It usually starts with a simple "Hello" from a handsome stranger who somehow found you on the internet and decided you were the one.
From there, it escalates faster than you'd expect. More attention than you've ever received in your entire life. Morning texts. Compliments. Declarations that feel almost too good to be true.
They are.
Meet Ms. Lonelyheart
Ms. Lonelyheart is a career-driven woman who has never married and is now closer to retirement than to her twenties. She wants someone to spend her golden years with, which is completely reasonable. Dating has changed since she was young and on the prowl. Everything is online now, and Ms. Lonelyheart's social calendar is full of blank dates until one day a handsome stranger slides into her Facebook DMs asking if they know each other.
She plays along. That's all the momentum he needs.
"Good morning beautiful."
"Hope you have a wonderful day today."
"Hey gorgeous, you mean everything to me."
This whirlwind romance is brought to you by Mysterious International Handsome Man: flush with money, surrounded in photos by desert sunsets, dirty trucks,taking care of sick children, and somehow desperately in love with a woman he's never met. He's overseas right now, naturally. Working for Doctors Without Borders.
In reality, he's working for Scammers Without Morals.
The Hook, Line, and Sinker
This particular breed of fraudster knows he can't ask for money right away. He has to earn it. So he wines and dines Ms. Lonelyheart emotionally first, building a fantasy so vivid she stops questioning it. Dimly lit evenings by a crackling fire. Promises of marriage. Living out a fantasy with a future that's been carefully constructed to make her feel like she'd be insane to walk away from it.
The love bombing is relentless and intentional. Every sweet text, every term of endearment, every "you're the only one I've ever felt this way about" is part of a script he's run a dozen times before. He's not in love. He's lubricating her emotionally so that when the time comes, her wallet opens a little easier.
And then, right on schedule, the script flips.
"Can you wire me $10,000 to my bank account in Sudan? My money is tied up right now and if I don't pay for these life-changing drugs I can't save the children from the scourge of cleft palates"
"Thank you so much, baby. This means everything. I know I've been traveling a lot, but we'll meet soon. I promise."
Spoiler: they never meet. There is no wedding. There is no slow-motion reunion on a beach somewhere. Ms. Lonelyheart is left alone, financially gutted, and holding onto memories of a relationship that existed entirely in her head.
Relationship Advice Left on Read
The call came in from a woman who was upset. Not at him. At us.
Her transfer had been flagged and she couldn't understand why the bank was "interfering" with her personal finances.
I pulled up the account. She had transferred $23,000 to him last month.
"Can I ask what these transfers are for?"
"It's personal."
"I understand. I have to ask, because our fraud system flagged this activity."
A pause. Then, quieter: "It's for my boyfriend. He's stuck overseas and he needs help getting medicine for children."
I asked how long she'd known him.
Five months. They met on Facebook. He's a surgeon working abroad. He was going to visit her as soon as he sorted out his work situation.
I told her, as gently as I could, that what she was describing matched the pattern of a romance scam almost exactly.
She'd heard it before. Her friends said the same thing. Her sister. Her pastor.
"They don't know him like I do," she said. "You don't know him like I do."
"And, we're getting married in August!"
I asked if she'd ever video called him.
She had. Once. It was brief. The connection was bad. He kept cutting out.
Then: "He loves me." Said softly. Like she was telling herself, not me.
You can't argue with that. So I didn't.
What I could do was tell her the transfer wasn't going through. If she wanted to dispute the fraud flag, she'd need to come in and speak with someone in person.
She said she'd think about it.
She called back one week later to argue about another transfer that got flagged.
This is not the first time someone has told her she was being scammed. Family members have said it. Friends have said it.
She's heard it and chosen to ignore it because he tells her she's beautiful, pays attention to her, and she is not crazy, thank you very much.
She's not crazy. She's lonely, and loneliness is exactly what these scammers count on.
Love Potion No. Scam Ingredients List.
For anyone who needs it spelled out, here is exactly what a romance scammer looks like in the wild.
Love Bombing
The attention is overwhelming from the jump. Constant texts, big promises, declarations of love that arrive before you've even had a proper conversation. It feels like a honeymoon phase dialed up to eleven. This is intentional. They're building emotional dependency fast, because the faster you're attached, the faster you start rationalizing sending money to someone you've never met.
Text Only, Always
Every time you suggest a video call or a phone conversation, there's an excuse. They're in a meeting. The connection is bad overseas. Give them ten minutes. They never follow through. The communication stays in text because text is easy to fake and hard to verify. If someone is romantically interested in you and consistently refuses to get on a video call, that is not a quirk. That is a red flag the size of a parade banner.
And if they do send a video, be skeptical. AI generated video is getting disturbingly convincing. But then again, Microsoft’s Clippy assistant could catfish them for millions. So maybe AI isn’t the problem.
The Traveling Job
He can never meet in person because his career requires constant international travel. He's basically Carmen San Diego, except instead of stealing landmarks he's stealing your savings. The traveling job serves a double purpose: it explains why he can never show up in person, and it reinforces the illusion that he's important, successful, and worldly. It's a built-in excuse machine.
Ask yourself: what does a man who travels constantly for work actually need from a committed long-distance relationship he started on Facebook?
Suspiciously Wealthy
He's rich. Very rich. Photos of him next to luxury cars and in expensive hotels. This wealth serves a narrative purpose. It reassures the victim that all the money flowing out will eventually come back. He's good for it. He's loaded. He just needs this one bridge loan from his fixed-income girlfriend he met online three months ago.
A man worth millions begging for wire transfers from someone he's never met in person is not a man worth millions. It should not need to be said. And yet.
Asking for Money Early
Nothing announces a scammer faster than a request for money. They speed-run through the romantic declarations to get to their actual goal, and they usually start small. A few hundred dollars. Something reasonable enough that it doesn't trigger alarm bells but just large enough to test whether you'll do it. When you do, the amounts grow. They've confirmed you're both emotionally invested and willing to send money, which makes you exactly the kind of person they want to keep on the line.
Love may be blind, but getting scammed is expensive.
Stranger Danger Didn't Stop at The Playground
Parents spend years warning their children about strangers. Don't take candy from them. Don't get in their car. Don't follow them anywhere.
What nobody explains is that stranger danger doesn't retire when you do. It follows you online and gets more sophisticated with age because the stakes get higher. Retirement savings, social security deposits, accounts that took decades to build. That's what's on the table when scammers target older adults who are lonely and looking for connection.
The emotional damage is its own category of loss. Unlike a stolen credit card, a fabricated relationship takes far longer to recover from than the financial hit it causes. Ms. Lonelyheart didn't just lose money. She lost a future she'd been looking forward to, one she genuinely believed in.
If you are someone who is looking for love in online spaces, or if you know someone who is, never send money to a person you haven't met in person. No matter how long you've been talking, no matter how convincing the story, no matter how many good morning texts you've received.
There is no star-crossed love story here. There is no happily-ever-after waiting overseas. There is only a person behind a screen, running a script, waiting for the next wire transfer to show up.
Don't be the next Ms. Lonelyheart.