Relationship Scams or Catfishing!?

Relationship Scams are scams that involve two people and one of the partners is lying about their actual attributes or physical appearance. They try to get involved with the other partner when he/she may not know what they are really like. An example of this incident can be when a “China man sued his wife for being unpleasant after he discovered she had had a $100,000 worth of plastic surgery before he met her” (Gordon, 2013). It was reported that that the man was surprised after the couple’s daughter was born and did not understand why she was unpleasant since both he and the wife were good-looking (Gordon, 2013). He later found out that the wife had surgery to make her look more appealing, which he later sued her for “lying” to her and marrying him under dishonesty. 

Another word for relationship scams can be tied into Catfishing. Catfishing can be described as “creating fake profiles on social networking sites by tricking people into thinking that they are someone else” (Peterson, 2013). An example of Catfishing can be of the man in Algeria who sued his wife for being less attractive without makeup. “The morning after their wedding, the man said he was shocked to see his wife’s natural face” (Ronnie, 2015). The man claimed to have said that she looked beautiful and attractive before the marriage, but when she woke up the next morning and found her with no makeup on he was frightened by her and thought she was a thief (Ronnie, 2015). This can relate to a relationship scam because one could say that she altered her face with extreme amount of makeup from what she actually looked like.

Catfishing can be used as a source of revenge, loneliness or even boredom. People may use catfish because they have been betrayed by someone else who meant a lot to them and because of that reason they may take it as a chance to get back at someone. However, revenge may be a cause for Catfishing, but one of the biggest reasons why people catfish is because they don’t feel confident in whom they really are so they pretend to be someone they are not (NA, 2014). Furthermore, usually when people pretend to be someone else and talk to other people over the internet, they start falling for the person they started an online relationship with and they become scared to reveal themselves. “If a catfish does come clean to the other person, it can create a lot of trust issues, since the relationship was not build on total honesty” (NA, 2014). In conclusion, relationship scams have a lot more debt than just pretending to be someone else including emotional and physical elements related to it.

 Getting Caught by a Catfish – www.loveisrespect.org. (2014). Retrieved February 19, 2016, from http://www.loveisrespect.org/content/getting-caught-catfish/

Gordon, R. (2013). This Man Was Able To Successfully Sue His Wife For Being Ugly To The Tune Of $120,000. Retrieved February 16, 2016, from http://elitedaily.com/news/world/man-china-wrong-suing-wife-ugly/

Peterson, H. (2013). 'Catfishing:' The phenomenon of Internet scammers who fabricate online identities and entire social circles to trick people into romantic relationships. Retrieved February 19, 2016, from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2264053/Catfishing-The-phenomenon-Internet-scammers-fabricate-online-identities-entire-social-circles-trick-people-romantic-relationships.html

Romance ScamsThe Official Romance Scams Website. (n.d.). Retrieved February 19, 2016, from http://www.romancescams.org/

Ronnie, T. (2015). Man Sues Wife For Being Ugly, After Seeing Her Without Makeup For The First Time. Retrieved February 19, 2016, from http://www.howwe.biz/news/WeirdAndShocking/7883/