Nicola Maria Vitola: The Geese That Lay The Golden Eggs

Mirta B. Bono

Romance Scams that break hearts

and plunder wallets

Original title:“Galline dalle uova d’oro”

Translated by Linda Thody

Copyright© 2017 Mirta B. Bono First edition: June 2017 StreetLib Write http://write.streetlib.com English edition 21 /04/2018 Translator: Linda Thody Published by: Tektime - www.traduzionelibri.it Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruffeRomantiche Twitter: https://twitter.com/mirta_bono e-mail: mirta.b.bono@gmail.com

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form, or by any mechanical or electronic means, nor photocopied or recorded, or otherwise disclosed, without the written permission of the publisher.

The geese that lay the golden eggs

For the women who know how to take care of themselves

and those who sooner or later will learn how to do so

Romance scams that break hearts

and plunder wallets

These are true stories. To respect the protagonists’ privacy, in some cases their names have been changed.

The title ‘The geese that lay the golden eggs' was chosen to emphasise the disdain with which scammers manipulate women's feelings to exploit them to their own advantage.

The contents of this book do not claim to be therapeutic but are intended to make women face up to a cruel reality of our times, and through the telling of stories and the dissemination of every possible means of defence, help them protect their hearts, hold on to their wallets and regain their self-esteem.

No offence, but it’s happened to us all, poor lonely women caught out by an online message which we’ve fallen for, some perhaps more than others. With our heart beating madly for that oh so handsome, charming, passionate man who’s noticed us, fascinated by our face in a photograph; won over by our story, or by the few personal details that the more reserved of us have only hinted at on our Facebook, twitter or other social network profile.

We can’t help it! Us women are romantic, and "friendly” to the point of absurdity. Friendly and willing to believe that finally cupid has smiled down upon us, noticed our most intimate desires for love and let fly his arrow.

It seems like a wonderful sign of fate that such a remarkable man is interested in us, a man in naval or military uniform. With an honest gaze, open smile, profound dark eyes or even light ones, it doesn’t matter. When we fall in love even the colour of the eyes is changeable, it matches the ideal image we carry around inside us. Remember Proust and the colour of the little Gilberte Swann’s eyes, who he meets as a child? He describes them of such a brilliant black as to give back a bright blue light, so that if the little girl had not had such dark eyes - writes Proust - he would not have been in love most particularly with her blue eyes.

It’s the meeting of desire and true likeness that fits our ideal image. The two pieces of a puzzle. What a coincidence! What luck, we think from that first contact with a few polite phrases from the fake American soldier. He’s even the right age for us! Somewhere between fifty and sixty, like so many lonely separated women, or widows, or divorcees, who before this lucky meeting had tried all the Meetics,dating sites , Badoos, where nothing ever came of anything, perhaps because of our aversion to the person who said he was 25 years younger than his real age, or the irremediable faults which led to separations from exes: wives, lovers, girlfriends. When my sister-in-law once asked me why I hadn’t rebuilt my life with a new companion, I told her it’s difficult finding the right person, because as we get older we become more demanding; we do not easily surrender our independence, and the men who approach us have already been left by their woman, probably because they’re flawed.

“Flawed?” replied my sister-in-law and she began laughing out loud repeating “Ah, flawed, flawed... what a description!”

But the same can be said of us too, what’s that got to do with it? On dating sites, we too describe ourselves in our Meetic profile, posting a photo on the net that was taken a few years after our first communion. Then we go to meet the poor guy in the hope that he won’t notice that the person before him looks like the grandmother of the beautiful girl in the photograph. So, what happens in these cases? The more courteous offer a coffee and say goodbye. The others ask you straight out to your face, "Why are you hiding your age? You can’t be forty! You must be at least twenty years older!”

“Well what about you? You’re supposedly only 55?" we might reply and get a brazenly optimistic response. “I’m sixty-four, but I look young for my age!”

Faced with such vanity, what should we do? I think it’s best to just forget about it. Or, out of pure revenge, we could recommend that our friend should at least buy a mirror to furnish his home.

How many Friday night encounters end with an argument, or perhaps a bad-mannered comment from a guy who seems aristocratic enough online, but then turns out to be more accustomed to the sort of company found down at the docks, not setting sail, but loading and unloading.

But let’s not be dramatic. Is the boor of the moment’s language distasteful? Then each of you better go their separate ways. At worst we can just ban him and put the whole story to bed!

Bluffing never pays. Not even a pizza together to make friends is allowed, when you meet on misleading premises. These are the risks of social networking. Moderate risks overall, until recently anyway: a bad impression, a disappointment, a missed invitation to dinner. Nothing more serious.

Nothing like the new trend of online virtual meetings between romantic ladies and lowlifes who set out to deceive mature women, with the single-minded ambition of getting their hands on the little, or large as it may be, nest egg which they imagine a person close to retirement will have set aside. They know all about the leaving bonus carefully hidden away in a safety deposit box, or perhaps even at home behind a tile? They know everything about us! And these sonnavabitches are clever. They use sophisticated techniques as if they really were the gentlemen they claim to be. They pull apart all our plans to defend ourselves against the "bad” guys, as though they were little Lego bricks, because they’re different, different to that loser of our neighbour’s ex-husband who woos us. Their (virtual) strong points are the appeal of a uniform, a distinguished profession, their status as a single man without ties, the adventure of it all, the courage involved, their financial resources. Because after all, we can all do the maths and perhaps even go online to see how much an American naval officer earns, or an Australian airman, or an English captain on ocean-going ships.

But we let our hearts rule our heads and as unsuspecting, romantic, dreamy women we don’t realise that they’re really very different to us. They’re not westerners but they do everything to seem as if they are. They learn how to act to turn a woman’s head. They watch lots of films, read romantic novels, and textbooks on how to conquer a woman. They pick up phrases, pleasantries, similes, which win the hearts of middle-aged women, even careful and intelligent ones. In fact, according to a statistical study, it seems the intelligence factor is always at a high level in these scammed women 1. Ghanaians, Nigerians or Malaysians, no matter where they’re from, the scammers use every tool the globalised world offers them to get to know the psychology, the dreams, the way of thinking of a western woman. Moreover, it’s by no means rare that the handsome man writing to us from the other side of the world is really another woman. Probably younger than us, but most definitely cunning and skilful. A professional organiser of Romance Scams, the sophisticated and lucrative love-affair scams.