The Nigerian scammer targeted Brits and Americans and conned dozens out of £56,000 using a book called How To Make White Women Fall In Love With You Online before he was finally caught

A Nigerian man who conned dozens of British and American women out of more than £50,000 has shared a step-by-step guide to manipulating women online, despite insisting he is now living the ‘good life’ at a fraud prevention agency.

Christopher Smalling, 25, told how he had lied to women for six years to get them out of the tens of thousands and no longer felt guilty when he realized he could become rich.

“I used to feel bad, but as time went on and I started making good money – a lot of money – I didn’t feel bad anymore,” he told Sky News.

His heartless scam led to an elderly American woman coughing up $20,000, sending her into a depression that tore her family apart.

Now Smalling has published a handbook titled ‘How to Make a White Woman Fall in Love with You from Online Chat’ – a forty-page guide to malice and manipulation, he says is routinely used by Nigerian scammers to cheat unsuspecting people out of their hard-earned money.

The book, whose author is not named, pulls no punches and reads like a military field manual: cool, calculating and utterly focused on the task at hand, describing victims as ‘targets’ and instructing its users with ruthless efficiency .

The opening line reads, “When it comes to appealing to white ladies, you must understand that they are different from Nigerian ladies,” and immediately directs the reader to target vulnerable women over the age of forty.

‘The types who fall in love with you as quickly as possible without much stress. Go for people over 40 – they work and therefore they have the money you need.

“Also because they are single at forty, they long for love,” it says.

The book quickly delves into the smallest details and offers a series of scenarios and tactics that can be used to charm women from the first interaction with a complex web of lies.

It tells readers to analyze all publicly available information about the ‘target’, identifying personal details, hobbies, interests and key factors that can be leveraged to start a conversation.

And it offers an extensive list of pick-up lines, pick-up lines and jokes constructed to make the scammer seem light-hearted, charming and genuinely interested – but not threatening.

The entire guide instructs readers to write down all the information they gather from their targets so that it can later be used to manipulate them.

It also encourages the reader to occasionally ask more questions of the subject and show as much curiosity as possible, because “(white women) like to talk about themselves.”

“If you get them talking about themselves, they’ll think you care and they’ll fall in love,” it says flatly, before giving a list of 60 compliments they can use at any time in a conversation to help the victim to love.

Finally, the handbook instructs readers to take their time and never ask for money directly.

Once a manipulator has won the subject’s affection and trust, he is told to drop hints about financial problems or tell a heartbreaking story about how he himself lost money.

By broaching the subject of money in this way, the book says, victims will often offer money themselves, without even having to be asked.

Smalling says he was arrested in Nigeria when his scam was exposed, but was never prosecuted.

He also insists that he felt so bad after hearing that the American woman had become depressed that he came clean, and that the victim put him in touch with Social Catfish, a company that tracks and exposes fraudsters while informing people about warning signs.

Smalling now says he is working with Social Catfish as a consultant, and insists his experiences with his American victim have led him to change his ways.

But he has never had to answer for his crimes, nor has he paid any money back to his numerous victims.

As the manual Smalling used stated, older people are more likely to fall for so-called “romance scams.”

Lloyds Bank revealed in a warning ahead of Valentine’s Day earlier this week that the number of people aged 55 to 64 who reported losing money to online dating criminals will increase by 49 percent by 2023.

Romance scams involve fraudsters who lure their targets into an online relationship and then extort them for money. Victims typically lost an average of £6,937 to scammers.

Banks say these types of scammers stole £31.3 million in 2022, but Action Fraud believes the real figure is closer to £95 million a year as many victims are too ashamed to report it.

Men were slightly more likely to fall for a romance scam, accounting for 52 percent of the cases.

But women generally handed over more money; they lost an average of £9,083, compared to £5,145 for men, Lloyds found.

Those aged 65 to 74 were cheated out of the most money, with an average of £13,123.

Liz Ziegler, director of fraud prevention at Lloyds, said: ‘Targeting people looking for love is a cruel but unfortunately common way for fraudsters to make money. No good relationship starts with sending money to someone you haven’t met yet.”

More than four in five people who fell victim to a romance scam said they were duped by the criminals’ clever language, the way they were addressed or the intimate conversations they had – the very tactics and materials used in the scam. shared manual are described. by Smalling.

Such scams are by no means limited to dating apps.

Paul Davis, director of financial crime prevention at TSB, recently told the Home Affairs Committee: ‘We recently did some work in my team where we used our own personal profiles on Facebook to engage with 100 sellers and 100 items on Facebook Marketplace to come.

“Our assessment was that about a third of that was probably fraudulent.”

Mr Davis said he had also recently seen a case where a client with more than 30 years of experience had fallen victim to a romance scam.

He said: ‘These are complex techniques that the fraudsters use to convince people to do things they will later deeply regret, and we see that as a common theme across many scams.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult for us to counter the methods these criminals use.”

Referring to the criminals, Mr Davis said, from conversations with the victims: ‘It’s clear these are not lone actors, this is organized fraud.

‘Criminals specialize in different aspects of organized fraud and work together, in a similar way to a company or business in Britain, to steal our money.

‘It’s clear they operate all over the world and this isn’t just something a lonely individual can do in their bedroom in Britain.’