In the beginning, circa 1998, a Nigerian immigrant was able to convince the welfare office for the City of Duisburg (Germany) that his father had a majority of interest shares in a South African diamond mine, but the Nigerian government had illegally seized and frozen his assets. He signed affidavits, and was given approximately $125,000 as a loan for obtaining legal means to release his assets.
Assets that he never had. They were fictional. And then word got out that if Germans will lend you money that easily, then anyone would.
That was the first spam wave - begging letters for the frozen-asset-diamond mines in Africa.
Then they discovered lonely middle-aged women on Friendster would give them money. And then they discovered this worked so much better on MySpace.
Fortunately they had problems setting this game forth on Facebook, although in the meantime, the East Europeans and Turks are trying it. Doesn't work at all on Google Plus or Linked-In.
They even tried bogus pet adoption for a while, but that made the news, and was short-lived.
Now they have discovered BDSM social networking.
So a word of precaution - Scammers are posing as fake Masters/Mistresses and slaves. They have already figured out that Master/Mistress is very hard to pull off, so they concentrate particularly on Dommes, Domme Switches or potential Domme Switches.
This is not always the case. Some of them pose as Masters, but they are pretty easy to spot. They'll write things like, "Get down upon your knees for grossly in overstepping your to me bounderies. You errant bitch!" in their "introductory" letters. Master is hard to pull off.
Submissive is a little harder to spot. Someone whose blog I enjoy wrote about this topic:
http://dumbdomme.com/2013/01/submissive-male-nigerian-email-scam.html
This is just a precaution to Dom/mes and Switches here at Lush, because recently I received this letter from an unnamed member:
Subject:
so interesting
Message:
hi
even if i am submissive that sometime switches, and even if we are on lush( and we all know what this means) i am writing to you because i red your bio and your so long list of interests, and i like them very much.
i like your bio
i like you interest lists
this made me write you and trying to know you better beside the possibility to lush together.
i think that before our fantasies we are persons, and the person i red of is a person i like.
why dont take the chance to know somebody i might like?
Normally I never disclose any letters to the public that I receive, but this letter just smacks of Nigerian scammer.
In closing, I am certain that the Lush Staff will do everything in their power to prevent these criminals from ruining this site, but you should be aware that not every online sub is "for real". Please use precaution, and report abuse.
Advanced Wordsmith
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Si vos postulo me, sed non vis me, oportet me manere.
Sed si vis me, sed non vos postulo me, oportet me abire.
Sed si vis me, sed non vos postulo me, oportet me abire.