Tinder has become the number one dating and meeting point for people all over the world. While it will primarily pair people who live in the same area, those willing to pay a premium can change their location to “physically” be anywhere in the world.
In fact, you don’t even need to upgrade to Tinder Gold or Tinder Pro; you can just use a VPN and get teleported to somewhere on the other end of the world.
With Tinder, anyone can take on the identity of someone else and chat with people from across the world. Some might ask, but what if the person I am chatting with has a verification badge?
Well, I would like to inform such a person that Tinder’s verification process is just a hoax. They don’t check anything, and a black person can verify that they are a white person.
But what if the app says my match is a few miles away from me?
Well, at the point when a Nigerian scammer uses a VPN to “relocate” to another place, the tinder app is going to record a nearby location, falsely telling a potential victim that the fraudster lives in the same location as them.
So, you cannot trust that the person you are chatting with right now is in the same vicinity as you. The advice I will give you is not to get carried away. Test the person’s knowledge of the city you are in. Ask them about specific locations or events that occur in the city that mostly locals would know.
How a Nigerian would scam you on Tinder
The people who perpetrate this scam usually have a phone dedicated to searching for potential victims on Tinder. They only log into Tinder using a VPN, and they would never ever use that same phone to search for dates in Nigeria.
You must understand that a tinder scam is not so different from any other type of scam. The most important thing they need to pull off the scam is to be able to get that initial access and generate that initial “vibe” with you.
Once the scammer has been able to generate some rapport with you, They usually send you pre-written messages first thing in the morning. These messages are usually “love text messages” copied from the internet. The scammer calls you “baby all the time. She sends you her nudes, of course. Those nudes usually don’t have her face, which could very well be the nudes of someone else.
The scammer could be posing as a sexy 24-year-old on Tinder who is looking for men who are trying to date someone way out of their league. These males are usually over 40 years old, as it is normal that most guys will only begin to make it when they hit 40.
So men who are divorced or men whom society might view as being “socially awkward” are now suddenly finding loads of love from this angle online.
The Consistency
So whatever you want about Nigerians, you have to give it to them with the level of consistency they put into these scam ventures.
Our sexy young lady soon starts sending love emojis to this older man and promising to do dirty things to him when they finally meet.
The bait
However, this lady, who had posed as an NGO worker, suddenly received a job transfer letter. She has to go somewhere in Africa for work. She promises you that nothing will change and that she will always be in touch.
But before she does that, she asks you guys to migrate the chat to WhatsApp or Instagram. Of course, you are eager to add her on IG in order to see all those other sexy photos. Only if you knew that 90% of her followers are fake.
Yeah, it basically cost less than pennies to buy up a bunch of followers.
The scam
So here is this woman you plan to meet in the near future, staying under the sun and taking pictures with African kids (pictures that she took off the internet).
But is it only a matter of time before she tells you that she is not getting any younger and would like to take things seriously? Actually, she doesn’t need to make the first move; you would have been given enough green light to make the move yourself.
So, she tells you how she dreams of being in your hands by winter. But then, there is an issue. She is out of money because the NGO is having financial issues. And she loves her job too much because putting smiles on the faces of the kids is the most beautiful thing in the world to her.
Soon she tells you that she can’t meet the rent and that if you could help pay for a couple of months, But you are already playing the boyfriend role and, perhaps, the husband role. So, you jump on it and offer to save your princess.
Then she loses her phone. Then she got malaria and was in intensive care (yep, white people legit go into ICU from malaria bites alone). Then she gets hungry. Then she needs to send some money to her mom with a disability.
But finally, it is time for her to come back. Then she tells you she needs money for flight tickets. And then the flight got canceled and she was stranded at the layover airport.
All through this scam, these guys usually have genuine documents to back up their claims.
This is the anatomy of a Nigerian tinder scam.
Author
Abbey Johnson has a Masters degree as an engineer and has over 3 years of teaching and research experience. He is happiest when on a bike and is also interested in electric energy and computer Science.