Funding for To The Contrary provided by: This week on To The Contrary: They don't exploit technology first, they exploit human connection and these scams target trust, hope and emotional availability.

If anyone is asking you for money and you have not physically me them in person, that alone is a red flag.

Hello, Im Bonnie Erbé.

Welcome to To The Contrary a diverse discussion of issues affecting women, families and communities of color.

This week we're going to talk about romance scams, which are a growing form of cybercrime as people invent fake IDs and then try to trap particularly women in love relationships and try to exploit them for money and other purposes.

Scammer quickly build emotional intimacy before inventing crise that prompt requests for money.

Women, particularly those aged 40 to 66, are most frequently affected, and losses can be devastating both financially and psychologically.

Joining me today are two cyber security experts: PurePoint International's Jessica Robinson and cloud security engineer Zinet Kemal.

So let's start with you, Zinet.

How do these scammers go ou there and find victims to trap?

What should women particularl be, and men who might be targets of these same kinds of online exploitation?

What should they look for befor getting involved with anybody?

Yeah.

So starting with thank you for having me.

So starting with how do these scams work?

I think romanc scams are very slow build scams.

They start with connection and not money right away.

And a scammer creates this believable online persona and invests time to build trust.

Daily messages, emotional support.

Sometimes, you know, weeks or months of conversations.

And once that trust is established, I think, you know, a crisis appears.

It's usually an invented crisis.

Could be a medical emergency, a business problem, travel issues, or it could be investment opportunity.

And by the time money is requested, the victim doesn't feel like they're being scammed.

They feel like they're just helping someone, you know, they care about.

And usually they want the mone by wire transfer or gift cards.

They're so effective in targeting women; its because women usually are emotionally, you know, appealing to care and be kind, societally.

That's how it is.

And these scams are so effective because they don't exploit technology first.

They exploit human connection.

And these scams target trust, hope and emotional availability.

And they happen on platform designed to encourage openness and connection.

So what would you say And I'll get to you, Jessica, in a second.

But what would you say wome should be looking for, somebody you meet online starts asking you for money?

Just back off?

Cut them off?

Yeah.

Slow down.

I think that's the most important thing.

Verify identities because, you knowbe cautious if someone avoids video calls or in person meetings and take a person's photo using a search engine searched by image feature and if that same picture shows up with different name then that's what they told you, that could be a red flag.

And don't send money or any financial information to someone you haven't met IRL, as we call iti real life, and most importantly, you know, talk to someone you trust about new online relationships because these scams thrive in isolation.

They try to isolate you, get you off of the platform that you originally met So, Jessica, what do you think?

What are telltale signs that women should flee?

So maybe they could escape befor there's even an ask for money?

Could you say at the beginning of every conversation with a new person by the way, I'm very interested in meeting and getting to know you.

But by the same token, I'm very paranoid because there's an escalation in this type of crime.

So don't ask me for money because you're not going to get it from me.

And if that's the purpose of this connection, I'm the wrong person to connect with.

Well, first I just wan to say thank you for having me.

It's wonderful to be here.

Well, Iyou know, I would sa that is absolutely the mindset to have because we want to b protecting ourselves as women.

And we also want to make sur that we're setting boundaries.

And as Zinet said, we don't want to be moving too quickly.

So whether we're on Facebook, Instagram or any other popular dating app, we want to stay there.

We want to stay in that chat for a while.

I think a lot of times, a lot of times in these cases, we still don't pause before providing personal information about ourselves to individuals that we don't know yet.

And if we provide our phone number to someone so that they can text us right away, then that means they can possibly find out other information about us as well.

If we provide our address, then that also then is another clu for them to utilize to find out additional personal information about us.

We want to make sure that we stay within the app.

We don't want to provide our phone number right away.

We want to build trust.

And then as much as possible, we do want to make sure that this person is real.

We want to make sure that we can, at some point through the app, maybe hear their voice, that we can validate that the pictures that they are using are indeed real.

So a couple of things that a woman could do is take that image that's there and maybe try and look for it online, maybe try to see any kin of a reverse lookup of the photo to see, is this photo being used any place else?

And that can be a great way for the person to automatically find ou if there are numerous profiles, particularly on a platform like Facebook or Instagram that is using this particular image, and then just allow for time to really to kind of lead the relationship.

