Online lonely-hearts scam is costing Britons millions of pounds

Single Britons looking for love on online dating sites and in lonely hearts columns are being duped out of hundreds of millions of pounds every year by fraudsters from West Africa.Gangs in Nigeria and Ghana are creating fictitious online profiles with photos of attractive men and women and sending hundreds of thousands of e-mails and letters each month. The scam has been going on for years, and the problem has become big enough for the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca) to send officers from its Anti-Kidnap and Extortion Unit to West Africa to help train police there.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7141462.ece