Romance Scams and Psychological Profile of a Perfect Victim

Scams are bad enough in themselves, but romance and dating scams take them to a whole new level — your money is lost, your time is wasted, and you are left with a broken heart. Internet dating sites, even those that are regarded as “reputable,” can be a playing field for scammers who are hunting for vulnerable victims — divorced, widowed, abandoned, middle-aged, elderly, women looking for a father figure for their children, or desperate men looking for exotic lovers way out of their league in terms of looks.

Military Romance Scams

Nancy (not her real name) is a woman in her sixties who longs to have someone to share her life with. Reluctantly, she joined a “reputable” dating site, and soon after creating her profile, she received her first request. “It was love at first sight,” she says. Little did she know that the perfect man she fell in love with didn’t exist.

The fantasy man, let’s call him Mike, told her he was in the military and deployed to a faraway land — a good reason why they had to keep things virtual for now. They wrote to each other for a while, and things escalated quickly. After only a couple of weeks, Mike proposed to Nancy, and she was ecstatic. Once she said yes, they began to plan their future life together. After all, Mike was about to return home to marry Nancy and build a life with her. He said his new business could make their dreams come true.

Soon enough, there was a little problem: Mike had to make a payment for goods he was supposedly about to export but was unable to access his own money in a combat zone. He needed Nancy’s help. As manipulative as it sounds, he told Nancy their whole future was at stake. Although Nancy felt uneasy about the situation, she sold some of her assets and came up with the $3,000 he needed.

It wasn’t long before another request followed, which made Nancy suspicious. After consulting her friends and later the police, Nancy found out that Mike never existed. It was only one of many romance scam cases involving scammers operating from countries far away from their victims. Military dating scams became common enough that the U.S. Embassy in Ghana published a warning on its website.

Cases like this one are a good reason why you should ask for more photos, preferably taken especially for you, insist on video calls, and, of course, never ever send money or give your credit card details to someone you have never met. Do not be afraid to lose the relationship with someone you have never even met — if they are genuine, they should understand your concern. If they aren’t, they may act offended and call it quits — congratulations, you’ve just saved yourself from being scammed!

It is not necessarily the case that your fantasy partner will ask for money immediately — scammers can be patient enough to build up your attachment and emotional investment first. The more attached you are, the more likely you may be to pay. Some scammers will wait weeks or even months before asking you for anything.

There are several similar scams that don’t involve the military, but they often involve being somewhere far away from the victim and then suddenly having a financial emergency. In some cases, a scammer will even agree to talk on the phone, just like in this woman’s case:

Email / Translation Scams

Dan is an overweight man in his forties. He isn’t particularly wealthy and lives in a modest house in a small town. Dan has been single for a long time, and his life is mind-numbingly boring. Dan is not one to give up, however. He dreams of ideal love, and his mate should look nothing less than a Hollywood star.

The world is big, and it didn’t take long for him to find a woman who seemed perfect for Dan. She lived in Ukraine, but in his mind, it was worth it. There was another little problem, though: Marina, his dream woman, didn’t speak English; hence, he needed the translation services offered by the dating site.

It continued for a while: Dan wrote to Marina in English, she replied in Russian, and the translation agency translated their emails. Over the course of several months, Dan spent thousands of dollars on translation. To make things worse, Marina seemed to ignore his requests for her personal email address, forcing Dan to use the messaging service offered by the dating website.

Finally, it was time to meet. Dan packed his bags and flew all the way to Odessa to meet Marina. Unfortunately for Dan, she never showed up.

Fake dating websites like the one Dan used may not connect men with the women they think they are talking to. Instead, scammers may impersonate them and fabricate romantic emails. Pictures of women may or may not be real: Sometimes these pictures are taken from the social media profiles of unsuspecting women or from other dating websites.

In some cases, good-looking women may cooperate with the agency just in case victims demand to see them or threaten legal action. If this is the case, they may even organize a meeting with the woman, but eventually she will find a way to break “the relationship” anyway.

Social Media Dating Scam

This usually begins on a dating site, then quickly moves to one of the popular social media sites where a scammer will try to steer the conversation toward something sexual in nature. They will attempt to get your real name, your phone number, and, if possible, compromising pictures of you.

Soon after that, you may receive a message informing you that this information has been published on some website and can be removed for a fee. There is no guarantee, however, that the information will be removed once the payment is made.

Psychological Factors: Who Is Likely to Fall Victim?

Scammers are constantly coming up with new ideas, and even informed people can fall victim to online romance scams. However, there are some factors that may make a person more vulnerable:

• Impulsivity. Because extracting money from victims often involves creating a sense of urgency, such as in the example above or, even more extremely, supposedly urgent medical expenses, impulsive people may be more likely to pay quickly without careful consideration.
• Desperation. Middle-aged and elderly people, people struggling with abandonment, people with emotional problems, single mothers, or people who view themselves as unattractive may become desperate to find a partner and therefore more vulnerable to manipulation.
• History of addiction. Some people with a history of addictive behavior may become strongly attached to the idea of the romance and find it particularly difficult to walk away from the relationship even when warning signs appear.

In addition, some research has found that women are more likely than men to report becoming victims of romance scams, and being highly educated does not necessarily provide protection [source].