Rushing into a romance quickly can be challenging, particularly if one of the tactics that these individuals are using is love bombing, right, so theyre, you know, doing a lot t kind of pull you in emotionally.

But at the end of the day, they haven't actually earned our trust.

So we want to make sure that we are setting those boundaries with these individuals to really help ensur that we're protecting ourselves.

And again, we're not just protecting our own in this instance, we're not just protecting our own kind of hearts, and our own kind of emotional well-being, but we're protecting our mone and we are protecting our data.

I'm curious, are there search engines that are better at searching for images than for text data?

Obviously we know the big ones.

Google and... Yeah, I mean, in today's world we have AI.

So we could for anyone who you know, there are fre profiles that people can have, even on tools like ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini.

And so you flies these tools that exist today that can be very helpful.

And putting in an image or putting in any text, you can put in the person's name and you can see what else comes up.

Again, we have you know, we have a lot of people that have the same name in the world, right?

That's very common.

But you can start to see what comes up about a potential individual, and that can give you clues as to how this person is using their profile on other platforms.

And that can be a great way for you to kind of really start to do some research yourself about, is this person real or is this person not real?

Zinet.

Do wehave you seen any data or any studies about wha percent of these relationships that start on potential romance applications turn out to be really more about money than about trying to find a partner?

Yeah, I know there are cases where people are losing, you know, life savings, retirement funds or even take out loans for someone they believe they're in relationship with.

And in many cases, the scammer never meets the victim and person.

But theyre so there's always a reason.

You know, one of the things that I've seen on FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, as a reason, is that military deployment, these are the excuses Working overseas, travel issues.

And what is especially painful is that the victims often realize the truth only after the money is gone, and the emotional fallout can be just as severe as the financial loss.

And there are many documented examples that show this how damaging romance scams can be.

Not just the emotional impact of it, but financially.

And globally, we also see individual stories that illustrate the pattern like case covered in international news, I think last year, of an 80 year old woman in Japan who was duped into believing that she was helping an astronaut in distress, I believe, from Russia, and she lost ¥1 million, which is the equivalent of around $6,700.

And in the UK, based on a data from Lloyds Banking Group, recorded a 52% ris in romance scams among victims aged between 55 and over in the year 2024 and 2025, and compared with the previous year, and victims aged between 75 and 84 los an average of over 8,000 pounds.

And the average loss account for all age groups was over 5,000 pounds And whats notable in this trend and data is that scams follow patterns of trust building, long conversations, consistent attention and invented crisis.

And according to data compiled by the FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, tens of thousands of people report these scams each year, and with losses running into hundreds of millions and often involving excuses about, you know, the reasons that I mentioned not meeting in person, and these cases aren't, you know, rare events, the scale of reporting and the size of losses make it clear this is ongoing and widespread.

Jessica, what kind of questions from a guy should women be wary of?

I mean, aside from what's your Social Security number, what's your bank account number?

But whatif they tend to push the conversation in a particular direction, what's a hint that this may b about something other than what this guy is saying it's about?

Yes.

So if someone starts to ask more about your financial information or your financial profile, if they start to ask questions about where and how you may be investing your money, if they then start to mak suggestions on possibly how you should invest your mone and they start to ask questions around your knowledge of crypto your knowledge of investments, they ask if you're ope to doing these types of things, and then if they start to ask you whether you would be willing to give them money in order to make investments for you.

Those are all red flags.

Because at the end of the day, this person has not certainly earned that trust of a financial advisor in our life yet.

And if anything, they're trying to earn the trust of being a partner.

So we want to make sure that if anyone starts to ask those types of questions, that we do loop in our own financial advisor to help us along the way, and to really ensure that, again, we're not just keepin this information to ourselves, but that we're bringing in someone else who can help us really evaluate what's going on here.

And this could b where you would engage a friend.

You could engage again, a financial advisor.

You can engage someone else in your life that can really help yo to make sure that you're asking questions of this individual to really validate what their ultimate goal is here.

If anyone is asking you for mone and you have not physically met them in person, that alone is a red flag.

So I would encourage everyone to not send money to anyone that they have met online, that they have not met in person to validate what is actually going on in their life.

So what What if a woman doe suspect that a guy or you know, if the tables are turned and it's a guy suspecting that a woman is maybe trying to take financial advantage of him, what do they do?

