Romance Scammer – How to Avoid Them?

A romance scammer is a person who uses fake social media accounts, dating platforms, messaging apps, and emails to build romantic relationships with unknown individuals and exploit them emotionally and financially. These scammers create convincing profiles to systematically approach their victims and get them involved in a romantic relationship. They drop hints to the victims, look innocent, and express love, affection and desire for the company to spend their leisure time with the victim.

These scammers use every course of action and emotional manipulation to win the trust and loyalty of their target. Once they successfully win their target’s trust, they use this relationship to extract money from victims. To do so, they make stories about emergencies such as medical costs, travel expenses or other such things. People who have already given in to the trap of romance scammers eagerly deliver whatever support they are asked for. By the time they realize the reality, it is too late.

Written by Waqar Khan
Published on July 10, 2024

What Are The Signs Of Romance Scam?

There is no denying the fact that online dating provides a convenient way to find a perfect match, and lots of people have found their special ones through these platforms. These successful stories have inspired millions of others to follow this simple and easy-to-access method to find the perfect life partner. But black hats and scammers have hijacked this method to promote their illicit gains. They have hijacked these online methods of finding people and building romantic relationships. They target older people and those who are going through problems in their love life. These sweetheart swindlers follow a common pattern to approach their target to seduce them to do whatever they want.

But if you are aware of these manipulative formats in advance, you will be able to outsmart the sweetheart swindlers easily. You have to find out their calculated love actions and social engineering tactics to stay ahead of them. Here are some signs that can help you identify a romance scam.

Seemingly Real Profiles

Sweet swindlers create fake profiles that seem real and appealing. They use catfish tactics in which they use other people’s photos and names to project an attractive image to lure the targets. They use photoshopped images of actors and models that appeal to the viewers. Their friend list contains few people, followers, and connections. The work location is located far from the place you live that they use to tell you that they live abroad, such as oil rig, military operation, or cargo shipping. If you find these signs and combinations on a profile, you are advised to act cautiously.

Quickly Moving To The Intimate Topics

Fraudsters quickly move to intimate topics when they communicate with their potential target. They seem excessively lighthearted, casual, and friendly in their chats with you. To keep this going, they start complimenting you and becoming curious about your personal life, hobbies, and activities you do on a daily basis. Within two to three chats, they express their deep intimations, love and special bond towards you. This love bombing exercise puts so much pressure on the victims that they find it difficult to ignore situations. If you come across these patterns, then take your next steps with care.

Urge You To Use Personal Channel

The very next step that these swindlers use is to urge the victim to use their personal number to talk to them. They will ask the victim to come on WhatsApp or direct message. This is a tactic to take the target away from the dating sites or online platforms to avoid the security barriers used by these sites. After this, they will ask for a mobile number, email address and work information. By and by, a person ends up sharing all the details about their personal life, and the scammer uses this information against them. Hence, it is highly recommended never to reveal everything about you to a stranger who is coming from a dating site.

Avoiding Face-to-Face Meetings

Romance scammers always avoid face-to-face meetings with the person they are talking to. They avoid video calls or physical interaction in the real world. Instead, they make excuses about this by telling their victims that they are not allowed to make video calls from the place they work or leave to meet the person physically. If this doesn’t work, they will say that they are afraid of being identified or tracked afterward, or they want to keep everything about them secret. Some will compose the story that they don’t look like the person in their real life as they are in the profile, so they are ashamed to reveal their physical appearance. But in reality, all these are tactics to avoid face-to-face meetings and hide the fact that they are imposters.

An Unbelievable Life Story

Sweetheart swindlers have an exceptionally tragic life story that is filled with betrayals, family conflicts, moral dilemmas, romantic breakups and migrations to different parts of the globe. All these events are used to evoke sympathy in the minds of victims. They always go back to these stories to make up excuses to evade the direct meetup. With these excuses, they keep you hooked on them and promise to meet you in person one day. When you come across such unique and exceptional tragic stories on your potential date, then know that these are red flags and that you are not in good company.

Asking For Financial Support

Once you have believed the stories and reasons about their personal life events, they will ask you for financial support. They will tell you about the emergency they are going through, or they are stuck somewhere they have no money to travel back home. In this situation, they approach you and ask you for financial help with the promise that they will meet you personally if you help them now. They will invoke the love and emotions they feel about you to emotionally blackmail you. You have to be patient in such an emergency situation and always make sure not to transfer money at any cost. These are situational formats that romance scammers use to scam you.

