I knew I was talking to a real girl in real time,” Patrick says. Every time she sends me another message, she stops dancing and starts typing on the keyboard. “I knew it wasn’t a recording, because she’s being really responsive. It’s clear she’s listening to music, because she’s dancing seductively, and moving her lips, presumably singing along with the song. The Skype chat begins, and Riana can’t turn her microphone on, but she can still type and send messages. Just to get to know the person better,” he explains. Show our little hobbies, our collection of video games, our computer set-up, or our art projects. “I’m used to doing video chat to filter out the real people from fake people,” Patrick says. He’d been online dating for a while, so this wasn’t the first time he’d Skyped with a near stranger. She was eager to get to know him - after they’d exchanged a few messages, she wanted to add him as a friend on all his social media accounts. She seemed “fresh-off-the-boat,” as he describes it, an Asian girl with broken English. So, I was kind of thinking with my dick.” “Plus, she was one of the most attractive people I’d ever met. “But it wasn’t on my mind, ‘cause I never thought it would happen to me,” he says. Patrick, for example, knew about these types of scams before he ever became a victim. Webcam blackmail is not a new scam, May tells us, but it is duping new men every day.

“One minute you see a good looking blonde, and the next you’ll see yourself with your pants around your ankles,” says Wayne May, the founder of Scam Survivors, a resource that counsels victims and educates the public about online scams.

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