Scammers move in on Christian Dating Sites

Christians using dating sites are being selected as easy targets by scammers looking for money!

Professional scam artists are contacting Christians and befriending dating site users and fraudulently asking for money. Most of the scammers are based in West Africa (Nigeria) or Eastern Europe and use photographs and profiles stolen from other sites on the internet to create fake profiles to convince Christian
dating site users that they meet they are god fearing and trustworthy people looking for friendship and romance.

 The scammers (let’s call them ‘Romance Scammers) profiles give every appearance of being genuine Christians and the fake profiles usually claim that they are western men or women working or travelling abroad. It is thought that it is the trusting and forgiving nature of the Christian faith that make Christian dating sites so attractive to scammers.

Another factor is that Christians registered on Christian dating sites do so in the mistaken belief that they are in contact with other Christians with the same values, belief system and moral stance as themselves.

Kim TUFFIN from FidelityCheckOnline commented “Christians joining Christian dating sites such as ChristianMingle.com should not let their guard down and assume they are dating somebody who has the same belief system as themselves, our research indicates that scammers are targeting these sites and in our opinion it is because the scammers consider Christians could be easy targets for fraud and deception”.

Most of the romance scammers operate from West Africa, with Nigeria identified as a worldwide centre of criminal activities. Nigeria is well known for its networks of criminal gangs, ironically 50.4% of the country is Muslim and nearly 2% of the population are other religions so Christians meeting a scammer on a Christian dating site might not even be in communication with a person of the same faith.

More and more Christians who are using Christian dating sites are joining cheater checking sites like Fidelity Check Online to check out the person they have met on a dating or social media site or the internet. Once the person they have met is registered the sites software can identify if the person has posted multiple profiles and is a romance scammer it looks for similarities in the profiles and the information they have given, if a possible match is found the members can be contacted and discreetly warned they might be the target of a scammer by one of the sites professional investigators.