I saw Mate1.com site on face book and as I have been widowed for 2 and retired for 3 years I thought it might offer me a chance to establish a long term friendship. I did not even compltete my profile and in fact chickened out at the last minute but for some reason I still got a list of women who were seemingly interested in my profile and I was asked to take a 3-day trial for £1.95; I thought I had nothing to lose. I noticed there were quite a number of girls in their 30's who were seemingly interested in my profile and I spoke to them on the Mate1.com site and most of them asked if I had yahoo messenger where it will be easier to chat and exchange photos. I created a yahoo messenger account just for that purpose. I received some quite stunning photos of young women, some in sexy inviting poses, who claimed to be interested in a serious relationship and the age gap between us did not seem to matter. On the profile of one of them, she described herself as Caucasian/white and her location was supposedly China, I was intrigued by that, Her explanation was that a friend of hers living in China had set up the account/profile on her behalf. She told me her father was Australian and had died and she was now staying with her mother, who is African, in Ghana. She was quite light in colour in her photos and did not appear to have a trace of African blood in her. I made the mistake of giving her my mobile phone number and I have been bombarded by calls and text messages since. Another one listed her location on her profile as Berlin but again her father had died and she was now living in Ghana with her mother and yet another claimed her father was from LA but she was living in Ghana with her mother, the Ghanan connection seemed to crop up time and time again. One of them claimed to be living in Toga with her mother and she sent me a picture of her and her mother, both very Caucasiann looking. Some of the photos from one girl in fact appeared to be of different persons.I spoke to 2 of them on my mobile and each time the voice sounded African and identical in tone, When I commented that her voice sounded African and did not accord with what i would have expected from her photos she said she had been living most of her life in Africa, that's why!! Another thing that aroused my suspicion was that I would receive get a long text suddently appearing, about them and all their wonderful qualities which was so obviously pre-prepared and been copied and pasted. When I challenged one of them on this, she denied that was so and said everything was spontaneous and came from the heart. Their written English was appalling I have to say. When I was checking my barclaycard statement, I noted that Mate1.com had taken a further £39.95 from my account!! I suppose i should put it down to bitter experience althougb baclaycard is conducting an enquiry into that. A few years ago I nearly fell for another scam to do with Euromillion lottery/Fifa and again the scam was from West Africa, Nigeria, this time. The lesson is to avoid anything on line that has aAfricaan connection and sounds too good to be true.