Romance Scam Signs: How to Protect Yourself
Entry No. 012 ·
By The IF Team
The surest sign of a romance scam is a request for money from someone you have met online but never in person — to lend, to invest, to pay a fee or to pass on for them. Around that request sit the other signs: affection that arrives far too fast, a reason they can never video call or meet, pressure to leave the dating app, and a life with a crisis built in. Two or three together make a pattern. Stop sending anything, tell someone you trust and report the profile. If money has already gone, call your bank first.
If something about a match feels slightly off, trust that feeling enough to check. Scams are a familiar part of online dating: in a Pew Research Center survey of American online daters, about half said they had come across someone they thought was trying to scam them. The people behind these schemes work from scripts and stolen photos, and they look for people who are open, kind and hopeful. Being targeted says nothing about your intelligence, and being open to love is never the mistake. The lie is.
This guide is about the money. For the wider picture — your profile, your location, meeting safely — start with our guide to online dating safety. It also helps to know what a scam needs to work: a stranger, a hurry and a way to move money. IF, the dating app we built for everyone, single or in a relationship, works the other way round: Search for people you already know, sealed messages that wait until you are both single, and a chat, open only between two single people, with no way to send money.
The warning signs of a romance scam
Apart from a request for money, no single sign proves anything. Real people are sometimes shy on camera, work abroad or fall hard. What gives a scam away is how the signs stack up, and where they point: first towards your trust, then towards your money.
In how they talk to you
- Intensity before knowledge. Talk of soulmates and a shared future within days, long before they could know you. This love bombing makes doubting them feel like a betrayal.
- Constant contact. Good-morning messages every day and long conversations at all hours. For a scammer, this is the job.
- A hurry to leave the app. Within a few messages they want WhatsApp, Telegram or text, because they are “hardly ever on here” — and the app’s reporting tools cannot follow you there. It helps to know when it is safe to give a match your number.
- Secrecy. They ask you not to tell friends or family yet, or say your family “would not understand” what you have.
In their story
- A life that keeps them away: an oil rig, a military posting, a medical mission overseas — jobs that explain why meeting is always next month.
- No live face. The camera is broken, the signal is bad. Even a call proves less than it used to, now that some scammers use face-swapping filters.
- Photos that are too polished, or too few. If your worry is whether they exist at all, how to tell whether you are being catfished walks through the image checks.
- Details that drift. Their city, age or job shifts slightly over the weeks. Someone running several invented lives cannot keep them straight.
In what they ask for
- Money in any form: a loan, a plane ticket, a hospital bill, customs fees, help with a frozen account.
- Payment that is hard to reverse: gift cards, cryptocurrency, bank transfers and wire transfers.
- Help moving money or parcels, such as setting up an account or passing on money they send you. This is called acting as a money mule, and it can make you part of a crime yourself.
- Your details: a one-time code, a photo of your passport, your banking login, intimate photos. Each can be turned into money later.
- Investment advice you did not ask for, especially about crypto. That version has its own name.
How a romance scam builds trust before it asks
Most romance scams follow the same arc, and each stage feels entirely normal from the inside.
- The approach. A dating match, a friendly message on social media, or a text that seems to have reached a wrong number.
- The bond. Weeks, sometimes months, of daily attention. They share “secrets”, ask about yours, and talk about the house, the holiday, meeting your family.
- The small test. A gift card because their bank card is blocked, or a secret to keep. A small yes makes the next one easier.
- The crisis. A sudden emergency with a deadline: an arrest, a hospital, a fee to release an inheritance. The urgency is there to stop you thinking.
- The escalation. One payment becomes several, and new fees keep appearing. If you hesitate, they are hurt, then angry, then desperate.
Seen whole, the arc is the tell. If a relationship has reached a crisis before you have ever met, you already know which story you are in.
Pig butchering scams, or romance baiting: when love becomes an investment pitch
A pig butchering scam blends romance with fake investing. The name, translated from a Chinese phrase, describes the method: fatten the pig before the slaughter. INTERPOL now calls it romance baiting, because the older name shames the people it targets. These scams can be short, and they may start on a dating app before shifting into a fake cryptocurrency or investment scheme.
