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Articles · Romance scams · 4 min read
Romance scams: how to spot them
A romance scammer doesn't look like a scammer — they look like the person you've been hoping to meet. The affection is scripted, and scripts have tells. Three of them expose almost every case.
1. Love arrives fast — meeting never does
Within days it's 'you're special', 'fate brought us together'. But the video call drops, the visit gets cancelled, and there's always a reason: deployment, an oil rig, a work trip abroad. Real feelings survive a video call; a stolen profile photo doesn't.
2. The conversation moves somewhere private
Off the dating app and onto WhatsApp or Telegram, usually within days. It's framed as intimacy — 'I'm never on here anyway' — but it takes the conversation away from the platform's moderation, reporting tools, and records.
3. Money enters the love story
A medical emergency, a customs fee, a plane ticket to finally meet — or a 'can't-miss' crypto opportunity they'll teach you. The details vary; the shape doesn't. Someone who truly cares doesn't ask a person they've never met to send money.
The four stories they tell
Romance scams are run from playbooks. These are the four you'll actually meet.
The catfish
A borrowed face and a fictional life — months of warmth before the first ask
The soldier far away
Deployed overseas, devoted, and always one fee away from coming home
The investment mentor
Affection turns into coaching — an investment that can't lose, and money that can't be withdrawn
The emergency
A sudden crisis only your money can solve — urgent, tearful, and unverifiable
Different stories, same underlying moves: instant intensity, a reason you can never meet, and money entering the story. Spot the moves and the story falls apart.
Knowledge fades.
Unless it’s used.
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