PORTLAND -- Sweetheart scammers are using online dating sites to trick people out of thousands of dollars, including one Vancouver woman who wanted to share her story to help others.

"He was knowledgeable, funny, intelligent, carried on a good conversation and seemed like a nice guy," the single woman in her 40's from Vancouver recalled. She wanted to tell her story, but wished to keep her identity private.

The man who scammed her went by the name "catchmoore" on the dating site Match.com. After trading a few e-mails, he asked this woman to call him. It was a local number and he claimed to live in the Pearl District.

"He said he only moved to Portland six months ago and talked about running on the waterfront." Every night for weeks they chatted by phone and computer. Then right before they were to meet, the telecommunications company he worked for sent him to London to install cell phone towers. "He was overseas working and even gave me the company name, so I checked it out and it was real," she said.

The pleasant conversations continued and they made plans to meet at PDX when he flew home from London. But 8 weeks into this relationship, he told her he made a terrible mistake on the job while thinking of her. "He told me he ruined a cell phone tower and he had to replace it and it would cost him $200,000," said the Vancouver woman. The next day he asked her to wire him $20,000."

She didn't fall for it and he never contacted her again. She checked and "catchmoore" is already back on the dating site prowling for new potential victims.

She said that she worries he'll use pictures of her that she e-mailed him to set up another profile and start scamming men. Scammers like catchmoore can be tough to catch, experts said because his phone number may be local, but odds are, he is not. And most on-line scammers will never actually meet in person because they hide across international borders.

But the money can be tracked! Just need Federal Martials with the nuggets to go to the countries they hide in and get them!