Romance Scams

How It Works

1. Someone contacts you on a dating app, social media, or through a message
2. They build a relationship over weeks or months
3. They seem perfect: attentive, loving, interested in you
4. They can never meet in person (military deployment, overseas work, etc.)
5. Eventually, they have an emergency and need money
6. The “emergencies” continue until you stop paying
7. They disappear when you can’t pay anymore

What It Looks Like

The relationship:

• Intense flattery and attention from the start
• Quick declarations of love (“I’ve never felt this way before”)
• They want to move off the dating app quickly
• Can never video chat (“camera is broken,” “bad internet”)
• Always has an excuse for why they can’t meet
• Seems too good to be true

Common stories:

• Military deployed overseas
• Working on an oil rig
• International business person
• Doctor with an aid organization
• Wealthy but temporarily unable to access funds

The money requests:

• Medical emergency
• Travel costs to finally meet you
• Business problem or investment opportunity
• Legal fees
• Customs fees to receive a package
• Being robbed while traveling

Red Flags

• Never able to video chat or meet in person
• Story has convenient obstacles to meeting
• Professes love very quickly (weeks, not months)
• Has repeated emergencies requiring money
• Gets defensive, upset, or guilt-trips when questioned
• Photos look like a model or professional shots
• Life story sounds like a movie
• Eventually asks for money, then asks again

How to Protect Yourself

Verify their identity

• Reverse image search their photos at images.google.com or tineye.com
• If the photos appear elsewhere with different names, it’s a scam

Insist on video chat

• If they keep refusing, that’s your answer
• Scammers use stolen photos and can’t appear on video

Never send money to someone you haven’t met

• No matter how compelling the story
• No matter how long you’ve been talking
• No exceptions

Talk to friends and family

• They can see red flags you might miss
• Scammers try to isolate you (“don’t tell anyone about us yet”)

Trust your instincts

• If something feels off, it probably is
• If they seem too perfect, they probably aren’t real

The Psychology

Romance scammers are experts at emotional manipulation. They:

• Study your profile to seem perfect for you
• Build genuine-feeling emotional connections
• Use love and guilt to override your judgment
• Create urgency to prevent clear thinking

Falling for this doesn’t mean you’re foolish. It means you’re human, and someone deliberately exploited that.

If You’ve Been Sending Money

This is hard, but important:

1. Stop all contact and payments
   • Block them everywhere
   • Don’t respond to “one last” messages
2. Talk to someone you trust
   • You’re not alone
   • You’re not stupid
   • Millions of smart people have been victimized
3. Report it:
   • FTC ReportFraud.ftc.gov
   • FBI IC3
   • The platform where you met them
4. Consider talking to a counselor
   • Romance scams cause real grief and trauma
   • Processing the betrayal is important

Financial recovery steps: I think I was scammed →

Remember