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By Marva Marrow
Contributing Editor
Editor’s Note: This is a continuation of Scammers are the Nicest People: Part One my personal experience of an encounter with a “romance scammer” — an individual bent on ultimately emptying your wallet and bank account while ruthlessly bankrupting your heart. Unlike the various scams that say you have millions of cash waiting for you in a foreign bank or that you are the long-lost relative of a wealthy person who just died — easy ones for almost anyone to spot and foil — romance scams are insidious. Even self-proclaimed sophisticated Internet frequenters and professionals (including journalists like me!) can get sucked into their subtle manipulations. Here continues the story of Clark.
 Shortly after we started our dialog I asked him for more pictures. In all this time, the only image I had of Clark was the one small, grainy photo. Then he said he was going to go for a few days to visit his brother, who lived in Florida. He told me that his brother had married a nice woman named Karen, whom he had met on Match! He said that this was the reason he wanted to try Match himself. He many times expressed his loneliness and desire to find a partner, a wife. Although the "wife" word rang a small alarm bell in me, mostly I was drawn to his focus on me, his interest and passion.
Since he was going to see the brother and sister in law, I asked him if he could have them snap some new photos of him, and also of them. While supposedly (yeah, the correct word) in Florida, he kept up the attentions, the corny poems and the instant messages. But these were brief, as he said his brother “needed the computer.” When I asked about his activities with his brother, he was vague. Communication was brief.
All the while, he had been telling me about a pending trip and contract he was supposed to be organizing with his agent, Nicholas, to go to Africa, to the Niger Delta. Clark had said he was a freelance contractor and en engineer, prospecting for oil. He said that he generally worked on contracts, which could last up to a month or two and then had reasonably long periods of down time.
Zoom, zoom...
When he returned from Florida, he told me that things were moving faster with his contract, that he might have to leave in a few days. He asked me if I had my passport yet, could I come with him? Although flattered, I was also a little shocked as again, this is a guy I had never even shared a moment with, face to face. International travel? To Africa? Spontaneous and combustible as I may be, I am also not totally without a brain — or without obligations.
 Thankfully getting the passport was going to take a couple of weeks, so that temptation was out of my hands anyway.
He had a meeting in two days (this was a Monday) scheduled with African diplomats in Sacramento and the trip was imminent. He just needed to iron out the final details, he said. He said he might even be leaving that weekend. Trying not to be selfish about it, I did suggest that he route his flight so that he could stop over in Los Angeles and we could meet at the airport. With effusive gushings in his charming but broken English, he assured me he would try.
Imagine my surprise when on Wednesday, the day of his meeting, I finally got a call — my first phone call from him. The connection was horrible and his accent was strong. I could barely make out what he was saying. But I did get the gist of it — he had met with the diplomats, and he was leaving right then and there. He said they had made arrangements for him to come with them. He was flying off to Nigeria.
Boom.
The African Storm
By this time we had been communicating, pretty much constantly, for about a month. I was used to hearing from him, usually early in the morning or early evening. But I was sure I wouldn’t hear from him while he was gone. A day or two passed and bam! I was sitting at my computer and the usual "hearts and flowers" IM message came up, with the big SMACK! pink lips. Clark. In Africa.
 After a few vague replies to my questions about the trip and work, he began complaining about how he didn't have a signed contract for the job. Flabbergasted that he would take off like this, go to Africa without a contract, I called him on it.
He said, "This is how they do things here."
"Okay," I said... "Well, what about your agent, Nicholas?"
"Nicholas is with me, here, "he said. "It will all work out."
"Okay," I said, "I guess you have gone through this plenty of times before. If you want to fly off to a place like this and trust that you are going to get them to honor an agreement, likely you know how they do things." I was skeptical but figured this was a professional, used to dealing with these situations in third world countries and he was there with his agent. I figured he had it under control. Then I started noticing the cobwebs in the corners of the castles (why hadn't I noticed them before?) — and sand began to shift under the foundation…
I still heard from Clark through IM, and a couple of virtually incomprehensible mobile calls. No mention of his work, activities, things he had seen, people he had met. Between declarations of how he wanted to be with me, he was just lamenting that he couldn't get some sort of work permit, couldn't get the contract signed, was stymied. He told me he had left with just some cash that he grabbed that day before they whisked him off. This was sounding weird and unprofessional to me. He told me he had tried to get money from his bank in the US and couldn't. Red flag, red flag, red flag.
I asked him what his bank was and he said, "Bank of America."
"That's mine too!" I told him. "Let me check with the bank and see why they say they can't send money to you."
"No, no no," he said. "You won't get anywhere with them. It is this country. Bank of America won't wire money to Nigeria."
The next day the news was that he couldn't get the necessary permit. I was incredulous. He flew ALL that way, without a permit, without a contract? The castle walls were definitely feeling shaky. Then he IM’d me later in the day. "I don't have enough money to come back," he writes.
"WHAT !!??" I screamed, in text and with plenty of exclamation points. WHAT?? "Don't you have a return ticket?"
"No," he said. "I was counting on signing the contract and getting the advance on the work." This lovely, beautiful guy was now sounding like a total lunatic. The barbarian hordes were banging on the castle gates... Ouch!
Next day I got this message: "Could you possibly send me some money so I can get my ticket back?" I was gritting my teeth in fury and tightly, rapidly typed back to him, "But you told me the other day that Bank of America won't send money to Nigeria!" I was not about to send money to someone I had never met in person.
"Well then, you don't love me," he screamed in his text, embellished with sad, pouting-faced non-smiley emoticons.
Also read Scammers Are the Nicest People: Part One Watch for the conclusion of this article, Scammers Are the Nicest People: Part Three, next week!
Did you have a similar experience or have thoughts to share? We welcome your comments below
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