Hi,

He conforms to type. The fact that you can't see him or speak to him indicates he would sound and look like a Nigerian. You are right to be suspicious. But his money request will be right after he claims his contract will be up and before he will get on the plane. Mark my words.

When two real people are getting to know each other, what will happen is pretty unpredictable. Scam relationships, on the other hand, are entirely predictable, because their course of conduct is scripted. There may be variations in facts that don't mean much and in timing, but the whole scam relationship relationship is moving towards one thing: getting hold of your money.

The moment a stranger asks your for money is when you can be sure you're being scammed. But you don't have to wait that long if you can recognize the tell-tale signs of a romance scammer. Once you know those signs, you won't ever be fooled:

- the scammer reaches out to you on a dating or social networking website and he falls in love with you at first sight. His profile usually shows an attractive, well educated man with his own business and you can't believe your luck. What's important to you is important to him too, and you are sure you have found yourself a soulmate. If you/he is middle aged, he generally claims to be a widower with a son or a daughter.

- He moves in on you faster than a speeding bullet and sweeps you off your feet, rushing the relationship towards some kind of a commitment. He pulls you off the site where you met and tells you that he wants an exclusive relationship with you via webcam, skype, text, Yahoo messenger, etc. He talks of love, marriage, future and forever.

- He is in another country, not his own, (or he will tell you that he's leaving for another country soon) usually though not always Ghana, Nigeria or Malaysia for work as an engineer, a geologist, an architect or a construction or mining supervisor. He desperately wants to meet you as soon as his foreign work contract is up. He may even refer to you as his wife or fiancee, though you've never met.

- And as soon as he sees that you return his feelings, and right about when he is close in time to finally finishing up with his job and getting on the plane, the conversation suddenly turns from love to money and he has the first of an endless series of unfortunate events. He has an accident at work or a problem with his credit card, a theft at his hotel, or he's mugged on the street and needs you to pay his hospital bill, or his son comes down with something serious, or he has workers he must pay or legal expenses he must clear before he can see you. There are dozens of excuses, no one of them truthful. You can see a whole list of these excuses on this page.

- He will want your money wired via Western Union or MoneyGram, which is untraceable.

When a relationship proceeds like the above and the person is in Nigeria or Ghana, it's a scam each and every time. In a country like Nigeria where the average worker makes only $700/year, the thousands he gets from you can keep him on easy street for a long, long time. Scam is Big Business in West Africa. The FBI says Americans lost $50 million dollars to romance scammers this past year.

If the scenario above sounds familiar enough that you think you've got yourself a scammer. Just cease conversation with him. You owe him no explanation and he's not going to tell you the truth anyway. (Who gets a certificate for taking a job, incidentally? Just another forged Nigerian document) Report him to the FBI online at IC3.gov, the internet crimes complaint center. As you haven't been hurt, they may do nothing. But you want the data on file to help others not so lucky to spot the fraud early as you are. You can also alert the website where you found him so they can take down his profile.