It can look nothing like the classic scam, because nobody asks for a gift or a loan: every payment feels like your own investment. Your match turns out to be quietly successful at trading crypto, gold or currencies, and after days or weeks of warm conversation offers to show you how. They send you to an app or website that looks professional, help you make a small first investment and let you withdraw a little to prove it works. The balance on screen climbs, so you add more. When you try to take it out, there is a tax, a fee or a “verification deposit” to pay first. The balance was never real. Watch for:
- A match who brings up investing unprompted, often with a mentor or relative who has inside knowledge.
- A platform reached through a link they send, rather than one you found yourself.
- Small early withdrawals that work, then growing fees to release the rest.
- Pressure to invest more before a “window” closes, or to borrow against your home or pension.
The rule is short: never take investment advice from someone you met on a dating app. A person who is interested in you does not need you to open a trading account.
Dating app scams worth knowing by name
Dating apps attract their own versions of the con, because they gather exactly what a scammer needs: people hoping to connect. Four are worth recognising on sight:
- The verification trap. A match asks you to “prove you are real” by reading back a code sent to your phone, which hands them one of your accounts, or by signing up to a “safety” site that takes your card details.
- The date-booking link. They suggest a first date, then send a link to buy the cinema tickets or reserve the table in advance. The site is a copy of a real one, built to take your card details. Book anything yourself, on a site you found yourself.
- Sextortion. Flirting moves quickly to intimate photos, then a threat to share them unless you pay. Do not pay; paying rarely ends it. Stop replying, save the evidence, report it to the police and tell someone you trust today.
- The stranded traveller. The first date is finally happening, and then they are stuck at an airport or a border with a fee to pay, and only you can help. It is the crisis stage, timed for the moment you most want to believe.
Someone you met online asked for money. What now?
If you have never met them in person, the answer is no. Not a smaller amount, not a loan with a date on it, not just this once. That rule protects you even when you cannot tell whether the story is true, and it accuses nobody.
You might say: “I don’t send money to people I haven’t met. I hope you understand.” Someone who cares about you will be disappointed and let it go, because real feeling can hear “no” and stay. Someone working from a script will push, guilt-trip you, or suddenly need it more. Then:
- Tell someone. A story that felt reasonable in a chat at midnight often sounds different said out loud to a friend.
- Search their photos and their story. A reverse image search may turn up the same face under another name. It can also help to search the job they claim plus the word “scammer”, such as “oil rig scammer” or “US Army scammer”, to see whether others have heard the same story.
- Check the crisis yourself. If they say they are in a hospital or held at customs, find that place’s number and call it. Never use a number or link they give you.
- Ask for a live video call now — inside the dating app if it offers one, otherwise on a call you set up yourself — and ask them to do something unscripted, like turning their head to one side or holding up a note with today’s date.
- Send nothing while you check. You never owe anyone money to prove that you trust them.
How to report a romance scam
Report it even if you lost nothing, and even if you feel embarrassed: reports help platforms remove accounts that are working on other people, and help investigators link cases. If money has gone, the order matters.
- Call your bank or payment provider first, on the number on your card. Ask them to stop or recall the payment. If you used a crypto exchange or gift cards, contact the exchange or the card’s issuer too. Speed gives you the best chance of getting anything back.
- Stop replying, but delete nothing and do not unmatch yet. Screenshot the profile and the whole conversation, and keep usernames, phone numbers, wallet addresses and every transaction reference.
- Report the profile on the dating app and anywhere else you spoke. Reporting, unmatching or blocking can make the conversation disappear, which is why the screenshots come first. Each of the three does something different, and the details vary by app.
- Report it to the police, or to the national fraud-reporting or consumer-protection agency where you live. Many take reports online, and the reference you are given is worth keeping.
- If you shared passwords, codes or ID documents, change your passwords and turn on two-step verification.
If anyone threatens you, contact the police or your local emergency services.
Watch for the second scam
After a loss, someone may offer to recover your money: a lawyer, a blockchain investigator, even someone claiming to be the police. They will want a fee up front. Real authorities do not charge you to investigate a crime, so treat any unexpected offer of recovery as the same scam coming round again.
If you think a parent or friend is being scammed
By the time you notice, the person you love is often defending someone they have never met. Scammers prepare for this, telling their targets that family will be jealous. Opening with “you’re being scammed” can push someone closer to the scammer.
