by John Tabler

Created on: February 13, 2008   Last Updated: October 19, 2010

He loves you so much, and he's so danged handsome you just can't stop yourself. You have to send him the money for that plane ticket from Nigeria to the States so he can meet you in person. Besides, he has a little boy at a school in Virginia, not twenty miles from where you are, and he's a citizen! There's no danger here, right?

First of all, he's not going to meet you. The plane will be late, or a business meeting will come up. That ticket you wired the cash for will not be purchased, and the money won't be returned. He's going to save it for next time, when he'll definitely come to visit. Only by the end of the week he'll have to use the money for something important, and when he wants to come again, he'll ask you to fund him. By the way, the kid isn't real.

It sounds far-fetched, but its only one of the many actual scenarios that have played out. Hat in hand these men or women come to the doors of the desperate and lonely, those among us who are most vulnerable because they just want to be loved, and prey on their despair. An emotional vampire, of a sort, that draws its meals from the broken hearts of thousands.

The woman in the above scenario, by the way, was a recent widow. She spent the majority of the insurance her husband left her on this scam artist, as well as most of her retirement plan, on the chance that love awaited behind the veil of the Internet. Her burden was a financial one that only ended after enough people convinced her that she was being taken. Prior to what can best be termed as an intervention by family and friends, she remained convinced that her suitor was real, he was deeply in love with her, and he was coming to visit soon.

The need for love, for attention, is a basic human concept, like hunger or fear. A person lives their life expecting to fall madly and deeply for someone; they grow up being told that there is someone out there just for them. Sadly, this leads to impatience or the need to connect on a long, lonely night. In this age of instant communication and anonymous dialogue, our heartbroken, longing e-suitor puts themselves at risk. They are a ripe target for emotional and financial predators of every ilk.

Take, for example, a young New York City girl who conversed nightly with a man who claimed to be an Irish national over the Internet. The two connected through common interests, and the matter escalated until they were having electronic trysts on a nightly basis. He then asked her to take several lewd photographs of

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