Romance scams, and the requests that give them away

A romance scammer sets up a fake profile on a dating site or app, or gets in touch through social media such as Instagram or Facebook. They build trust first, sometimes chatting several times a day, and soon ask to move the conversation to email, phone calls or a messaging app. After that, they ask for money.

The stories they tell

• Far away. They live or travel outside the country, work on an oil rig, serve in the military or work for an international organization.
• A medical emergency. They need money for their own medical bills or a family member's.
• A visit. They want a plane ticket to come and see you, or money for a visa.
• Trouble. They need money to get out of a legal or financial problem.
• An investment. They offer to help you start investing in cryptocurrency.

How they want to be paid

Scammers ask for a wire transfer through a service such as Western Union or MoneyGram, a gift card with its PIN, a payment app, or cryptocurrency. They push you to pay right away and in a way that's hard to reverse, and that pressure is itself a sign of a scam.

An annotated example

What to do next

Don't send money or gifts to someone you haven't met in person. Stop writing to them. Talk to a friend or relative you trust, and listen if they're worried about the relationship. Search the person's job with the word "scammer" to see whether others have heard the same story, and run a reverse image search on the profile photo. A photo that shows up under other names, or with details that don't match, means the profile is fake.