How Smart Women Get Scammed by Transactional Tourism Boys

"She's so naive."

"How did she not see he was just using her?"

"He took all her money and disappeared; how could she not have known?"

Anyone who has watched 90 Day Fiancé and its seven American spinoffs has said some version of this out loud at the television. We watch a much younger, strikingly attractive man wooing an older woman he met on holiday, and we're sure we'd never fall for it ourselves. It's compulsively watchable precisely because it's hard to tell, even as an outside observer, whether we're watching real love or a slow, deliberate con. Some couples genuinely make it and go on to star in 90 Day Fiancé: Happily Ever After. Others are, painfully obviously to everyone except the person living it, being played for a green card, a paycheck, or both.

I rarely write about my own life on this site. I write about romantic hotels, desert luxury camps, and the more scandalous corners of travel dating. But today I want to talk about something I don't usually admit to publicly: how a smart, self-aware woman ends up vulnerable to exactly this kind of scam, and why the women it happens to are not the fools we assume they are.

The Part Nobody Wants to Say Out Loud

Most people are decent. Statistically, the overwhelming majority of us will never be scammed, robbed, or harmed while traveling, and when it does happen, it isn't because a man happens to come from a particular country. It can happen at home just as easily as abroad. I want to be careful here, because I genuinely dislike the lazy shorthand of "all Moroccans" or "all Nigerians" or any other sweeping generalization about an entire nationality. The truth is simpler and less comfortable: in every country in the world, women need to stay a little vigilant, without becoming cynical or assuming the worst of every man they meet.

The motto I try to live by is simple: keep your eyes open and your judgment intact. That doesn't mean you can't have fun, flirt, or embrace your own desirability while traveling. It just means going in with your eyes open about what could happen, so you're prepared either way.

I also want to say clearly that I know many women, close friends included, who have fallen in love with, and in some cases married, men they met while traveling, and who are genuinely happy. There are wonderful, sincere, loving men in Morocco, Nigeria, and everywhere else in the world. Good and not-so-good people exist in every country, and in my experience, who you attract often has less to do with geography and more to do with where you are in your own life at the time.

Why Travel Makes Us More Vulnerable, Not Less

Over the years I've taken several extended breaks from dating, what I call a "man ban," starting more than twenty years ago when a friend convinced me to go thirty days without contacting the man I was involved with, and without dating anyone new. I remember standing in the middle of Union Square in New York, genuinely panicked about what I would do with my time instead. That first month turned into a year. And at the end of it, I noticed something: the men I started meeting afterward were healthier, kinder, and better for me than the ones I'd been drawn to before.

What I learned from that experience, and from the ones after it, is that I tend to attract partners who match whatever emotional state I'm actually in. When I'm grounded, spiritually centered, and taking care of myself, I attract people on that same level. When I'm not, when I'm spiraling into negative thinking or avoiding my own life, I attract people who reflect that instability right back at me.

Travel intensifies this in a very specific way. A trip is rarely planned during a stable, contented stretch of life. More often, it's an escape from something: boredom, stress, loneliness, or in my case, often a period of genuine unhappiness with my circumstances. We don't book flights to ordinary places either. We choose exotic beaches, deserts, and cities, environments that already feel heightened and different from daily life. Add unfamiliar food, music, culture, and attention from people who find you genuinely novel and interesting, and you have a powerful emotional cocktail. The positivity and excitement travel generates can also make you more magnetic to the people around you, which only deepens the pull.

The Honest Part: Money, Attention, and Feeling Beautiful

Here's the part that's harder to admit. As a woman traveling on a limited budget, arriving somewhere like Jamaica, Nigeria, or Morocco can completely change your economic reality overnight. Modest savings can suddenly stretch to cover nicer hotels, better food, and a lifestyle that feels far more luxurious than what's affordable back home, even briefly.

And there's an emotional shift that happens alongside the financial one. Catcalling on a New York sidewalk feels exhausting and unwelcome. But walking along a beach in Negril, or through a market square in Marrakech, and hearing genuine, repeated compliments from attractive men who seem sincerely drawn to you starts to land differently. Eventually, some part of you starts to believe it.

I'll be honest about my own version of this: for most of my life, I believed I was deeply unattractive, not just a little insecure, but genuinely convinced of it. Somewhere in my fifties, spending time in Morocco is what finally started to shift that. I am fifty four, curvier than the American beauty standard I grew up measuring myself against, and for the first time, I actually feel beautiful.

I don't know for certain whether every compliment I've received from a much younger man abroad was sincere. Realistically, some probably were flattery aimed at money, a visa, or simply a fling, and some were likely genuine. I consider myself sharp, a tough, street-smart New Yorker who doesn't get played easily. But when a stranger tells me I'm beautiful, I choose to believe it, because I have spent my whole life wanting to.

I can't say with certainty whether anyone has tried to scam me, because I've never had much to give. I don't earn enough to sponsor a partner for a fiancé or spousal visa, and I typically travel on a tight budget, staying with friends or through Couchsurfing rather than paid accommodations. I've bought a stranger coffee once or twice, covered a meal for a family I met along the way, but nothing close to what it would take for someone to actually profit from me. That isn't virtue. It's simply that I haven't been a viable target. And that's exactly why I refuse to look down on women who have been scammed and call them naive. Give me a different set of circumstances, a bit more money or a softer heart at the wrong moment, and I can absolutely see how it could happen to me too.

What I Actually Believe

I'm fully aware of the privilege I carry as an American traveling on a relatively strong currency, and that some of the men I meet abroad are working with genuinely fewer opportunities: less access to education, stable jobs, or the basic financial safety net many of us take for granted. I've seen real hardship in India, Nigeria, Morocco, and plenty of places closer to home too. It's tempting, in the moment, to want to fix that for someone specific you've connected with, to bring gifts, cover expenses, help fund a small business. That instinct comes from a real place. It's also exactly the dynamic that can be exploited if you're not careful about where generosity ends and a one-sided arrangement begins.

Women who get scammed this way are not stupid. Often, they're women who already know, on some level, that they feel older, less desirable, or overlooked, and the validation from a stranger's attention, however manufactured, meets a real and human need. I know that a healthier, steadier sense of self-worth should come from somewhere more internal: a spiritual practice, gratitude, genuine self-acceptance, rather than a compliment from someone I met an hour ago. I'm still working on getting there consistently. But I also refuse to pretend that external validation doesn't feel good in the moment, or judge anyone else for needing it too.

The Takeaway

If you're traveling and someone seems too enthusiastic, too fast, especially someone who's declared his love before knowing your name, that's worth noticing, not necessarily dismissing outright, but noticing. Slow down. Let a real connection prove itself over time rather than a single, electric first conversation. And if you do find yourself pulled in fast, know that it doesn't make you gullible. It makes you human, and it makes you someone who, like the rest of us, is looking for a version of yourself you like better than the one you left at home.

There are genuinely wonderful people to meet in every country on earth. The goal isn't to stop believing that. It's to stay clear-eyed enough to tell the difference between a real connection and a well-rehearsed one, without losing your capacity for either joy or trust along the way.

Have you ever been scammed while traveling? Do you find yourself more drawn to romance abroad than at home? Or are you just here for the 90 Day Fiancé commentary? Share your story in the comments below.