The Online Dating Scam You Should Be Aware Of

I have been paid to do some interesting things in my time, some of which I am not very proud of. This is one of those things.

I was scrolling through a site looking at job advertisements. I couldn’t go back to work but I still needed to make enough money to keep us afloat. That was when I came across an advert that was recruiting “Open-minded women” for a position where they could work from home; there were no more details provided other than the requirement for internet access. Eagerly, I filled in the form.

Within a couple of days, a response came through by email and I was asked to do a test. I sat on my sofa and curiously clicked on the attached link. I frowned as the instructions came onto the screen.

“You are going to be responding to messages from men, as the characters provided in the right hand corner of the screen. Please read the notes for the characters and respond appropriately.

Please note: Some of these messages may contain sexual content. You must decline any meetings within the next two weeks and come up with an appropriate excuse. If any meetings are suggested beyond that, you can say you like the idea of meeting but you must never discuss specifics.”

As the messages flashed before my eyes, I responded to all of them with as much imagination as I could muster. Once the test had finished, I was told that they would review my responses and get back to me.

They got back to me the same day with my log in details and password.

Without realising it, I had become a part of what would be considered a “legal” scam. In the fine print on the dating website these men had signed up for, it had specified that these chats were based in fantasy. So if anyone were to take the people who created these sites to court, their argument would be that it was made clear that this was fantasy only and that these women were not real.

What this website was doing was charging extortionate amounts of money to men so that they could message women who were “interested” in them. I was one of those women and every conversation was passed between dozens of different people who all thought of appropriate responses to the last message each man had sent and replied. We got paid for each message we sent back.

So which website was it I worked for?

I don’t know. The truth is we were given a blank log in page to sign into. We had no idea what website(s) the men were using. I suppose it protects the people running the scams and stops people like me writing reviews and letting the world know what was actually happening.

Top tip: If you have met a woman online and she won’t commit to a date, or keeps changing the details of a date and pushing it further away, she probably isn't real. Excuses I used were "I'm really busy with work at the moment. I'm not sure when I will be able to get a day off to meet."

Also I would encourage you to move from the website in the beginning to text or email. If she won’t do that then there is probably a good reason for it. I spent most of my time giving excuses like "I broke my phone" and "I don't think I know you well enough yet."

Another note to any men that may be reading this: Please stop posting pictures of your genitals on these sites. I have seen too many to count and honestly, it is revolting. I know you expect your women to be real, but if they aren’t, save that poor person the pleasure of looking at your wrinkly bits. Thanks.