A lady friend of mine was the victim of an attempted scam through a dating site. They chatted on Yahoo. The man claimed to be an engineer who was working on a job in, yes, Africa. He said he had a young son and that his wife had died. He invited her to visit him in Dallas when he returned home, and said he would make a hotel reservation for her. A couple days before her projected visit, he still had not made the reservation, then suddenly he said he needed money for one thing or another. She cut him off immediately.

What was interesting was how long he kept the scam going. She was chatting with him for over a month.