What's the first thing they do?

Do they call the police?

Do they call the FBI?

I would recommend absolutely reporting it to law enforcement and to the FBI.

I think those can be great places to start and then go from there.

I think part of the challenge nowadays is that you may not always hea back, particularly for the FBI, particularly about something like this, because it's soit happens so often that they can't always respond quickly.

So local law enforcemen can be a great place to start.

And then again, having some of those key people in your life that are there to help guide you along the way, I think could be very helpful, whether it's a close friend, a close friend, or whether it is financial advisor, whether it is someone else that's in your life.

So it could be someone like your legal representative, particularly if they're asking for money as it relates to their business or your business.

These individuals can very much help you and kind of assessing what is going on.

And then from there you can start to take action, particularly if at any point you decide to actually file any charges.

I would just also add that notify the dating site where you meet this scammer as well, because they're supposed to provide that safeguard.

So I think it's a good idea to notify the dating site.

Are there websites that are worse about allowing these sneaky characters potentially criminal characters, into joining the grou so that they can get access to these people?

Or are there one that are known to be very safe?

Anyone who is looking on any of these platforms should just always kind of keep their intent up, and by that I mean their intuition, their kind of gut instinc to really be paying attention.

I wouldn't want to say necessarily that one is safer than the other, though I do think that those platforms that have the true intention, that have been created for the intention of helping people to come together for, for the purpose of a relationship, they probably have more purposeful, built in ways to create safety for individual and are probably paying closer attention to that.

I think a lot of the challenges can be on the platforms like Facebook or Instagram, even TikTok.

Even though TikTok is known to be able to remove their fake profiles pretty quickly or at least are, you know, have a history of paying attention to those types of things.

I do think that those platforms where essentially anyone can just create a profile and they don't have to, you know, they don't have to pay to do that.

And also those would be the platforms where people would in many cases have multiple accounts.

So you could search perhaps an account there that will have the same photo, perhaps with 15 different names across 15 different accounts.

And those are the type of things that we really want people to pay attention to.

Yeah, the platforms play a significant role.

I don't necessaril have ones better than the other.

I don't have the information on that.

But because they control the environment wher these scams begin, that means, you know, responsibility or stronger identity verification, faster response to reports.

These are all responsibilities that should be placed on social media, you know, platforms and clearer safety signals for users.

And right now, you know, too much of the responsibility seems to fall on individuals to spot professional deceptions.

And safety should be built into the design of those platforms.

Now, what about platforms that may suggest that people get together for the first tim or for several times in groups?

Does that help prevent fraud from going on?

When people get to know each other as a group?

And then you could say, hey, I'm a little worried about Joe X over here or Jane X, do any of the sites do that or not?

Yeah.

I mean, I know that there are many platforms that do encourag kind of a group or speed dating where it helps to kind of eas the kind of getting out there.

Many of those do happen to be in person.

So for anyone who is looking to invite a relationship into their life, that actually can be a great way to do it to minimize the possibility of scams.

Because if you are meeting with a group of people, you can probably trust that all of those individuals are exactly who they say they are.

And so that actually can be a clue to that' the route that you want to go.

I think that the red flags are going to be that even if there happens to be someone and let's say there's an online group and you find that that person is always showing a photo but isn't actually showing their video, or if you're finding tha consistently you're not able to meet them in person or get a true sense of who they are, their face, their likeness, then those are going to be the red flags that you're going to want to keep in mind to avoid with these individuals.

Well, if indeed in-person meetings, group in-person meetings are a way to lessen the amount of fear of being scammed by somebody, shouldn't all the platforms do that at some point?

I think that that can be a great thing, you know, probably support the in their success rates as well.

So I would say that that would be a great thin to do that could support them.

Absolutely.

I think every, every platform has their own way of and uniqueness for how they bring people together.

But at the end of the day, safety is the number one thing that is a priority and should be a priority for them.

Yeah, I think that I would agree with Jessica.

I mean, that would be great, but you know there are challenges to this scammers too, because jurisdiction can be a major challenge because the scammers often they operate from countries with limited cooperation agreements, different legal systems.

So it's fewer resources for reinforcement.

So by the time, you know, these funds are transferred, they've often moved through multiple accounts or cryptocurrencies making recovery extremely difficult.

