Last night NBC aired it's latest Dateline investigation to catch_an i.d. thief which reveals how overseas scammers are able to use stolen credit card numbers to purchase merchandise in the U.S. and get it shipped overseas for free with little chance of ever being tracked down. The linchpin in this scheme is a U.S. resident who has been duped into accepting shipments of merchandise to their home and then reshipping the merchandise overseas at their own expense.

Without the duped U.S. resident the scheme falls apart. So who are these people? Obviously, they are naive and gullible, but what the Dateline investigation shows, they are also looking for love. Scammers finds their patsies in chat rooms where such people go to search for what's missing in their lives. A scammer may be working several targets at a time using the same lines and photos. At some point the target believes they have found their future spouse and is now willing to help them out in their business shipping merchandise overseas. Of course it doesn't make sense to most people, but there are some among us who open and order products from SPAM, or believe they can get rich by sending money to someone overseas, or falls in love with an internet induced figment of their imagination.