From Fitbit to financial despair: How one woman lost her life savings and more to a scammer

These scams, known as “pig butchering,” involve scammers building a relationship with their victims to gain trust before introducing fake investment opportunities. They present fabricated evidence of their own success and luxurious lifestyles to convince victims to invest. Share every minute detail with this person you’re turning to for counsel and heed their advice.

Three days later, he called again, sounding hysterical, claiming he had misplaced a bag of expensive tools costing $4,000 and needed $2,600 to buy a near-identical replacement. When creating a dating profile, be extremely cautious about what you share. Being aware of the threats faced in online dating and the virtual world, in general, can help you tread cautiously.

Never send money

Spokeo is a people search platform helping users know more about the people in their lives. Spokeo provides access to social media profiles, court records, criminal records, names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, marital status, and more. This tool will do just that and pull up any hidden social media and dating profiles, photos, criminal records, and much more to hopefully help put your doubts where to buy stacks crypto to rest.

They make every effort to appear flawlessly in harmony with you to gain your trust. This is only one of the many methods they practice to attempt a scam. There might not be any video calls, but your lover may have given you a WhatsApp or cellphone number. Firstly, they are nearly always unavailable when you call them. Secondly, their area code doesn’t match the location they claim to be in. It’s highly likely that your romantic contact will pique your interest with a profile picture that features an attractive, charming and seemingly trustworthy person.

A quick reverse image search on Google will show you whether they’re a solid 10 or a zero. If the photo has been cloned from someone else’s social media profile, their ruse will be exposed in just a few clicks. They call their victim a pet name sooner, fall in love quickly and the relationship moves along faster than any other one.

Romance Scams 2025: New Tricks and How to Avoid Them

This will help you know if the image is used elsewhere online. Once they’ve got you hooked, they’ll start asking for money, often citing medical expenses, travel expenses or other fake emergencies. Remember, real relationships don’t come with a price tag. Romance scams are getting more sophisticated but knowledge and awareness is your best defence.

Why People Want to Work at Spokeo

Before you share any personal information or send money to anyone, do some research online about their profile and background. If there are any red flags or inconsistencies in what they have told you, then it is best to proceed with caution. Another easy way to outsmart a romance scammer is to do a Google image search. Your relationship is likely to grab your attention with a photo of a beautiful and reliable individual. A fast Internet reverse image lookup will reveal if they are real or not. If you figure what is a devops engineer out red flags but are unsure what to do with an online relationship, the best thing would be to take a second opinion from someone close to you.

Being a victim of romance fraud, irrespective of whether the perpetrator succeeded in conning you or you were able to outsmart a romance scammer, can be an emotionally scarring experience. It can shake your faith in the idea of love and may even put you off dating for a long time. If the blow of a being conned in the name of love has done you serious damage, do not hesitate to seek help from a mental health professional. A skilled wordpress developer vs web developer counselor or therapist can help you make sense of your feelings of guilt and shame, and help you take the first step toward healing and moving on.

• “Sometimes when it reaches the phase of money, it’s too late to stop,” Lazarus says.
• Scammers understand something about us that we don’t always admit, we all want to feel special.
• Romance scammers are professional con artists who can indirectly make you the middleman for their unlawful acts.
• Many people from the last few generations have found love online, they call it a “modern love story.” No doubt that internet is a great place to find love, but it’s not always safe.
• Here’s what you need to know if you’ve met someone through social media, a dating site or your DMs.

This may lead people to ask if scammers can actually fall in love. If you’re looking for strategies for how to outsmart a romance scammer,  begin asking them specific questions about their interests. A romance scammer will not be able to send such a picture because if they did, their true identity would be revealed.

• Or, they may claim that they cannot come to see you until you send money for a plane ticket.
• This can be a pre-emptive measure to deflect criticism of the relationship.
• At first he seemed real because we were just chatting as friends for a long time.
• Once they’ve got you hooked, they’ll start asking for money, often citing medical expenses, travel expenses or other fake emergencies.

Never send money to someone you have met online and never seen in real life. If you’re trying to order last-minute flowers for a loved one, beware the fake florist grift. The BBB has a deep catalog of scammed consumers who thought they ordered from a legitimate retailer and then received extremely subpar flowers – or nothing at all. The scammers use the same tricks as jewelry scammers – attractive websites with prices that are so good you can’t ignore them.

The Truth About Celebrity Romance Scams

Romance scammers create fake profiles on popular social media platforms or dating apps and strike up a relationship with a potential victim to build up trust. Their goal is to win the trust of the unsuspecting victim and make up a story to swindle money from them. One way you can outsmart a romance scammer is to ask them tons of questions about their life and research their name, job, and profile online to see if you can catch them in the act. As the majority of us spend more time online presently, it is proving to be a boon to romance scammers. If you had read all the 11 outsmarting ways, you could save not only your money but also your valuable time. Maybe you could help someone else before they get scammed!

Write your tip or submit a video tip

For example, it’s normal to talk about where you work out in a budding romance. People that are dating might discuss buying things they’re excited about, such as a new stand-up mixer or planning a vacation. When someone is interested in dating and romance, financial details shouldn’t come into play for quite a while.

But unlike other countries, the U.S. does not require banks to reimburse fraud victims or to close accounts used to launder the proceeds of fraud. And cryptocurrency, where much of the fraud earnings is now circulating, is of course even less regulated. When contacted for comment, the State Department declined to specify whether any anti-trafficking programs have survived the federal government’s rushed purge of most foreign aid programs. The remainder will now sit under the slimmed-down State Department. This translates into the evaporation of funding to rescue and assist trafficked scam workers.

So, it’s important to always look for the red flags and #BeFraudSmart before you talk to someone you’ve met online. Whenever such a request comes in, tell the person you’ll see what you can do. That is if you don’t want to start accusing them of scamming you straight away or want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Then, talk to your family, financial advisor, lawyer, or friends. Mull over the situation a little, and see if it still sounds as realistic and convincing as it did at first. Once you’re sure that you are being trapped by a romance scammer, you can file a complaint with the FTC.

NYC Success Story: How to Get Real Estate…

The person behind these scams is hoping that a woman will fall in love just as quickly, and then send them money. You can avoid this by not posting too much personal information to the public. For example, avoid posting your address, phone number, financial information, or favorite things. If you’re using a dating website, only put a few of your favorite things in your profile if others can see them. Save the rest of the details about yourself for those awesome getting to know you conversations.