What Are Refugee, Orphan And Widow Scams?

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Refugee, orphan and widow scams involve scammers claiming to have large sums of money and to be refugees and/or orphans who may be victims of war, where their parents have died or been killed, or they claim to have suffered atrocities and are now living in a refugee camp, in a church, an orphanage, or living in some other form of exile outside of their own country. Many of these scammers will claim to be located in Senegal, Ivory Coast, Somalia, Sierra Leone or possibly another poor country in Africa.

Others orphan and refugee scammers will claim that they are on the run and have gone into hiding somewhere with a lot of money and need someone to help them transfer the funds to safety very quickly. Some also claim to be adult widows. And some of thee types of scammers may claim to be both a widow, an orphan, and a refugee. Many of the widow scammers will claim they are the wife of a wealthy government official or businessman who was killed in Muslim or Arabic country.

In some cases the scammer also claims that they would like for you to adopt them as your own child as part of helping them to move a very large sum of money out of their war-torn country by putting the funds into your bank account and into your name as their adopted parent.

During the course of the scam the scammer may provide a so-called online banking website (with login details) in an attempt to prove that the funds truly exist and are safely sitting in a bank account awaiting payout. In all cases these bank websites are always fraudulent/fake websites owned and controlled by the scammer and the money that they are showing within the bank account are fictitious funds in a non-existent bank account. The scammer may also ask you to contact 2-3 different people that the scammer claims are also involved with the transaction as a psychological technique designed to make the transaction seem more legitimate. In most cases though you are dealing with only one scammer who is acting behind all of the various different personas being presented.

The scammer will eventually ask you to send some money before any of the money being promised can be sent out to you. This is a type of scam known as Advance-Fee Fraud. Advance-Fee Fraud is best described as an offer of money, merchandise, services, employment, or even romance, but where the victim is asked to pay a fee in advance to obtain whatever is being promised to them by the scammer. The main scam strategy of all advance-fee fraud scams is to try to persuade the victim to send money, and then continue to send more money to the scammer, as many times as possible, until the victim eventually runs out of money and/or goes into debt as a result of losses from the scam. And in the end, the victim only loses their money and never receives any of the money at all being promised by the scammer.

Please click here to read more about the psychological techniques used to deceive people with Advance-Fee Fraud scams. The following article on Wikipedia also explains more about Advance-Fee Scams in general: Wikipedia Link