The other day I received the following message from an out of town SB who had favorited me. I had sent her one hello type of message before receiving this:

"Hi i am currently stuck in Oregon trying to get home. Im sleeping in my car because im broke. Ill do anything if you will please help me"

Here's what I sent back to her:

"Miss, Your plea for help deserves a reply, but the answer is no. Unfortunately, I've been scammed in exactly this way several times, so I'm done sending money to people I don't know in exchange for promises that are never kept. Your situation may in fact be genuine and if so, I'm sorry to hear you are in a bind. Best of luck to you."

It's a lot more common than you think. I ran into that line over 10yrs ago.

If so, you are a VERY slow learner.

Personally I disagree that such a request even deserves a reply, but if I do reply to such a message my message is usually short and sweet and it goes something like this. "My mother warned me to NEVER send money to people I have never met over internet, You don't want me to disappoint my mommy, do you?"  

Please tell me you were just taking literary license when you say that you have fallen for this several times. NEVER send money to people with a sob story over the internet

WARNING

A scam is being pulled, mainly on older men.

What happens is that when you stop for a red light, a young nude woman comes up and pretends to be washing your windshield. While she is doing this, another person opens your back door and steals anything in the car.

They are very good at this: They got me 7 times Friday and 5 times Saturday.  

I wasn’t able to find them on Sunday.

I'll bet 8-tracks are hard to replace.

As noted, the scam is many years old.  I have not actually seen it on SA, probably because I always shut down out of town SB's that message me.  

On second thought, I have seen a variant of this a few times when an SB messaged me that she needed $$ for books/tuition/etc. and she would gladly do anything when she came to my city for summer vacation... blah, blah, blah.   All get the same response of essentially "no fucking way."  

I did get one of these a while ago when I tried Arrangement Finders - the absolute BIGGEST scam SD/SB site on the planet, with the possible exception of Craigslist.  

Said she was in the Peace Corps and was coming homing home soon to look for her soul mate. I saw this scam immediately, but decided to see how far she (probably he) would take it.  We decided to message offsite and exchanged 10 or 15 emails over the next 6 weeks. Her messages increased in "I think you're my guy" crap along the way and the final buildup was when she told me a sob story about her camp being threatened by bad guys and she needed to evacuate asap. She just needed cash to fly back to the US and then we could be together.  Her pleas got desperate and she hinted she was in danger of being caught, raped and killed.    

I sent her a note that said:  "Sounds bad. I'll sure miss you. Good luck."  

[Begin Bugs Bunny voice] Ain't I a stinker? [End Bugs Bunny voice]  

Of course 3 weeks later I got another email. No mention of evacuation or danger, just "I miss you and want to see you soon" sort of crap.  No reply from me.

I received a similar message on SA. She worked for a secret federal government agency. She couldn't tell me what city she was in, but she needed me to send her money so she could travel to meet me, lol.

classics like the Doodle Town Pipers and Paper Lace?

I wonder how many SBs work for the Nigerian Office of  Excess Funds.

I don't claim to be a fast learner, but actually I only fell for this once.  I sent her some $$ and she of course never did show up later to make good on her promises. I even suspected at the time there was a strong possibility this was a scam, so I chalked up the expense to my education.  Never fell for it again.  But I have encountered this with some variations several times.  

...Sure baby, my check is already in the mail to you

That response has ALWAYS put an end to her messages !