My friend reached out to me recently about a man she’d been talking to via text. She thought she might be falling in love. Her husband recently died. They had been married for decades. She knew nothing about dating. She was lonely and vulnerable.

Wisely, she hadn’t been looking to date yet. She wasn’t on any dating sites. She was simply doing her usual routine. Keeping up with friends and family on Facebook after her husband’s death. She changed her relationship status there to Widowed.

She received a friend request from a man she didn’t know. Assuming he knew her or of her from somewhere, she accepted the request. They began messaging on Facebook Messenger.

Very soon, he began telling her he was in love with her. He told her how amazing she is — which she definitely is. He flattered and admired her. She felt validated and she was able to put her grief in a box on a shelf for short periods of time while communicating with this man.

She is the second person in a month who has asked my advice in these types of situations. Both are older women.

These conversations with friends and clients sadden me. Most of us want to be loved. Those who’ve lost someone they love to death are sometimes eager to find another good lover, not realizing how many bad lovers might be waiting in the wings.

We’re growing older, and worrying about how long we can remain attractive enough to get the attention of someone for a romantic relationship. We also are aware of the diminishing time we have left to conduct another long-term relationship. We get in a hurry.

Scamming isn’t a new game.

Scammers know older people can be lonely and in a rush to have a relationship. They look for widows, and widowers online, and not just on dating sites. They troll on social media where older women, and older men, feel safe connecting with family and friends. Never mind that no social media platform is actually safe.

Scamming isn’t a new game, it’s simply an easier one and can be done from anywhere today. Before the internet, criminals might look for obituaries, note the day and time of the funeral, and break into and burgle the homes of the widow or widower. The crooks had to be local and were committing breaking and entering and robbery.

Today’s crooks have it much easier, and they’re much harder to catch

A group of them in a call center focus on not only dating sites, but also Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly known as Twitter). They found my widowed friend on Facebook and my divorced client on X.

The most confusing aspect of these scams is that the women (and men) targeted actually think they are talking to someone who is who they say they are.

Sometimes after those targeted become alert to the scam, psychologically they still feel that there was an actual person who was conversing with them. They’ve developed a fantasy connection with someone who doesn’t exist, and the cognitive dissonance is jarring. In their mind, they’ve connected to the person in the photos, but those were scraped from someone’s profiles, and that actual person doesn’t know their images are being used in a scam.

The mother-in-law of one of my clients was furious when her son “ruined her relationship” by discovering the scam and reported the scammers. She couldn’t wrap her brain around the fact that the scammer wasn’t real.

Even after the scammers eventually ask for money, their targets find it hard to believe it’s not a real person in need. Why? Because the scammers spend weeks, sometimes months, texting with the target, professing love, admiration, and desire. Building a fantasy future relationship that feels all too real to the target.

Remember that if anyone you haven’t met in person asks you for money it’s a scam. No matter how what connection you think you have.

They’ve stolen the tricks of in-person narcissists: professing love too quickly, leading the target on with descriptions of future plans together. Building the fantasy.

Some of these scammers have gotten even bolder and more sophisticated by having telephone conversations with their targets. They explain away their accents by claiming to have been raised in another country, going to school overseas, or having a parent from another country.

If you are someone who hasn’t traveled much or learned other languages, it’s possible many accents sound the same to you. It’s simple for scammers to convince you their accent has a legitimate origin.

They tell you they work outside the country, or from a state far away from you, which explains why they can’t meet you in person. They often say they are in the military, or work on an oil rig, or in the case of one who tried to scam me, working as an engineer building a bridge in Nigeria.

What they don’t tell you is that they are in another country — sitting in a call center with dozens of other scammers. Some have wives and families. Some are there by choice. Some are not. You might even be talking to more than one scammer who are pretending to be only one person — a fake one.

The Federal Trade Commission lists what to do if you suspect someone is trying to scam you.

• Stop communicating with the person immediately.
• Talk to someone you trust. Do your friends or family say they’re concerned about your new love interest?
• Search online for the type of job the person has plus the word “scammer.” Have other people posted similar stories? For example, search for “oil rig scammer” or “US Army scammer.”
• Do a reverse image search of the person’s profile picture. Is it associated with another name or with details that don’t match up? Those are signs of a scam.

I have another tried-and-true action. Ask the scammer to do a video call with you

They can fake a profile and even an accent, but they cannot fake the fact that they are not at all who they say they are. They have scraped someone’s online profile of an attractive person, sometimes with photos of “themselves” with “their child”. They can’t disguise themselves in a video call.

I told both my friend and my client who told me they were falling in love, to ask the person they were talking to for a video call. If the person they’d been talking to said no to a video call or Zoom meeting, I suggested they insist on one before they would continue communicating.

Usually, the scammer will agree, and then, of course, not show up for the call. They‘ll give you some excuse — they were called into work. If they told you they are in the military, they’ll say video calls aren’t allowed. That’s what the scammer told my client.

In my friend’s case, the scammer reacted angrily to the request. Because I’d already warned her he was a scammer, she then blocked him on her phone and on Facebook.

What else can you do besides blocking them if you suspect or confirm you are being scammed? The Federal Trade Commission provides that information.

How to Report a Romance Scam

“If you paid a romance scammer with a gift card, wire transfer, credit or debit card, or cryptocurrency, contact the company or your bank right away. Tell them you paid a scammer and ask them to refund your money.

If you think it’s a scam, report it to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. Notify the social networking site or app where you met the scammer, too.”

Homeland Security has a hotline number where you can report scammers. Their website says, “Even if it’s too late to recoup losses, details may help others from becoming a victim. Call 1–866–347–2423 to report suspicious criminal activity, including possible romance scams, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.”

Here’s why you should always report the scam or attempted scam. Call Centers for romance and other scams are being raided and shut down around the world, partly due to victims reporting them.

“Over 60 German law enforcement officers, supported by hundreds of their colleagues in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, and Lebanon, as well as Europol specialists, swarmed dozens of residential and business premises. Apart from arresting 21 persons, officers were able to secure extensive evidence such as data carriers, documents, cash, and assets amounting to EUR 1 million. A large number of electronic evidence was also seized, which should enable the investigating authorities to obtain information about possible further call centres and more fraudsters.”

What is as tragic as older people being scammed in romance scams?

Police rescued hundreds of victims from the centre in Bamban, about 100km north of the capital Manila

While we have compassion for the lonely, older person losing their life savings to a scammer, and fury at the organization or person that scammed them, there is something equally tragic in this game.

Some call centers are made of scammers who have been lured there under false pretenses and forced into the work. The criminal activity of human traffickers kidnaps and forces people to work in scamming call centers.

The BBC reports one of these was found and raided in the Philippines when a 30-year-old Vietnamese man escaped the holding center and reported it to police. He reported torture and being held against his will along with hundreds of others.

When money is involved — and when isn’t it — there are no limits to what criminals will do to obtain yours. Remember that if anyone you haven’t met in person asks you for money it’s a scam. No matter how what connection you think you have.

. . .

Carol Lennox is a psychotherapist and writer. She prefers to write humor, but the condition of our world often requires more serious approaches. She will be conducting a workshop October 25–27 at the Omega Institute on “The Psychology of Writing — Getting to Flow”. Click for more information on how to attend.

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This post was previously published on Crow’s Feet.

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