Love should be a beautiful thing as we’ve always believed, but wolves in human clothing are now using it against the lonely ones who just want to be loved. Enjoy this ride with me as I expose the secrets behind Romance Fraud.
What is Romance Fraud?
Romance Fraud is also known as romance scams or sweetheart scams, this is when a fraudster deceives someone into a fake romantic relationship, using a fake identity to establish a relationship with their prey to steal their money, personal information, and even identity.
Romance scams can happen both online and offline. The fraudster targets persons on dating websites, and social media platforms, they gain their trust by portraying themselves as someone looking for love or companionship, and then they cunningly start exploiting money from the victim.
They might claim it’s for medical expenses, transportation costs to meet them in person, housing, and other bills feigning an emergency.
How does Romance Fraud work?
Romance fraudsters are masters of manipulation and will go to any length to cook up stories including their fake identities and well-planned lonely and helpless situations. This will make you believe they’re genuine but it’s all a sham.
They’ll frequently communicate with you to gain your trust. Once they’ve gained your trust, they’ll invent a situation whereby they need money urgently usually using medical, housing, travel, business emergencies, and so on, that is in case they came for money.
Suppose they came to get your personal information. In that case, they create sympathy or play the victim card for you to be more flexible with them, trust them more, and give you access to their personal information, for instance, bank details, property details and documents, business secrets, and much more.
The fraudster doesn’t need to get the money from your own money, so far the primary aim is just to get the money, the fraudster might make you a money mule whereby, asking you to send them money that you’ll be getting from another person.
The fraudster could even blackmail you via several means, for instance, you may share your personal or intimate pictures or videos with them because they promise to send theirs in return but the fraudster might end up not sending theirs or forcing you to delete them immediately, meanwhile, they end up using your pictures or videos to threaten you saying they’ll send them to your family and friends or go as far as posting them online for everyone to see unless you send them the money they request for or do whatever they ask you to do.
After getting the information, money, and whatever they want from you, they disappear into thin air and leave you devastated both financially and emotionally.
How to spot Romance Fraud
Identifying a fraudster and who’s genuine is becoming increasingly more difficult. Because they’ve also devised so many cunning ways to make their evil plots successful without suspicion.
Here are a few ways to spot romance fraudsters:
- When they profess their love for you too quickly. They will often declare their love for you within a few days, or weeks, of starting a conversation.
- They will always make up excuses as to why they can’t meet you in person or even have video calls with you, some might even start exploiting from that stage by telling lies that their phone camera is bad and they need to change the phone or even laptop before they can do the video call. The naive you that eagerly wants to see them will send money to them and that is where it starts from and you might not even realize it till you’ve dug deep. Some will lie they’re overseas hence, won’t want to meet you in person because they might claim it’s a very far distance or claim they don’t have travel funds to come see you.
- They move the conversations off the dating sites you met.
- They claim to need money for emergencies and may cook up touching stories that’ll leave you with no choice but to help.
- They tell you to keep the relationship private and not to disclose it to anybody including your family and friends or via social media posts, because they claim they love their private lives or probably don’t like public displays of affection.
- If a profile looks too good to be true, their pictures seem too perfect, look fake or you find something suspicious, it’s best to follow your instincts and avoid them because they might have used a celebrity or wealthy person’s pictures and even names.
- If you notice inconsistencies in their stories or details, then, you need to be vigilant and distance yourself from them because they might have forgotten they told you a particular lie previously, and to cover up another lie, they might have forgotten they’ve told you a different story before and cook up an entirely different one.
How to Avoid Romance Fraud
Now that you know how to spot Romance Fraudsters, it’s still easy to be caught in their web ignorantly. These points will guide you to avoid being their victim:
- Do not share your personal information or those of anybody close to you. Sensitive information such as bank details, passwords, and home or work addresses shouldn’t be shared with someone you’ve just met online or even offline.
- Never send or give money to someone you just met online, no matter the reasons they give.
- Always be cautious and take things slowly especially when your online partner professes love quickly and if you feel he’s taking things too far and fast. Because fraudsters often use emotional manipulation.
- Ask lots of questions to know them better and be sure they’re real.
- Verify the person’s identity by insisting to meet them in person or via video calls, be careful of those who resist these requests and avoid them.
- No financial investment should be conducted under the supervision of someone you just met on dating websites.
- Always do a small research and due diligence when in doubt, to confirm the person’s identity and determine the authenticity of their profile;
- Research the person you’re interested in, look them up online, and perform a reverse image search to check if their pictures appear elsewhere on the internet. Check their profile carefully to know whether it’s a new account or not. Check the kinds of friends they have too.
- If they are withdrawing some information from you, you need to watch out because fraudsters avoid sharing their personal details which could expose them easily.
- Continuously educate yourself and everyone around you about the tactics used in romance fraud. Stay informed about new scams and trends to help you remain vigilant and not fall victim.
- Always talk to your friends and family when you meet someone new and you are interested in them. Seek advice from them and they may offer valuable ones that’ll guide you along the way.
- Trust your instincts and distance yourself from them when you feel something is wrong or off, then, report them to authorities if you suspect them.
Romance Scam Investigation
Romance fraud can have devastating consequences for victims, both financially and emotionally because victims may lose huge sums of money and feel betrayed and broken-hearted when they realize they’ve actually been duped by someone they thought they could trust and love.
Hence, it’s important to report the fraud to the appropriate authorities; contact your banks immediately if you notice you’ve been scammed, report to the police and the website you met the person if you met online.
Now, this is where we come in, Pythagoras Forensic Services Limited is ever willing and ready to helping you through this difficult phase, our romance fraud investigation experts are committed to help you uncover fraudulent activities and use advanced techniques to expose the fraudster and retrieve all you’ve lost.
We also help to verify the authenticity of someone you met online or offline.
Contact us now:https://pythagorasforensics.com/contact-us/
