Scam Watch · Hanna’s guide to not getting ripped off
By Hanna Deen (The Price Mistake Queen)
This is the hardest one in the series to write, because the other scams steal money, and this one steals money using loneliness as the crowbar. So before a single red flag, let me say this: wanting companionship is not a weakness. It’s the most human thing there is. The people who run romance scams are professionals who abuse that, and being fooled by a professional says nothing bad about you.
Now let’s make you very hard to fool.
How it works, from their side of the screen
Romance scammers don’t fish with a rod; they fish with a net. They send warm little openers to hundreds of people at once, on dating sites, yes, but just as often through Facebook friend requests, a comment in a hobby group, a “wrong number” text that turns into a chat, even a message from someone claiming to know an old friend. Whoever replies, they pursue.
And here’s the part people don’t expect: they are lovely. Attentive, funny, spiritual, devoted. They message good morning and good night. They remember your dog’s name and your doctor’s appointment. Within weeks it can feel like the realest connection in years. The industry even has a name for this stage: love bombing. It costs them nothing and it’s the whole setup.
The profile is usually stolen: photos lifted from a real person’s account, often someone photogenic with a respectable job. And the job always comes with a built-in reason they can’t meet: deployed overseas, an engineer on an oil rig, a doctor with an international aid group, a contractor abroad on “one last big project.” That detail is load-bearing. It has to explain months of never meeting, never video-chatting, and eventually, money trouble in a place where you can’t help in person.
Then, once you’re attached, the crisis arrives. Small at first, sometimes: a customs fee, a phone card. Then bigger: a frozen bank account, a medical emergency, a plane ticket to finally come see you that keeps going wrong. The requests come with tears, urgency, and very specific payment instructions: wire transfer, gift cards, or cryptocurrency. Never a check. Nothing traceable. Nothing reversible.
The red flags, in the order they usually appear
- They fell hard, fast. Talk of love, destiny, or marriage within days or weeks, before you’ve ever met.
- They’re always somewhere unreachable. Military, oil rig, overseas contract. Romance scam geography is remarkably consistent.
- The camera never works. Every video call fails, gets canceled, or shows a frozen blurry clip. In an era when a phone can video-call across the planet for free, “my camera is broken” for three straight months is an answer in itself.
- They want to move off the site fast. Dating platforms watch for scammers, so they’ll push to switch to text or a chat app right away.
- Their life is a string of emergencies that always end at your wallet, and each rescue leads to the next crisis.
- They ask for money in scammer currency: wires, gift cards, crypto. (My standing rule applies here too: gift cards are never payment for anything real, including love.)
- They ask you to keep it private. “People wouldn’t understand what we have.” Secrecy is scaffolding; it keeps the people who love you from saying, “Wait a minute.”
- Or, one strange variant: they offer to send YOU money or a package to hold. That’s not generosity, it’s money laundering with your name on the account.
One of these alone isn’t proof. Three of them together is a pattern I would bet the grocery money on.
The 60-second detective trick: reverse image search
Here’s the practical tool for this one, and it’s free. Save one of their photos, then go to images.google.com and click the little camera icon to upload it (or use Google Lens on your phone by holding your finger on the photo). Google will show you where else that photo appears online.
If “Michael the Army surgeon” turns out to appear on stock photo sites, or on three profiles with three different names, or on a real person’s page with an entirely different life, you have your answer in one minute. Real people’s photos generally trace back to one consistent person.
The one rule that ends it
Never send money, in any form, to someone you have not met in person. Ever. No exceptions, no matter how long you’ve talked or how real it feels.
That’s the whole defense. Not “judge the story,” because the stories are excellent. A genuine person who cares about you will survive you saying, “I don’t send money to anyone I haven’t met, it’s a firm rule in my family.” Watch what happens when you say it. A real sweetheart shrugs and keeps chatting. A scammer either escalates the pressure, gets angry or wounded, or evaporates within the week. The rule doesn’t just protect you; it makes the truth show itself.
Do this right now
- Adopt the rule tonight and say it early in any new connection. It’s not unromantic. It’s a lighthouse.
- Reverse-image-search the photo of anyone you or someone you love is talking to online. Sixty seconds, images.google.com, camera icon.
- Insist on a video call before your heart goes further. One relaxed, ordinary video chat clears an honest person instantly. Months of excuses convict a fake one.
If money has already been sent, act fast and skip the shame: call your bank or the wire service immediately and ask for the fraud team, report it at reportfraud.ftc.gov and ic3.gov, and tell someone you trust. And if you’re on the other side of this, the daughter or friend who’s worried, lead with kindness, never ridicule. “This person may be lying to you and you deserve better” opens doors that “how could you fall for this” slams shut. The scam’s last line of defense is embarrassment. Warmth beats it.
Share this with someone: If anyone you know has a long-distance sweetheart they’ve never seen on video, send them this. Not as an accusation. As a lighthouse.
Hanna Deen is The Price Mistake Queen. Twenty years of deal hunting taught her that when something wonderful keeps asking for more money, it was never a deal at all.
I send the morning’s best find on WhatsApp, and our Facebook group of nearly 10,000 deal hunters posts finds all day.
Join on WhatsApp →Facebook Group →More in this series: all of Hanna’s Scam Watch warnings.
