If you're a single, 40-something woman who's wasted one too many bikini waxes on the wrong men, a message like this in your inbox might seem like a gift from Cupid.

"Hello Pretty!!! How are you doing? I'm Frank. From Virginia. But am New to the State's...The first thing that came to my mind when i saw your picture was..'WOW..you're drop dead GORGEOUS, that is why i'd took time to introduce myself... Well i am currently in west/coast africa working on a Casino project at this time... I have 2 weeks to get back to the state. if you are interested and you will like to talk some more."

So he's not the greatest writer. But you've recently figured out, thanks to many chats with girlfriends and your mother, that you've always been too picky anyway. That's why, at 43, you're still single.

You've also been at this online dating business for months, and though you've always sworn off anybody who wasn't local, you spent enough first dates at Ruby Tuesdays to reconsider.

You're a college-educated career woman. You don't need a man to fund those jaunts to Europe or help with the mortgage. But it wouldn't hurt to find one who could match your enthusiasm for the finer things—someone who's financially secure, thoughtful, funny, good-looking and, most important, crazy about you.

Frank Cotton? From his pictures he's a real beefcake. Tall, athletic, good-looking, employed. The kind of guy who loves life, traveling, working hard and playing hard, who just needs a feisty gal like yourself to share it all.

But right now, he's wooing you with his life story, the promise of far-flung locales and his favorite Van Morrison song, "Someone Like You." Over the next few months, he'll wake you up with romantic text messages and instant message you all day long. He'll ask about your day, laugh at all your jokes, and make you feel like the only woman in the world. You'll burn the midnight oil on the phone at night, where you'll learn about his dead parents, his inheritance managed by a stingy aunt, his passion for architecture, and his dreams of marriage and children. It all fits together with cinematic significance.

But one day, after weeks of romancing, he calls you, frantic. He's trying to ship some antiques out of the country and the export fees are exorbitant, but he's a little strapped for cash. He's embarrassed to ask, what with him being a successful architect with a sweet inheritance, but he'll pay you back immediately—and it's just this one time.

Only it won't be.

At the end of six weeks, your Casanova will drain you of a cool $7,000. And compared to the other women he's swindled, you're getting off easy. An Internet search for "Frank Cotton" and "Nigeria" leads to a site for the romantically scammed, where multiple posts share tales of the man who bilked them all for thousands.

It happened to Jill, a 43-year-old Nashville woman working in finance. That's not her real name—she's too embarrassed to tell her family about her astonishing naïveté, much less go public. With her shiny shoulder-length hair, voluptuous figure and well-tailored wardrobe, she looks every bit the part of the modern career woman you'd spot downtown sipping a chai tea while texting on her BlackBerry. It's hard to imagine that this fast-talking, bright-eyed woman with a casual sassiness could be so easily snowed by a schemer pulling one of the Internet's most notorious cons: the sweetheart scam.

It's a variant of the 419 scam, named for the Nigerian law code outlawing fraudulent practices that promise unclaimed millions in exchange for a little dough and a little risk up front. But thanks to the proliferation of online dating sites, now any lonely heart with a little bit of savings is a perfect mark for swindling. Only the big pot of gold isn't a financial investment. It's the hope of companionship, true love and marriage.

These lotharios create fake profiles on dating sites like Match.com or eHarmony, usually pulling photos from European modeling sites. Then they browse for women—single women with high incomes, particularly those who look vulnerable or were recently dumped. The kind of ladies desperate to have their faith in romance restored.

The backstories are eerily similar—a guy from the States is working in construction overseas. He's a successful entrepreneur who runs into a little bad luck. A passport error keeps him detained in the country. He can't cash his paychecks till he's back home. He often has bad money orders he needs you to cash for him, offering to let you take a little off the top for yourself.

The excuses may vary but the MO is the same: He needs just a little dough so he can get back home to meet you in the flesh—his princess, his dream girl, the most gorgeous, intoxicating woman he's ever encountered.

"I fell for this guy over the phone," Jill says. "He would say all these sweet nothings that I totally wanted to hear. I'm 42, I've never been married and wasn't in a relationship. So I was like, 'Wow.' "

She sent $1,500 for the antiques shipment. The transaction went through, he was grateful, and they began planning his visit to see her. But he needed a little help with the plane ticket. His aunt was supposed to fund the trip, but she's been keeping a tight rein on his inheritance. He only needed another grand, and baby, you know he's good for it.

She dutifully went to a nearby Kroger to send him the money via Western Union. When the employees read the destination on the form—Nigeria—they asked her if she was sure she knew what she was doing. Of course, she told them. It was for a friend.

Ironically, her friends had recently told her about an Oprah episode concerning otherwise intelligent women who were scammed by Nigerians through online dating sites. She had laughed it off. "I just never in a million years thought it would happen to me," she shrugs. "I'm college-educated. I make six figures. I live my life cautiously."

Even her bank flagged the second transaction. She had to call and confirm that she actually intended to send another $1,000 to Nigeria.

Frank sent her his itinerary—a forwarded email from the airline. Jill checked out the flights and they were real. Cotton was to call her when he changed planes somewhere in Switzerland.

Instead, she got an email the next day asking her to please call immediately.

"He said that when he went into the country they messed up his passport and didn't stamp it right, so in order to get out he needed money," Jill says, peeved. "He was really upset, and he said he got into an altercation with whoever the authorities were. The story now sounds stupid, but this guy was good. He said they'd detained him at the airport and taken his passport and all his credentials. He hadn't even left Nigeria."

He only needed another $500.

By now, even the dimmest audience watching this horror film would be howling at the screen, "Noooo! Don't open the door!" But Jill still believed. It was those itineraries. It was the way he talked to her. It was how upset he seemed when he asked for money. It was the fear in his voice that he might get stuck in the country and never see her. Here was a good man she didn't want to pass by. No self-respecting woman wants to be a paranoid nag, so she takes her man's word at face value. The heart wants what it wants, and the head filters out any pesky incongruities that might thwart that picturesque portrait of true love.

Jill had even just received a phone bill in the mail for $3,400 in long-distance calls. Again, Cotton reassured her he'd cover it. So she sent him the last $500.

But when Cotton went to retrieve it, he called her and said the cash had already been picked up by someone else, and asked her to send more. You've got to be kidding, she told him, as her heart sank. She realized she'd been scammed.

"I was like, oh my God, you're screwed," she says. "You're never getting your money back."

She contacted Match.com. She called the FBI. "They were like, basically, you're an idiot. And you'll never see that money again," she says.

She filed a police report. But nothing ever came of it. She recently paid AT&T off, and months past the ordeal, she's like anyone who finds herself poring over the details of a love gone bad, looking for the signs of impending doom.

But strangely, she isn't bitter, even as her face contorts in anger while she recalls the details.

"I think about it all now and I'm like, 'What were you thinking?' I was always such a trusting person. Now I don't care who you are—you're getting a background check."

But you can still see her mind sifting through the memories of this man she thought she knew. This literary creation who duped her out of her hard-earned money. The traumatized brain tries to make sense of disparity any way it can.

"We would talk for hours," she recalls. "It was just so easy to talk to him. He told me I was gorgeous and everything I ever wanted to hear. Never would I think he wasn't legit."

Still, she's back on the horse, but this time she's looking for love in the real world, in all its imperfect glory. "I only meet losers on Match. I'm not putting my profile back up on there."