joining online dating services.  There are men and women out there who take advantage of single, sometimes very lonely people with loving, trusting, optimistic views of others that make them easy targets.  My friend Sharon is one of those singles, but she’s no dummy!
Sharon recently received an email from a man claiming interest in her profile.  The age, height, education level and religion were all in her stated parameters.  The email was a minimally worded invitation to read his profile and contact him if there was “hopefully” any interest.  She read it, and wrote back to him asking him to tell her more about himself.  In no time flat (!) he sent a very long essay, with subheadings!  But Sharon is, in my opinion, very savvy!  She sensed a problem.   His writing style from the short email didn’t match the style of the essay.  So, my brilliant friend cut and pasted one sentence, and Googled it.  It popped up, along with the rest of the essay, on a site about dating scammers.  Apparently, being a widower and raising a child single-handedly is the perfect gut-wrenching bait for good-hearted, single women.  So, she reported him.
It turns out that these scammers place several profiles on dozens of sites.  Each profile is a different age, religion, height, etc., designed to meet the exact criteria of the target.  Unfortunately, there are other types of scammers as well.  They’re just not intentional scammers.  
A few days after reporting the widower, Sharon met someone from another dating site.  One email, one phone call and there they were.  She walked up to him in front of the restaurant, and he smiled… with the most yellowed teeth she’d ever seen.  He posted non-smoker on his profile, but only because he cut down from three packs/day to less than one-pack/week, and was planning on quitting before his arterial bypass surgery that was scheduled in a few weeks.  Why?  Because he was out of breath after five steps and he wanted his life back.  I call him a scammer because he was lying to himself, but Sharon lost an hour on a perfectly good Sunday.
And, for those of you wondering about Safiya – when last we left our friend, she was packing up for a trip to meet the man of her dreams.  
Not surprisingly, he wasn’t quite what he represented himself as.  The sarcastic wit that attracted her was actually bitterness.  The beautiful house and diminishing retirement savings were both heavy financial burdens he needed to share.  Romance was non-existent and a future with him promised to be more work for Safiya than being a single parent had ever been.  I admire women who understand that, sometimes, being alone is preferable to being in a miserable relationship.