Scamaroo review: Nigerian loverats nabbed, a Russian scam dating package and mistreated in Maryland

Lots of action recently on the dating scam front. Here's some of the latest and lowest, leading off with some good news for the New Year.

Two less fraudsters are in the online dating game. Reporter James Dunn of the Daily Mail in London reports that two Nigerian men are off to prison for swindling a recent London divorcee through Match.com. Among their methods: They relied on insights from the books The Game by Neill Strauss and For You, My Soul Mate to seduce the woman. The dating scam ward-off tips at right are from London's Metropolitan Police, via the Daily Mail.

Former Washington Post reporter Brian Krebs informs about a dating scam package is being marketed to Russian-speaking hackers in English and other languages in efforts to prey on lonely men. The vendor in this case says users who aeverage 30 scam letters a day can expect to haul in roughly $2,000 a week, according to the story.

Don Aimes of the Hagerstown, Maryland, Herald Mail reports that a Hagerstown woman pled guilty to extoring thousands from a man she met online by telling him she was underage after they had sex. Twenty-six-year-old Whitney Danielle Doleman could face up to a maximum 10-year prison term upon sentencing, the story said.

And here's a piece from The Advertiser in Australia about a man who got whacked for $176,000 through an online dating scam.

Several recent overview stories on romance scams offer tips on how to sidestep sweetheart swindlers. Some of those were tweeted through thedateinspector on Twitter or otherwise posted by us on our Facebook and gmail accounts.

Among some of the coverage worth catching:

• "Tips to avoiding romance scams," by KEPR TV in Pasco, Washington
• "Dangerous Liaisons: The risky side of online dating," a Martha T.S. Laham blog on the Huffington Post
• "A look into online dating scams reveals their ridiculousness," from Catalin Cimpanu of Softpedia
• "What is catfishing? A brief (and sordid) history," by  Ellen McCarthy of the Washington Post

Get more tips on how to avoid scams and con-sumers on the InspecaDate Safety Tips page. Also, follow InspectaDate on Facebook and Twitter for regular shares of scam and fraud news that may not always make it as a blog entry on this main blog.