I joined a penpal site at the end of June 2010, I started sending & receiving messages with a few people on the site but after a few messages most people stopped sending any apart from a Filipino woman. The Filipino lady & myself exchanged messages pretty much every day as friends for two & a half months before we started sending flirting & romantic messages. My feelings grew for her more & more and she sent messages professing her love & that I was the only man for her.
I was not to sure how to proceed as this was my first internet love affair & I am very shy when it comes to romance & women. in January I purchased a mobile & sim card so that I could phone her, we chatted a couple of times but it was difficult to have a decent conversation because of reception problems. I felt a real connection with her and we started to
send messages discussing the sort of things that you only talk about with someone you deeply care about.
All was going well, I felt closer to her than I had to anyone before and she was sending messages to me saying I was the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with & start a family with & she changed her profile on the penpal site saying that she had met the man she would spend the rest of her life with , then in the middle of February she announced that she was moving to suburb of Quezon city to stay with her cousin & find a job in march. After she moved she sent messages saying that she was settling in & that she would start looking for a job soon.
About four days ago she sent a message saying that she was looking for a job in a district the other side of Manila to where she was staying and that she wanted me to send her money to pay for the rent on a apartment in this district and to pay for new clothes for a interview & to take a test, Alarm bells started to ring in my head as I read this. The message she sent me was completely out of character to every other message she had sent.The message was about twice as long as any other message I had received from her. She normally made may spelling & grammar mistakes but in this message it was near perfect apart from sections of the message that were specific to are relationship at which point she had misspelt the words she always gets wrong. This message seemed to me to be a cut and paste scam message and that she had added in the personal stuff.
I reacted angrilyto this message and deleted my account on the penpal site straight away without sending any message to her. The next day after not sleeping very well I decided that I may have made a mistake & that I should at least send her a message asking her to explain. On opening my gmail account a email came up from her that she had sent two hours ago, her message asked me why I had deleted my penpal account and that she was sorry for asking for money & that she could manage without me sending any money. I felt more gilt for not sending her a message so I decided to reactivate my penpal account but before I did this I decided to check her penpal profile.
I was so shocked to find that she had changed her profile to say that she was single and looking for another man as I had stopped sending her messages & she did not know why?,to my disbelieve she had done this an hour after sending me the email apologising.
I hope this is a warning to anyone that thinks if someone does not ask for money within the first two or three months of a online relationship that the person is not a scammer.
George.
