Beware Of Romance Scams: Protect Your Heart & Finances

Everyone is looking for love. However, be wary of developing any romantic relationships online. What starts as a seemingly innocent message can turn into emotional manipulation and financial loss. Romance scams are where the scammer builds trust by developing a romantic relationship online, usually by contacting their victim through social media or dating apps. Here’s what to look for and how to stay safe when connecting online.

How These Scams Blossom

Romance scams almost always start online. Scammers set up fake profiles through social media or dating applications to gain a victim’s trust. Through these apps, the scammer will send an unsolicited message to start a conversation. From there, they build the relationship to seem genuine, sincere, and honest. To make their identity even more believable, they will send photos and videos of “themselves.” These photos are usually stolen from other accounts or AI-generated. After they think they have gained your confidence, they will start to entice the victim to send personal or financial information, money, gift cards, or electronic devices.

Romance Scam Red Flags

They Avoid Meeting in Person

At some point, when an online relationship evolves, the next step is to meet in person. A red flag is when the person you’re in an online relationship with always has an excuse as to why they can’t meet in person. The excuses usually include being away for business, lacking money for travel, working with an international organization, on an oil rig, in the military, etc.

They Ask for Financial Help

Once a scammer thinks they have gained your trust, they will start asking for your help financially. These asks are usually innocent and hard to determine as a lie. Some ways they ask for money are:

  • Asking for your help to pay for their own or a family member’s medical bills
  • Having you buy their ticket to visit you
  • Helping pay fees to get them out of trouble
  • Wanting to help you with investment opportunities, like cryptocurrency

When they ask for financial help, they will usually ask for the money in a certain way. Their goal is to get money as fast as possible and make it difficult for you to get it back. Scammers will usually ask you to provide money through gift cards, send money through money transfer apps, or wire money through companies like Western Union or MoneyGram.

Their Stories Don’t Add Up

A clear sign of a romance scam is when a person’s story starts to fall apart. Scammers often rely on vague backstories, which means the details may vary from conversation to conversation. Or, they may claim to have a fancy job, but are unable to go into details or explain in depth what they do.

Other inconsistencies to look out for are where they grew up, language that doesn’t match their supposed background, or family members that exist one day but not the next. For example, someone claiming to be a professor at a university using poor grammar should feel out of place. When the parts of the story start to fall apart, it probably means it was never real to begin with.

They Avoid Answering Direct Questions

Successful scammers know how to steer a conversation to avoid saying anything that may expose their con. When you ask a direct question—about their job, family, or plans—they may dodge it entirely or respond with something emotional rather than factual. Instead of clarifying, they might shift the topic back to you or use guilt to make you feel bad for asking. This tactic keeps you emotionally invested while preventing you from noticing the gaps in their story.

How To Protect Yourself

  1. Be mindful of the information you share online. Scammers often scan social media and dating profiles for personal details they can use to tailor their approach and make their schemes more convincing and target you.
  2. Verify their identity. Research their profile and do a reverse search. This way, you can see if the photos, name, or details provided have been stolen from other profiles.
  3. NEVER send money to someone you have not met in person, including gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers, etc.
  4. Go slow and ask lots of questions. And make sure you are getting real answers to your questions.
  5. Get a second opinion. Sometimes love is blind, and asking a trusted friend or family member what they think can you help you protect yourself.

If you think you have fallen victim to a romance scam, contact your financial institution immediately. They can try to help minimize your losses. If you think you have found a scam, report it to the FTC.

Stay safe online!