You're so sweet and naive, CR. You dont know about all the online scams? Billions of dollars each year blown by idiots (sorry, that's a bit harsh) either through fake online relationships or every day scams like one guy on a purebreed dog forum I was on set up a scam over a few years to gain trust and pretended his wife was dying of cancer. Long story cut short he 'adopted' a special needs child and desperately needed baby clothes. He was caught by a regular (personally known to me) flogging off BAGS of expensive baby clothes on ebay that had been donated to him by women on that forum, and that's just small fry. There was another guy pretending to be a woman with ovarian cancer on that forum. He got a 5 star holiday, 'medical expenses' for his cancer treatment paid for and something else which currently escapes me
NO WAIT: IVF fees paid for before his cancer treatment to save his life started, and another person personally known to me who had just come through several years of failed IVF blew his story wide open. OMG I had forgottenabout those days. There were a group of us who all knew each other through dog showing in Aus and we were slammed relentlessly by people who didnt believe us when we called out scammers. We were labelled trolls. Eh??? Trolls waiting to call out scammers to save these lonely elderly women their hard earned money? We got sick of the criticism and stopped warning people. The forum owner got sick of yet another ttempted police action against the scammers and brought in a new rule that anyone wanting to use offtopic, marketplace etc had to be a regular of x number of years or have x number of posts to sign in to certain sub forums. The person pretending to have ovarian cancer joined just before Steve Irwin died and said if anyone wanted to donate money for flowers he would accept the transfers and take the flowers to Australia Zoo because he lived close by.
This was around 2001.
OMG another one turned out to be a teacher at a well known christian school who was grooming young teens. His house was raided by a task force in that state and his computer confiscated. He lost his job, moved interstate, and last I heard was still working in a christian school and trying to become a catholic priest.
NO WAIT: IVF fees paid for before his cancer treatment to save his life started, and another person personally known to me who had just come through several years of failed IVF blew his story wide open. OMG I had forgottenabout those days. There were a group of us who all knew each other through dog showing in Aus and we were slammed relentlessly by people who didnt believe us when we called out scammers. We were labelled trolls. Eh??? Trolls waiting to call out scammers to save these lonely elderly women their hard earned money? We got sick of the criticism and stopped warning people. The forum owner got sick of yet another ttempted police action against the scammers and brought in a new rule that anyone wanting to use offtopic, marketplace etc had to be a regular of x number of years or have x number of posts to sign in to certain sub forums. The person pretending to have ovarian cancer joined just before Steve Irwin died and said if anyone wanted to donate money for flowers he would accept the transfers and take the flowers to Australia Zoo because he lived close by.
This was around 2001.
OMG another one turned out to be a teacher at a well known christian school who was grooming young teens. His house was raided by a task force in that state and his computer confiscated. He lost his job, moved interstate, and last I heard was still working in a christian school and trying to become a catholic priest.