But that would be a good way to circumvent the scammers facilitating those in-person ones.

I don't know how logistically that would be done, I guess worldwide, because these platforms operate to connect people across the world.

Are there certain apps that are safer than others, maybe even run criminal record checks on people before they allow them to sign up?

Or do they do anything precautionary to help prevent people who've used their site becoming victims in some kind of crime?

You know, that's a great question.

I don't think that any platform uses any type of kind of review in that wa of doing any background checks.

I would say that that would be more of a high touch service.

So for those individuals that have hired a that have hired a, let's say, a matchmaker, you probably maybe would have that high touch servic within a matchmaking agency, but that would be a much higher level of buy in.

And where individuals would be paying for that level of information and also exclusivity to ensure that they are being connected to someone who has had that type of background check and review and is also meeting certain expectations.

So I definitely think that that's the case there.

But not for many people that are probably using the platform and and lookin to kind of meet people in their, in their town or out of state or in another country.

And I think that while the different apps may have different safety concerns or I should say safeguards in place, I think the challenge is, is once you start to widen that net of the location of where, of how and how you're connecting with people, then that's where more risks start to come in.

The smaller the net and particularly the location for some of these platforms where you can meet with people in person, then that's something that lowers the risk.

Do these apps, who are obviously making money, making a living and they're growing in popularity despite everything we hear about scams.

Should they have minimum bars that do investigate in some small way, maybe not run a credit check or run a run a criminal records check on somebody, but do some kind of screening to help protect the people who are using the app innocently from getting scammed?

Yeah, they do have that responsibility, but the difference is how much of a strong identity verification that they're doing on these platforms.

And it's hard to say which one provides more stringent, you know, verification or like Jessica mentioned, you know, doing a background check might be, you know, outside of their thing, but the platforms have that responsibility instead of placing it on the users, which seems to be the case with a lot of the social media platforms.

You know, I think we should rely on educating users, you know, but policymakers should enforce this.

And then also having these platforms should also take more responsibility in terms of ensuring that their apps are safer, because with the rise of AI, again, you know, even the GenAI tool that we're using are endangering people's lives in terms of, you know, leading people to commit suicide and that kind of thing.

So, you know, a lot of responsibility seems to be placed on the use versus the platform providers.

I think it'll be interesting to see how this continues to evolve over the next several years.

I think that when it comes to dating and some of these high touch matchmaking agencies, a lot of times they're actually interviewing people so that they can make sure that they're matching people.

I know that for many platforms, even if they're a dating platform it can be challenging for them to interview every single person that comes on.

But I think what can be interesting is to see ho these platforms can leverage AI to help better ensure that they are vetting the individuals that are coming on to these platforms.

Should there also be training for people who are interested in using these apps to learn how to spot something that's irregular?

You know, that's a great question.

I think that if someone is, you know, kind of coming on to an app for the first time and, you know, a lot of times you see notifications come up so people can learn how to use the app, you know, for example, here's your chat button or here's how you, you know, this is where you can create your profile, and here's where you can explor and see who's on the platform.

I think having a couple of those notifications that do prioritize safety and security can be great.

Platforms like Instagra or Facebook and even LinkedIn.

There are cases where this has happened on LinkedIn, and I think that there can definitely be opportunities where the platforms can also just provide any type of kind of, you know, notifications that can help with individuals and better using those platforms for the purpose of safety and security.

Yeah.

And the more we normalize talking about these scams, I think the more powe we take away from them as well, because unfortunately, silence protects scammers, and the more we tal about this, it's going to help protecting other peopl as a form of educating others.

And a lot of these reports don't get, you know, reportedthese scams, and the reason is shame.

And I think shame plays a huge role because many victims worry they'll be judged, blamed or told tha they should have known better.

And that fear, you know, keeps people silent even from your family members.

Thank you both for an eye opening discussio and thanks for the warnings too.

I think people need to be very careful.

It's one thing if you want to join a group of alumni of your school, high school, college, whatever but when you're dipping into a sea of people who you don't know who they are or where they came from, caution is definitely the bylaws.

Thank you both for joining us.

Let's keep talking on X, on Facebook, on other forms of social media.

And please get in touch with us directly, our address is on the screen and whether you agree or think to the contrary, see you next time.

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