Why don't you dredge up every bad thing a man ever did to a woman and post it here? The real romance scam is marriage and divorce--and women are the ones making out like bandits.

"there are an estimated 7,400,000 Internet users looking for love online."

Yeah, and they're probably almost entirely the sort of people who are also fans of BS. I.e. paranoids with severe emotional problems and probably accompanying physical problems such as obesity, metabolic and hormonal disorders, etc, and desperately trying to rationalize it all as unfair persecution.

These people would be doing themselves a huge favor to crawl out of their shells and get out to experience real life. Go to the gym for a couple months and deal with the embarrassment. Then once you can walk a few miles without too much trouble, join a local recreational walking club like Sierra Club or such. Meet real people. Build some healthy habits.

It is one thing to prey one people's greed, though that is not acceptable, and another to prey on people's loneliness and heartache. It's not surprising that this sort of thing happens in a world where young men have no qualms about knocking down an old woman and stealing her purse, but still, it makes me wonder yet again how some people can be so devoid of conscience.

Um. The SEVEN MILLION people involved in Internet dating are "almost entirely" fat and socially inept? Have you...been to the Internet lately? Contrary to your name, you seem to have an unhealthy fixation on fat people. Who are not necessarily obese, not necessarily unhealthy, and not necessarily unhappy. I don't happen to be fat. I happen to be healthy. Those things do not always go together. My very thin mother recently had cancer, while her siblings, all quite large, have not. Yes, yes, statistics show. But I have a feeling you paint individuals with your very broad (some might say fat) brush. The smug, judgmental thing might backfire on you. Turns out, social isolation is also bad for health.

Men get caught by these romance scams too. A woman on a board I read's ex-husband was absolutely convinced there was an all-girl bomb squad in Iraq who had been cheerleaders together or something like that back in the USA and the cheerleader/bomb squad beauty had time to post on the Internet all the time to him and get engaged. The scam went on and I'm not sure how much money he sent to her "dad" who turned out (I think) to be some woman playing multiple roles on the Internet. Of course, the entire cheerleader bomb squad got killed right before the supposed to be big face-to-face meeting and wedding.

Didn't Paul McCartney have his scam artist of a wife clean him of $50 million as punishment for him being lovelorn and naive?

Seems society does not have a problem with women criming and scamming men.

I say let er rip, let's get some karmic revenge against the supposed 'fairer' sex (the load of bullocks that THAT is).

Gold-digging is a different kind of marriage scam, brightstar, and has of course been a grand old tradition ever since cavewomen coveted the caveman with a two-bedroom cave with Jacuzzi in Yellowstone Park. But at least a relationship WAS involved, there for a while. The anonymity of the Internet makes these scams against lonely people into a global enterprise rather than a mere cottage industry.

Nothing wrong with Internet dating, as the pool of eligible singles in your "crowd" gets smaller the older you get. It's just another tool, and can be helpful (I know at least three happily married couples who met online), but you need your eyes open and your BS meter running, as always. Which is, of course, hard when you are blinded with love/lust. (Ask Sir Paul....)

Yeah. Talk to me after dowries and bride prices and marrying-the-daughter-of-your-boss and marrying the divorced/widowed heiress have been done away with.

Although really this story has NOTHING to do with the comments here by jeebery, healthyskeptic, or brightstar. It's about PROFESSIONAL CON ARTISTS operating out of Nigeria, a well known source of internet crime. Who hasn't gotten those e-mails about how some Nigerian diplomat's son has $9 million in unmarked bills and wants to share half with YOU? LOL? These scam letters are sent by the billions to almost everyone on the internet; it has nothing to do with your gender or your weight or divorce laws. Tracy is just talking about a new (and very cruel) variation.

What happened to you, healthyskeptic? Did a fat person scare you when you were a toddler or something? Do you sit there online, just waiting for an opening to attack people who YOU DO NOT KNOW and who have DONE YOU NO HARM? There was absolutely NOTHING to do with obesity in this Broadsheet item, and yet you are inferring that "anyone" who uses internet personals MUST be obese (???). What do you base this on?

I haven't dated since before the internet was born, but I have friends that use online dating services -- none of them are obese. I've sat with them while they purused the listings on their various sites (e-Harmony, Match.com, etc.) and actually most of the people listing there are reasonably attractive. This is NOT a method of dating exclusive to the ugly or overweight! Sites like e-Harmony screen applicants extensively and have methodologies in place to reject people who are obviously squirrely, very depressed or unattractive (actually, I think this is harsh, but it is the way e-Harmony works).

Since all dating sites incorporate photos, it's much less possible to "hide" unattractiveness or obesity than it was in the days of blind newspaper personals, so the system as it is today is somewhat self-editing.

The mean-spirited idea that anyone who is alone must be a hideous "dog" with a severe weight problem and anti-social behaviors is a pathetic and cruel stereotype. It certainly does not take into consideration the millions of people who are divorced, widowed or simply over 30 and not into barhopping or night clubs. It does get harder to meet potential partners as we get older, have kids, work all the time -- that doesn't make us anti-social and it certainly doesn't mean we are "fat".

What's scary to me is how people like healthyskeptic treat obesity not as a medical condition, but as a moral failing that must be "treated" with ridicule and derision (i.e., online daters only need to "go to a gym a few times" to get "fixed"). Never mind that we are not even talking in this article about obesity! But you can't miss a glorious opportunity to make fun of people who are less worthy than yourself!

As far as divorce law: I've said it before, but I guess I have to say it again....nothing in modern divorce laws in the US or UK "give everything to the woman". I have no idea where you losers get this idea (notice that Brightstar himself, a great critic of divorce laws, has never even been married let alone divorced!). It's simply, factually untrue. Most women see their income fall drastically after a divorce. Alimony is fairly rare these days -- even if it is awarded, it is very hard to collect. Child support goes to the care of CHILDREN, it's not a windfall for the children's mother (and it rarely covers even half the cost of actually raising a child). Women do NOT typically "get the family home" (which for most of us is heavily mortgaged anyhow), and they get custody only because of most divorced men have no interest in being primary caretakers of their kids.

It's a little absurd to use Sir Paul as an "example" of divorce laws. For starters, he's a billionaire ex-Beatle -- not an average Joe. And Heather Mills was married to him for years and the mother of his young child -- do you seriously think she is entitled to NOTHING from the marriage? (I'm not even getting into why Sir Paul, who has plenty of lawyers no doubt, did not get a pre-nup.) I imagine that $48 million, though a vast sum to the rest of us, is just a small fraction of his total wealth. At any rate, this is a poor example of typical divorce as the couple were billionaire celebrities.

It would be nice if these Broadsheet threads could be remotely about the subjects posted, instead of being used as a forum by bitter, angry trolls trying to take potshots at their favorite targets.