Welp, I tried another dating app. This time it was one for people aged 50 and older. The many others I’ve tried seem dominated by young people and I’m looking for a someone who first watched Mork and Mindy in the 1970s. But it turns out that all dating apps are plagued by fake profiles trying to trick singles out of money.

Back in my day (that’s how old people talk, right?) online dating meant using a desktop website such as Match.com where the initial contact was an email. We emailed back and forth until we decided to talk on the phone or meet for dinner. Yeah, that’s right: first dates were dinners. Somewhere between 2006 when I met my husband and 2015 when my divorce papers were a year old, websites became applications (apps) and emailing changed to texting/messaging. Another big change was the infestation of scammers.

To me, the opposite of a scammer is a seeker like me who’s really looking for a date. Scammers set up a fake profile and try to trick seekers out of our money. Here are the ways I detect a fake profile with a scammer behind it.

1. Too many ideas packed into one statement. 
2. Weird punctuation, as in the example above and this one.
3. Nothing original or unique. Here’s a counterexample of a profile statement that I believe does have a seeker behind it: I don’t know why it cuts off like that, but I don’t think this is scammer. This is a seeker.
4. Weird spelling, syntax and word choices. One described himself as a professional jeweller who made “jewelries.” Here’s another: Obviously there are non-dominant English speakers who write like this and are actual seekers. I’m just listing the things that often indicate a scammer, especially when you get several of these indicators in the same profile.
5. When you message with them, they don’t give appropriate answers to your questions. I asked one what he was doing today (it was a Saturday). He responded by asking how long I’d been on the dating app. Knowing it was a scammer, I had fun by pressing him for what he’d spent the day doing. I offered that I’d gone shopping and met a friend for a meal. What did he do? He asked again how long I’d been on the dating app and what my experience had been like. I finally said that if he was a real person, he’d be able to answer a simple question like what he’d spent the day doing. He finally wrote, “Relaxing.” I wrote back, “That’s not a real answer. You’re a scammer. Good-bye.” He deleted our conversation and broke our connection immediately, probably worried that I’d report him. After that, I started reporting them.
6. The photo is too good-looking. Scammers have gotten a little savvier about this. It used to be that scammers only used photos of American-standard-good-looking white men, but now they use Black men’s photos, too, plus the photos look more down-to-earth. But if the writing is on the level that I’ve described and the photo is unusually appealing for the population you’re searching (which in my case is old people), it’s probably fake. This man probably has no idea his photo is being used this way.
7. They are often widows.
8. They usually work out of the country or travel a lot for work, so they put off meeting in person for a long time (which turns into forever).

Here are two more counterexamples that probably have legitimate seekers behind them. Not only do these answers not have the syntax or punctuation mistakes of a scammer, but they convey what feels like an honest response that sounds like an original idea.

Here’s the exchange I had with the one who makes “jewelries.” Sometimes I string them along just to waste their time.  In his profile he had answered the prompt “What I Miss About the 80s” with “country gospel music, movies.”

He finally answered my question about the 80s movies with this:

True, Olsen banden,love is war ,Bobby’s war

That made no sense and I’d had enough fun with him, so I reported him to the site. I’ve now reported several scammers and hope they all get kicked off.

A few years ago I had a good time stringing a scammer along for weeks. He called himself “Reggie” and said he had a grown daughter named “Brenda.” Reggie and I actually had one phone call, and I heard his accent, but I couldn’t identify it. Of course we never met in person.

This text exchange gives an idea of what must work for scammers when they trick lonely, middle-aged women into developing feelings for them and then sending whatever amount of money the scammer asks for. There was more to our exchange which probably started on OK Cupid and we also emailed, but here’s the part that ended up on my phone.

He or someone else even played the role of his daughter who also texted me one morning before “Reggie” gave up. They were tugging hard on what they believed were the heartstrings of a sad old woman who had always longed to be a mother.  (At first I didn’t know who this was.)Thus ended my text-acting career as a lonely-but-loaded old woman who regretted not having kids. The email part of this exchange was where I got the information I needed to send him the $5,800, but I don’t have that email. My favorite part of this adventure was telling him I was on my way to Western Union (or wherever) to send my darling the money and then proceeding to ghost him. He sent emails asking if I’d sent the cash and then he texted, but I let him twist in the wind. I hoped that by drawing his fire I prevented him from scamming just one other woman..

Scammers are on all dating apps and men get them, too, so you just have to know how to recognize them. It infuriates me to think of how much they steal from women, especially when I know how hard it is to be divorced and middle-aged and trying to create your own retirement fund.

I swear each time I try another dating app a bigger percentage of the interactions I have are with scammers. Now that I’m graying and pudgy (and still Mexican), I know that if a very good-looking white man reaches out to me, he’s a scammer. It’s yet one more reason I feel discouraged about meeting anyone with whom I could have an actual date or even a phone call.

At this point, I should probably start all dating app interactions with “Are you a real person?” No, a better idea is to just stop all dating apps. What a waste of time, attention and money.

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