Romance fraud is an epidemic that has grown massively, especially around the time of the pandemic, and there are a lot of victims of this heinous crime all around the world. Although a relationship with a scammer is not a real one, the scammer will bend over backwards to manipulate their victim to make it seem or feel real because their success depends on the victim’s belief that they are in a real relationship. Romance scammers will construct a fake relationship in the following stages…
The Stages of Romance Fraud
In 2013, Professor Monica Whitty developed a seven-stage model to explain online romance fraud and published her findings in the British Journal of Criminology. The information below is based on Professor Whitty’s model and my personal experiences with romance scammers.
Profile Creation
Romance scammers create multiple fake accounts on social media and dating sites. They use stolen photos of doctors, surgeons, public figures, engineers, pilots, boat captains, military personnel (generals, soldiers, marines, even diseased military personnel), offshore workers, celebrities, etc. Sometimes, they use their own faces, and sometimes they use ordinary people’s photos to scam unsuspecting individuals.
Because these fake accounts are built in one day, their social media posts tend to be published either on the day the accounts are opened or within a few days.
Sometimes, scammers take control of ordinary people’s accounts by hacking. In this case, the account will look old, and the friends list will already be established. Additionally, since most work in groups, they add their scam partners’ fake accounts to their friends list.
Targeting Victims
After creating fake profiles and getting their stories right, romance scammers actively search for victims or ‘clients’ as they call them. Online dating websites and apps may do the ‘matching’ based on preferences. However, on social media, they may start following certain pages or businesses to find their victims from their lists of followers. For example, my own scammer was following Menopausal Mayhem Mothers on Instagram. Why would a man follow anything that says menopause?
Once they make initial contact with a victim, romance scammers immediately try to take their conversation elsewhere, to a platform other than the one on which they have found the victim.
These are the most common platforms romance scammer will want to take their victims to:
- Google Chat
- Messenger apps such as Facebook Messenger or Telegram
- Skype
Let me explain the reason behind this: if romance scammers meet their victims on a dating app, they would want to avoid the safety measures these apps and websites have in place. If they meet their victims on social media, they would still want to keep in contact with their victims in case of account closure.
Grooming
Once initial contact with a victim has been made, the “relationship” now continues with a grooming phase, in which the fraudster learns about the victim’s life, especially their vulnerabilities, and builds trust. Most victims described this phase as ‘quite intense’.
During this grooming phase, scammers do:
- Profess their love for the victim
- Shower the victim with excessive compliments
- Put the victim on a pedestal
- Show constant attention
- Make soulmate claims
- Make immediate promises about the future and demand commitment from the victim as well
Some scammers send small gifts to their victims, such as teddy bears, a box of chocolate or flowers. They do this to build trust. However, there is a dangerous side to this. If the scammer is part of an organised crime group, this means they have their own people living in the victim’s country. After the scam is over, they may come back and blackmail the victim now that they have their address. These organised crime groups are also experts in money laundering, and they use romance scam victims as money mules.
Romance scammers may also request small favours in return, such as gifts. These gifts may be as small as perfume, a gift card, a mobile phone, or a laptop. This allows them to test the water. In other words, they check to see whether the victim is likely to be susceptible to the inevitable time when there is an “emergency” requiring that the victim send a substantial sum of money.
The grooming process also focuses heavily on isolating the victim from their friends and families. When victims share what their friends and family members think about the scammer, the scammer often urges the victim to question other people’s motives. Another reason that romance fraud works is that the scammers tell the victim what the victim wants to believe.
The Sting (Asking for Money)
The grooming process may take a few weeks or as long as a year, and it ends only when the scammer decides that the victim is attached and ready to send money. This is when the scammer asks for a large amount of money.
Romance scammers fabricate tragic situations that can impact the victim’s feelings of sympathy. For instance, they claim they are in an emergency, a tragedy, or difficult circumstances.
Now, let’s have a look at what these criminals request money for:
- Medical Bills
- Plane Tickets
- Taxes for packages to be released from customs
- Internet data for texting or video calling
- Birthday presents for their child or children (called birthday billing)
- Inheritance tax
- Increased costs of finishing a project
- Lawyer fees for having run into trouble with authorities in a foreign country
- Nanny or boarding school fees
Military Specific Reasons
- Early retirement
- Emergency transportation or supplies
- Military leave
Whatever the reason for requesting money from the victim, there will always be a sense of urgency associated with the situation, and the scammers put in a lot of effort to increase their odds of success. At the end of the day, they are professional criminals.
Coercive Control
Once a victim has complied with an initial request for money, scammers escalate the amount and frequency of their financial requests. They can use a range of emotional and psychological techniques to maintain their power and control, and this stage can be sustained for weeks, months, or years.
Sexual Abuse (Sextortion)
In small circumstances, some offenders will employ ‘sextortion’ in an attempt to gain further money transfers from the victim. This usually revolves around a threat to expose an intimate image or recording obtained by the scammer during the relationship. Referred to as ‘image-based sexual abuse’, this technique is not universally employed in all romance fraud cases.
End of Fairy-Tale
The relationship ends when the victim realises that the person who claimed to love them and they loved doesn’t exist, or the scammer disappears after taking the victim’s money. The victim now starts to grieve for the loss of an incredibly intense relationship, which is devastating to their emotions and finances.
Revictimisation
Research indicates that once a person has been successfully scammed, they are more likely to be targeted and further victimised. This can occur through a new scheme and a new set of scammers, or through a recovery scheme, where the scammer(s) pose as an official who can retrieve any funds lost to the initial scam. You can read about recovery scams here.