Here are some reasons you will get from online swindlers to pay for the money:

Pay for the plane tickets to travel back home.
Pay for the pending fees to get the bigger amounts or inheritance
Purchase a new device to talk to you secretly.
Settle old accounts to release the seized funds.
Invest in a profit-making business instantly.
To pay the medical bills or funeral charges of a family member.

How To Avoid Romantic Scammer?

Don't Move To Private Chat Quickly

Not moving quickly to a personal chat or private message is the first step that you should keep in mind when interacting with a stranger on a dating site or social media platform. Sticking to the platform is the best safety measure to avoid complications down the line. These platforms are protected with security protocols. They will keep you safe throughout the way.

Don't Take Profile for Real Persons

Sweetheart swindlers often optimize their profiles to make them look real. But in reality, it is fake. So, don’t take everything for granted. These are traps to lure innocent persons and win their trust. Instead, you should wait and watch.

Cross Check on Different Platforms

It would help if you always did some research to find out the real person operating behind the curtains. Know the person thoroughly and proceed with the next steps slowly. Make sure you meet the person physically once to establish the truth. Cross-check the profile on different platforms to learn about their identity.

Image Search on Google

It would help if you used Google Lens to search the image and learn more about the person on different sites. If the image is available on other platforms, then you will get the information about it. If it’s a catfish profile, then you will also get the links about it.

Be Wary Of Complements

If you are getting pleasant compliments and love bombings constantly, then you should search these on the web. Any matches of the content infer that these are all the scripts copied from other sites and pasted on your chatting window.

Ask Lots Of Questions

It would be best if you asked lots of questions from your potential date to get to the root. Remember all the answers and make sure they are all consistent and complementary. If you find any inconsistency in the answers, then it is a scam.

Set a Face-To-Face Meeting

Seeing the person face to face is one of the best ways to learn about them at a deeper level. If they agree to meet you physically, then make sure to meet them in a public place. Always avoid isolated places very far from your residential area.

Don't Share Personal Information

Scammers will try to know as much as possible about you. They will ask personal questions about your professional life and your work locations, date of birth and home address. You are advised never to share anything about your personal life. If they knew these details, they would use them against you to extract the money. Hence, always make sure you keep your personal information private.

Don't Click Links

Romance scammers share malicious links to their target to direct them to the malicious websites. Clicking these links downloads malware into the system. These malware steal your personal information, get unauthorized access to your key accounts and hack them. So make sure not to click any suspicious links you get from dating sites.

Never Send Money

Never send any money to the stranger you are chatting with on the dating site. They will ask you for your bank details, card numbers and user ID to transfer the money from your account to theirs. These fraudsters leave no stone unturned to manipulate you emotionally and mentally. If you give in to their plan, you will end up losing your money. Hence, never give them what they want.

Stop Communicating With Them

If you find anything suspicious and harmful when you are talking to the person, then immediately stop talking to them. Block their profiles and report to them as scammers. Keep your personal number and direct message address private from such people.

Who Are The Targets Of Romance Scammers?

Online sweetheart swindlers mostly target people over the age of 50, that includes both men and women. They look for divorced couples and potentially lonely people in society. After this, they fish all the negative points and painful memories from their conversation to use them against victims to manipulate them. They track potential targets on social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook and dating apps like Tinder, Bumble Etc. In this process, they keep an eye on the status of whether someone is single or in a relationship. All the more, they see every post and reel to learn about the internal thoughts, emotions and feelings of their prospectus to know what they are going through in their real life. If they spot loneliness, desperation, betrayals or search for a mate in the posts, then they will be an easy target for scammers.

Once scammers have searched everything about the prospects, they prepare a calculated plan to approach them. They will tailor their profile to make it compatible with their target. It projects a satisfactory image in the victim’s mind. They find it irresistible to avoid the approaching person. In the end, they end up being scammed. Hence, expressing too much about your current life events and emotions on social media is not a good idea. It puts the romance scammers in a better position to negotiate with you and lure you into their trap.