- Ask, do not accuse. “How did you meet? Have you video called?” Curiosity lets them notice the gaps themselves.
- Offer to check together. A reverse image search done side by side can do what an argument cannot.
- Ask for one promise: “Whatever happens, don’t send money to someone you haven’t met.” It is easier to agree to than “they are fake”.
- Stay close, even if they are cross with you. When the story breaks, they will need somewhere safe to land.
Go gently with their hope; it was never the problem.
Shame is the scammer’s last tool
If you have lost money, you may feel foolish, heartbroken and angry all at once. Scammers count on that shame, because it stops people reporting. You were not stupid; you were lied to by someone skilled at lying, and what you felt was real even if they were not. Grief for the person you thought you knew deserves care. Talk to someone you trust; you do not have to carry it alone.
And do not let one liar take your openness from you. Being willing to feel something for someone, and to say so, is not the weakness here. It is the best of you, and it deserves someone who means it.
Where IF fits
IF is a dating app for everyone, single or in a relationship, and several things about how it works leave a scammer less to work with. Two single people use it like any dating app, and no chat opens until you accept someone’s Like, so a stranger cannot start a conversation with you uninvited. And if you would rather not be found by your email, number or handle, turning off Discoverable in Search makes you invisible to anyone searching them.
Once a chat opens, it carries text, voice notes, GIFs from a built-in library and heart reactions. There is no way to send money through it, or to send photos from your phone, so a match who wants your pictures — the raw material of sextortion — has to ask you to move somewhere else. That push off the app is your signal, because it is where many of the scams above begin. A request for money is different: it is only words, and words can arrive in any chat, IF’s included.
An optional selfie verification badge shows that someone has passed a live face check matched to their main photo, which a profile built on stolen pictures would struggle to do. Text and photos are moderated, Report and Block sit on every profile you can identify, a report separates you for good, and every report is reviewed within 24 hours. No app is scam-proof, so the one rule travels with you: never send money to someone you have not met. Our safety page has more on meeting in person.
The deeper difference is what IF is for. Search finds a specific person by the email address, phone number or Instagram handle they have shared with you — the friend from university, the colleague you have known for years, someone you have actually met. And when either of you is in a relationship, no chat can open at all: you send an IF, a private, sealed message of up to 250 characters that opens only once you are both single. Until then it asks nothing of them — not a reply, certainly not a payment. It simply waits, unless they choose to delete it.
That is the quiet test of true affection: it can wait. A scammer cannot, because every week without a payment is a week wasted. Your first IF is free, and how an IF works covers every situation. If being lied to has left you wary of strangers, it may be a gentle way back to hope: say what you feel to someone you already know, with a Like if you are both single and on IF, or in an IF if either of you is spoken for.
Questions people ask
Can you get your money back after a romance scam?
Sometimes, especially if you act within hours. Banks can occasionally stop or recall a transfer, and in some countries they must now reimburse many people tricked into making one, within limits — so ask yours. Cryptocurrency and gift cards are much harder to trace, which is exactly why scammers ask for them.
What do romance scammers say?
That they have never felt this way before, often within days. They talk about fate, use pet names early and describe a shared future in detail. Then come the lines that open a request: “I hate to ask”, “my account is frozen”, “I’ll pay you back as soon as I land”.
Is it a scam if they have never asked for money?
Not necessarily; most people online are who they say they are. But some scams run for months before the first request, and investment scams may never ask outright. If you are falling for someone you have not met, the checks worth doing before it goes further apply either way.
Why do romance scammers avoid video calls?
Because the person in the photos is not the person typing. The pictures are usually stolen, and the messages may come from someone of a different age or sex, working from a script. So the camera stays broken, week after week, and a call that is short, dark or glitchy proves little.
Should you confront a romance scammer?
No. It rarely achieves anything, and it keeps you talking to someone whose job is persuasion: they may deny everything, turn the guilt back on you or switch to a new story. Confronting them can also warn them to delete the profile and the messages before you have saved them. Screenshot the conversation first, report the profile, then block them, and let your reports do the confronting.
Stay open, stay curious, and never let love arrive with an invoice. Real feeling asks for nothing and is patient: if the person is right and the timing is not, say it in an IF, and let it wait for the day your timing lines up.