Oz Dating

There are more and more reports about various online dating scams. But most of them are fairly unsophisticated operations. For example the scammer might pretend to be an attractive woman in financial trouble who then asks for an online money transfer from her contacts on various established dating sites.

But sometimes the scheme is elaborate in the extreme. Take the case of Canadian Barrie Turner, who created a series of niche dating sites, along with very detailed fake profiles to bilk lonely people out of large sums of money.

The whole scheme must have taken many, many hours of intricate planning and work. He could easily have made the same amount of money (or more) if he'd put the same amount of effort and expertise into a legitimate operation that genuinely helped people get together. So it seems that it was not merely callous greed that was motivating his actions but cruelty as well.

I think the same can be said of a lot of fraudsters - even those who are not as diabolical as Turner. That's what makes their deceptions not only depressing but disturbing as well.