what is a romance scam?

Online dating is where people hope to find love and live happily ever after. Unfortunately, online dating platforms are also the ultimate places where romance scammers find you.

What is a Romance Scam?
In basic terms, romance scams happen when a scammer creates fake identities online with stolen pictures to trick vulnerable people into sending them money.

Which Platforms Do Romance Scammers Use?
Scammers generally prey on those people who are in search of love through online dating websites but they may also contact victims through popular social media sites such as Instagram or Facebook. These are the most common places where you are likely to encounter a romance scammer however there is more:

• Online game platforms
• Messenger apps like Telegram, Facebook Messenger
• Email

Where Do These Criminals Live?
Mostly they are from poor west African countries. According to one study, 50% of scammers come from African countries, 30% come from Nigeria and 13% come from Ghana. Even though Nigeria and Ghana are leading countries in that respect, they can easily come from Malaysia, Turkey, Philippines, India or they can be just around the corner from where you live. When you think about these scammers, think of them as a large network spreading all around the world.

Operation: Fake Love
They may come across as these loving and caring people who are very attentive to your emotional needs. They quickly declare their love for you, they shower you with affection and compliments and you have their ultimate attention but none of it is real. It’s all part of their grooming process. Their main objective is to get your money and the harsh truth is that they do not care if they destroy you along the process. At the end of the day, they are ruthless, heartless scam artists and this is what they do for a living.

I once had a large number of scammers in my fake accounts and it got to a point that they all sounded the same, talking the same way, using the same expressions, etc. Here’s the reason why:

These scammers work in groups and they help each other during the process. The less experienced scammers use a format or script. The ‘format’ is a document of a script for every scenario they might need—dating, soldier, engineer, doctor, billing (which is asking for money), sex chat, love and trust, blackmail, etc. In Nigeria, these formats are sold by special vendors who specialise in developing all kinds of schemes for scammers. This ‘format’ (a. k. a. Nigerian scammers’ playbook) has been leaked to public some time ago and I have a copy of it for anyone who’s curious about one of their tools for scamming. You can download it here.

This is the reason why they all sound the same. However, more experienced scammers can come off script which makes them more dangerous in that respect. That means they are more experienced and know exactly what they’re doing.