I joined e-harmony in August. I posted a profile and in October began communicating with a match that eharmony provided to me. He was a "soldier" in the Army in Afghanistan. I was unaware of romance dating scams. I am a legitimate user and did not know that identity theives target stupid lonely women on these sites. I have been separated/divorced since 2006 and had not dated anyone or used dating sites. Eharmony tv ads hooked me on using their site to meet someone "perfect" for me. I am educated. I am beautiful, not a lonely-heart old maid looking type. I am familiar with the military. My ex-husband was an Airforce Colonel. This man was very slick and had multiple pictures of himself and seemed very legitimate. I communicated with him for several months before he had his hooks in me. When I was "in love", he and then started milking me for money etc. He was very good... He was sick. He was sent to a hospital in Germany, then London for an eye specialist. I bought a plane ticket to London, then cancelled it and had to buy another when he was transferred to Walter Reed.
I travelled from Seattle to DC to get to him when he arrived at Walter Reed. I waited all day as the chopper loads of wounded came in all day and he still wasn't there. With suitcase in their lobby I waited and waited for news of him. At 9:00 pm I finally went and got help from the Colonel there and discovered I had been scammed. I was devastated. I nearly took my life because of all the money I lost and humiliation. I stayed in my hotel room for 3 days without coming out because I couldn't quit crying.
Eharmony could easily get rid of some scammers by requiring some kind of id verification when people sign up. They could also do some sort of IP address check on subscribers so that if their IP address does not jive with their identity, they would not get approved for subscribing. They could have also educated me about scammers when I signed up as part of the subscription process. Eharmony was glad to take my money and so was Western Union and Money Gram.
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