Don’t fall for scammers

I can honestly say I’ve been approached with many different scams, never falling for any. So, it baffles me just how some people can be so vulnerable and lonely, to get taken for thousands of dollars. In January 2001, I had barely hooked up my first fax machine when a Nigeria letter rolled in. I immediately called RCMP and spoke with Don Crozier, head of Commercial Crime. I contacted Crozier whenever a scam came my way. He is long retired now, but he taught me a lot about reacting to scams.

And the scams continue … Within the past couple of years, a man approached me on a dating site, seemingly smitten.

He was much younger than me, and the picture he presented was handsome. He claimed he lived in Dartmouth N.S.

I became suspicious when he took down his profile within days of beginning our correspondence. In our messages, he said he was in an African country to pick up his diamonds.

Finally, after a couple of weeks of banter (about his diamonds) he blatantly asked for $25,000 to pick up the diamonds because the government was holding them.

I sent a note asking did he really think I was dumb enough to fall for this and told him to get lost.

What he wrote back would not be printable. It’s never too good to be true. There are a million scammers looking for an old softy.

At 70 years I’m not one of them and proud of it.

Kathy Birt,

Mount Stewart