Romance scam on bumble

I recently experienced this one on Bumble. I was traveling internationally. To pass time, I decided to see if I could meet someone on bumble. I had a few matches but one girl quickly latched on to me and very soon after the first few messages she asked to continue the conversation on whats app. 

From my perspective i thought sweet, that was easy. But indeed, it was too easy. While on whats app, the same night she asked me to call and we spent 2 hours on the phone. The conversation started nice, but as we got deeper, she started to tell me a lot of stories about the many unfortunate things she had experienced in life. At this point she didn't ask for anything. And the conversation ended. 

The next day, she called me and texted me the whole day. I told her i was busy doing the some holiday activities but she insisted to have another call in the night. This call again took another 2 hours with the stories getting even heavier.

Eventually we decided to meet and I met her and took her to lunch in a relatively well known area. She kept looking around the entire time, as if she was hiding from somebody and it was there that she asked me for some money to help her out. In the end, the amount was north of 500 dollars and given the moment and the desperation i saw in her eyes i acquiesced and actually agreed to this. Dumb, i know!

The next day I tried to send her the money but my bank actually denied it. As the days went by, I met a group of local dudes who explained to me that these romance scams happen on bumble often and they I might have gotten myself in one. She tried to contact me a lot after that and it eventually got too much. But I consider myself lucky that i managed to make it out of this one relatively clean.