These online sweetheart swindlers can be located anywhere in the world. But mostly, they are known to be located in the western African countries. When you talk to them, they use dilapidated English. Their sentences have too many grammatical errors, spelling mistakes and incongruity in their overall communications. If you ever encounter these signs on social media, make sure to move away from them as soon as possible. It is not what you are seeking.

What Are The Most Common Types Of Romance Scams?

There are different types of romance scams based on the pattern and social engineering tactics to approach the victims and lay the honey trap. Based on this information, here are some of the most common types of romance fraud that fraudsters use to manipulate innocent people:

Intimate Activity Scams

In this activity, swindlers target individuals by presenting themselves as possible matches from a foreign country. They build profiles on different social media apps displaying similar statuses, images, hobbies, and events. All the platforms are used to approach different people around the world. Once individuals get hooked on them, they get engaged in intimate webcam conversations. When all this is done, the fraudster reveals their true personality and threatens to share the video on social media. They blackmail victims using these threats and extract money from them.

Fake Friendship Sites

These are other convenient platforms for romance scammers to lay a honey trap for innocent people. They approach people with a calculated methodology to seduce them and love bombings. After this, they ask them to provide personal details and launch their malicious operations of lotting and extracting money from them. Most importantly, there are sites that require users to provide information to become a member. In addition to this, they will ask for permission to access your key accounts and data on your phone. Once you provide access to your key media files and documents, they steal your data and promote illicit jobs.

Military Romance Scams

These are the most common types of fraud that occur to people across the planet. Fraudsters take the name and identity of a soldier. They approach commoners in an amiable way and use efficient social engineering methodology to get more and more personal information from them. The messages, references and information used in the conversations are riddled with military titles, jargon, and far-located base locations. All of this convinces the potential prospectus and makes them do whatever they want.

Suddenly, a twist comes in the story where a scammer is deployed to a far-located base. They face a financial emergency in this situation, and they ask for some financial support to meet their internet expenses, buy a new device to communicate and pay for the flights back home or miscellaneous other expenses. These demands are strong signs confirming the fact that you are talking to a romance scammer.

Malware Scams

These are other common examples of malicious dating activities romance scammers do to target commoners. These strangers, from their legitimate-looking profiles and sites, send malicious links claiming that these will offer more information about them. But as soon as one clicks these links, they are led to the websites that are tampered with with malware. Once you are on these sites, malware gets downloaded to your system automatically, and it infects the whole system over time. It steals your personal data, modifies system settings and helps the black hats control your device from a safe, distant location.

Inheritance Scams

These are exceptionally fabricated ways to scam a person. In these types of frauds, an individual will contact a person to ask for help from them. They look for a person to get married to inherit the property or move the wealth from one place to another. But they are not able to do so because they don’t have any money to pay the marriage taxes and other types of charges to get it under them. If you marry them and pay for the money to pay the taxes, they will make you partners in the wealth they will receive. But in reality, there is no partnership or sharing of any amounts once they get the payment from the victim. It was all fabricated and fraud that swindlers use to get financial support from innocent people.

What Question To Ask From A Romance Scammer?

Asking too many questions about your match on a dating platform is highly essential to learning about them deeply. It will help you find the truth, whether they are right for you or they are just using a honey trap to swindle you. Observe what they have to say and use your instincts to get to the right decisions. If you find inconsistencies and incongruities in their answers, then don’t proceed with them. Here are some tricky questions that you can ask from your potential match:

Where did you grow up? Where did you complete your high school education?
Where did you go for the best vacation during your school time?
What is your family life like? Who are all in your family?
How did you become interested in the work you are doing currently?
What are the life experiences that shaped your current life goals?
What are your thoughts on the future relationship goals?
How do you handle challenges and setbacks in your life?
What do you expect from your potential date?
What are your favorite spots and restaurants in your hometown?
What is your nickname in the family and friend circle?
What social media apps do you use on a regular basis?
Can we talk on the video call to get to know each other?

Final Thoughts

These questions will offer you a complete overview of the person you are chatting with. You can add more questions to this list if you have any to learn more about your match. If you get valid answers to these questions, you can do a little more research about them. In case of contradictions, you can always go and check for the information using the answers you get. If the information does not match the answers you get, then you should always stay away from such people. They are professional sweetheart swindlers who lay a honey trap to find innocent victims and exploit them for money and other favors.

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Romance Scammer – How to Avoid Them?