Scammers are at best time wasters and at worst criminal fraudsters, we all need to be careful whom we communicate with. A request for a skype vidoe call early on is a good idea, to see if they match their profile photo if they have one. They usually move to requesting money in some form very quickly, so at least you will not waste too much time before finding out if they are scammers, and you never send money to anyone you have only met online no matter what they tell you. If you do suspect a scammer always report them to the site so they can check them out, no harm done if they turn out to be genuine and you could save someone a lot of heartache as well as money.