Nigerian dating scams (or romance scam), besides just asking for money for their sick relatives, etc.. usually involves this scheme: the scammers upload fake attractive photos, in most cases of white people. They pretend to be the foreign specialists working in Nigeria (usually from US, but it may also be Canada, UK or any other European country). After they establish some lovely correspondence with you, fall in love and maybe even send a couple of cheap presents, they will tell you that their employer pays them with Money Orders, and they can't cash them in Nigeria. They will send you the Money Orders and ask you to deposit them into your bank account and then wire the money to them via Western Union. Usually they say to keep some money for your trouble. Needless to say, those Money Orders are no good, and not even worth the paper they're printed on.

If you cash them or deposit them into your account, Money Orders will come back after few weeks as fraudulent and you will be responsible for paying back the money to the bank and sometimes even charged for passing counterfeit instrument. Read more about Nigerian romance scams in this article.

When we say "Nigerian scam", it doesn't mean it originates from Nigeria only. It may also originate from any other West African country, like Ghana, Ivory Coast, Senegal etc..

Where do scammers get their photos from? Most of their photos are taken from the modeling sites. The first thing you should do, go to this Hawaiian models website: Focus Hawaii, take your time and browse ALL galleries of their models. 90% of the images that the most active Nigerian scammers use are taken from this website. If you find the photo of the person who contacted you on that website, than you know it's a 100% scam. You don't have to go any further!

Unfortunately, they also take photos of innocent people form the dating profiles and start using them. You should always keep in mind: the photos you see on the scammers profiles ARE NOT the actual faces of people who are scamming you! It is very important to understand that you are NOT looking at the photos of scammers, those are photos of innocent people that scammers use, and in a way those people are victims too.

The scammers have many faces: not only they frequently change names, e-mails and photos, but they may list themselves on different dating sites as being of different gender, race, age, location and sexual orientationSometimes on the opposite: many scammers may simultaneously use the photos of the same person.

Other places where you can check if that person is a scammer:
1) Join Yahoo Romance scams group. This is a wonderful group with wonderful people, they have many scammers listed there, and you can always find help and support with this group.
2) You may also want to join Anti-scammers Yahoo group. This is a new group dedicated to Nigerian and Russian scam, the guys are doing the great job.
3) DotSilver scam list. These guys do an excellent job listing Nigerian scammers. There are many Russian scam and 419 scam lists out there, but unfortunately almost no Nigerian romance scams list. DotSilver is the only site that we've seen so far that actually tries to make a difference and maintains the updated Nigerian romance scammers list. Search their huge database, if your scammer is not listed over here, he may be listed over there.
4) Yerwho scammers directory, which lists scammers Yahoo IDs.