You would be surprised, your 2nd point sorta happened to me, funny fucking story. I worked at a store that had Western Union and one evening a guy comes in and sends money to Russia. People send money all over the world all the time so I thought nothing of it. About 20 minutes later another guy comes in to send a W.U. to Russia and the name looks the same. This seems too odd to me, I pull the paper work on the first and sure enough only the last letter of the last name is different. So I mention to the guy sending about the other transfer. He goes "oh maybe it's a common name, it can't the same female" and tells me a story about how a woman who's studying to be a doctor and is trying to come to the USA and he wants to help her. I'm not convinced at all so I call the 1st guy. I ask him about the person and sure enough the same story.I tell him about #2 who's in the process of sending. He comes right back to the store and we cancel out the transaction. The 1nd guy talks to the 2st guy, but he's refusing to believe he almost got took and says the chick's for real. lol. 1st guy laughs and thanks me for saving him $800. The other still wanted to send the money (no lie) He was in super denial mode.
Talking to both at the same time, neither had told her exactly where they live outside of saying California. I'm sure she had no idea, I've wondered since so many times what the hell are the odds that 2 people in in the same medium sized city would decide to send the same scammer chick money from the same store on the same day 20 minutes apart. The store wasn't the closest WU location to either of them. When I called W.U. they looked up the name and found a dozen or so other men who were all sending around $800 to help this Russian chick come to the US. lol