'Pregnant’ for 15 months' Cryptic Pregnancy Scam: How Miracle Fertility Treatments Prey on Vulnerable Women

Cryptic pregnancy" is a new scam that has been posing a problem by exploiting womens' vulnerable desires to become a mother. The scam offers miracle fertility treatments that charge extortionate fees but have nothing to offer. Scammers often pose as legitimate doctors or fertility specialists, suggesting to women that they can achieve pregnancy through some unique methods. These treatments mostly are elaborate frauds designed to leave families financially devastated.

The following is one example of this scam's impact: from Nigeria, where women wishing to have a child are fraudulently targeted. They get hundreds, if not thousands of dollars for miracle treatments. Women like Chioma, who spent years trying to conceive, are sold false hope through injections, pills, and supposed fertility boosters. In Chioma's case, after receiving these treatments, the claim made was that she was pregnant and that the baby was growing outside her womb-an impossibility according to the science of medicine.

This places a huge economic cost on patients. Patients receive multiple treatments, which can range from hundreds to thousands of dollars. For example, one "cryptic pregnancy" clinic charges women $205 for the first treatment but then requires additional payments for scarce drugs used to "deliver" the baby. This high cost can add up rapidly, leaving families in a debt trap.

The economic loss is even more massive if considering more general implications that result from the scam. One of them is social pressure on most women to conceive, especially in countries where infertility is often stigmatized from society. Desperate to conceive, they may sacrifice their entire savings or obtain loans for these supposed miracles of treatments without knowing anything about the scams involved. Even worse, the fraudsters often encourage silence, cautioning women not to consult other traditional doctors, which only worsens the isolation of the victims.

The infrastructure for the scam is a web of deceit, using social media and online groups to spread disinformation around cryptic pregnancies and miracle fertility treatments. Scammers often target people in online communities, where desperation meets vulnerability, offering them a glimmer of hope at a steep price. This fraudulent network feeds off the emotional and economic vulnerabilities of its victims.

In the end, the "cryptic pregnancy" scam does emotional and financial destruction. The women who trust these false treatments are emotionally destroyed but now suffer from crippling debt. Until stricter regulations and public awareness campaigns are introduced, scams like this will continue to take advantage of vulnerable women and their desperate desire for motherhood.

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