Why are there so many Engineers looking for love.

Keep in mind that eH does not match based on occupation. They match based on answers to the questionnaire. There are no more single engineers, than in any other occupation.

I have been an engineer for a long time, and I used to buy into the stereotypes. But it's not really the occupation that shapes your personality. It's the people that you work with every day, the corporate culture.

Some engineers travel, but most don't. Some are nerdy, but most aren't. Just like in any other line of work. And engineering is a very broad line of work, there are many many different kinds of engineers and there isn't very much that they all have in common. Plus, as has been pointed out, it's a term that gets misused. People can take a 3 month class and pretend to call themselves an engineer.

Most of my matches seem to be in education and health care and law. And I can't really generalize anything from that.

Another note about the Nigerian Scammer: I saw a TV show on Dateline in late 2007 or early 2008 that covered this popular scam and it was reported to have been traced to a Nigerian attorney. He was said to have made a small fortune from this scam. However there was no mention of him being prosecuted. Perhaps it's not a crime in Nigeria or he's shielded since the victims are in the U.S. The point is that it's not an engineer that is carrying this out. He uses engineering rather than law as his career, perhaps to make it more difficult to be traced back to him.

The first time I was matched with him, he said he was a biomedical engineer. Then when I mentioned that I was completing a Master's in this, he said his Bachelor's was in civil engineering and that his work was related to this instead. On the 2nd match, he claimed to be a petroleum engineer. The point is that both times he was able to google information on these fields and respond eloquently enough to be believable. Obviously the 2nd time I reported him immediately when he traveled to Africa and followed the same patterns.

Another note is that if you place religion as a level of 10 in importance on your preferences, you have a higher chance of being matched with him. Since as was already mentioned above, they look for sympathetic people. The 1st time, I was so sympathetic, that even after I found out he was a scammer, I was worried that perhaps it dealt with an impoverished person in Africa that needed the money for food. I actually had a dialogue with him afterwards and was contemplating sending help, when my sister came across the Dateline TV news reporting on the scam and the amount of money made off of it.

On an upbeat note, the scammer writes beautiful poetry that almost looks custom written. So if you're really bored and love poetry then just play along, save them and print them out.

I do want to prevent this from happening to someone else, hence my long reply with details. Also know that the form of money transfer which he prefers is Money Gram. Just because you place money to be picked up at another Money Gram location in the US, does not prevent it from being picked up at a Money Gram location in Africa. The Money Gram customer support are also very well informed of this scam, luckily for me.

My conclusion to this whole fiasco, is that I'm sure any engineer who is interested in you would be more than happy to purchase RelyID. For only $5.95, it's a small price to pay to prove to your person of interest that you really are who you say you are. They asked me all kinds of questions about my student loan payments, prior addresses, etc. Stuff that only I would know. Scammers might have someone's stolen ID, but that's it, no other information. They wouldn't be able to answer the extent of questions required to get RelyID. Most engineers are logical people, so once you explain to them your fears about this popular scam, I'm sure they'd understand and purchase it.

I'm just wondering how these scammers pay for their membership. If they use credit cards from Nigeria and the scam is so popular, how is it that they can still acquire memberships?