Recognizing Scammers on and Off Dating Sites

When "Romeo" Or "Juliet" Wants To Steal More than Your Heart

Sep 28, 2023

This is another in a series of blog posts I hate to write.

Most widowed people encounter a scammer when we date for sure, many of us much earlier.

It starts something like this: someone reaches out to you. They appear interested in you, sometimes via a dating site, sometimes via Facebook, LinkedIn or some other social connection. You can read a glowing profile or they reach out to you.. They “appear” to have a connection of some sort, including stating that they are also widowed.. Using that connection, they engage and try to gather information. They mirror your experience, claiming similarities in your background. Sometimes they send flowers, or gifts, for weeks or months. They appear to care and ask you if you have eaten and slept. It is all part of the grooming process.

Ultimately, one of a few scenarios happens:

1) They begin to drop hints of vague unease to set you up for a pending crisis and ask you for money;

2) They tell you about some scheme that requires your money to invest in to get some future payoff;

3) They ruthlessly collect information to steal your identity, the identity of your dead spouse or your children;

4) They may ask for favors (cashing a check, shipping a package). This is usually to make you assist with the transportation of stolen items or items obtained through fraud.

And, like it or not, you are a tempting target as a widow. Women and men over 40 who are widowed, divorced or disabled are prime targets, according to the FBI. You can access the article at https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/sandiego/news/press-releases/fbi-warns-of-online-dating-scams)

Remember this, even if they are actually widowed: Death does not discriminate. Scammers get widowed too!

It’s about three things for these criminals:

money (life insurance, inheritance, or fake credit applications),
assistance with their schemes, generally by deception (engaging you in helping them with money laundering by cashing checks or shipping stolen goods) and
future targets (by creating legitimacy with your widowed friends, perhaps with a new identity if you discover they are scammers).

If the scammers cannot get you to friend them, they may try to set up a fake profile with a stolen photo of your friends to build connections. It’s called “cloning” of an account and it is despicable.

My online classes teach ways to recognize scammers easily. I also provide general information to help the widowed community. I’m not going to educate the scammers to make them better, so I will not share the information in a public forum.

So, what can a widowed person to do?

Get smart by educating yourself (all part of that “widow backbone” we talk about).

1-Limit the information you share about your spouse or your situation with persons not known to you. For privacy reasons, some widowed people choose to limit the information in a public obituary and create a separate, detailed one for family records and genealogy.

2-Consider smart financial steps when facing widowhood and after you are widowed: put passwords on all of your accounts, consider using only your first initial on checks, monitor your financial situation carefully for unusual charges, place a freeze on your credit or get a credit monitoring service after you are widowed.

3-Do not take part in the “About Me” fun games that have answers that relate to your challenge questions on your passwords or mix up the information you provide. Joining a group for widows can be a great way to connect, but there’s a risk of dishonest people temporarily slipping past the moderators. Or, if you answer those quizzes, answer wrong and keep your challenge questions specific.

3-Keep a reasonable level of “suspicion” about people who are not known to you who suddenly enter your orbit post-widowhood.

Things to Look For:

Here are some budding relationship or friendship warning signs:

Parallel profiles: They try to set themselves up as member of the “community” by saying they are also widowed, raising a child as a single parent, etc.

But-and this is important-they cannot verify common experiences related to being widowed. Ask them questions and their story falls apart:
- With new friends, attempts to get super close, super fast.
- With romantic interests: Declares love too fast, too quickly. Uses terms like “destiny,” “soul mates,” instant connection. This person engages in “over the top” language and uses “love bombing” tactics:
  - A “story” about where they live or what they do that cannot be verified.
  - Sends you a photograph that looks professional, from a magazine, or seems too good to be true.·
  - Claims to be any of the following:
    - From the U.S. and working overseas,\
    - Military attaché to a UN peacekeeping mission,
    - Red Cross or Peace Corps mission,
    - Working on an oil rig, pipeline or some other “profession” that puts them outside the U.S. The key is you can’t find them.
Sets up plans to get together but has a “family emergency, ” “tragedy,” or other event that “gets in the way.”
Appears to contact you only in the early morning or late evening (signal that they may not be in your time zone).
Asks for money, or cash equivalent transactions.
- Wire transfers,
- Transfers that cannot be recalled or verified via transfer services,
- Doing someone a favor by cashing checks for various reasons such as emergencies, travel, hotel/hospital bills, crime victims, sick children, and terminal illness with the promise of a bequest,
- Receipt of packages with the promise that they will be “picked up” from the house.
  
  The key is that there is some sort of crisis that only you can help with.
Significantly younger or older than you.
Wants you to JUMP OFF the dating site, social site super-fast and connect with them directly in a private network.
Their public profile states that they make a lot of money or leaves that impression. (This is because they want you to think that they will reimburse you quickly for any funds they request.)
Their online profiles don’t go back far enough or have a LOT of updates
- Think about it…how much information do YOU have online, even if it is at a privacy-conscious level?
- If they have an older profile, there have been many updates-changed pictures or details
They bring up religion right away and seem to use it to “prove” their character initially.
They bring up a career choice that that involves humanitarian work, again to “prove” their character.
Female scammers targeting men may initially use sex as a weapon. They might claim to be from an exotic place and need financial help for their education. There’s usually an age difference between the scammer and the victim.
They may claim to be in the military and claim to need money to “get home.” (The U.S. military does not strand people in foreign countries when their enlistment period ends.)
Photos may be good ones, but not specific or “right” for our culture here in the U. S…. the pose may be off or the activity seems unfamiliar. Photos, like language, have a cultural context.

3- Ask questions and listen to the response without calling them out. They are the predator and you are the prey in their minds-don’t bother giving them any information that you are suspicious. We all know there are common responses to being widowed, common experiences we all share. I will not elaborate on them here because I won’t give the scammers that information, but their responses will be “off” in ways you can sense.

At one point, I was showing my then-teenage son how to spot a scammer on a popular dating site. The scammer claimed he had also lost his father at a young age. My son asked him what it was like-and my son picked up immediately that his reactions were not “right.”

4-NEVER SEND MONEY OR A WIRE TRANSFER. NEVER CASH CHECKS. NEVER SHIP PACKAGES FOR SOMEONE UNKNOWN TO YOU.

5-If you are texted, called or messaged by anyone claiming to be part of a legitimate organization (e.g. your bank security department, online retailer, United States Postal Service) with some report of an issue or suspicious activity, NEVER respond to the initial message: don’t click links, verify information over the phone, etc.

Instead, hang up, ignore the link in the message. Contact the organization through the official legitimate channels:

Call a bank security team through the MAIN bank number.
For emails, go to the bank or organization through the official website, log into your account and contact them through customer service.

5-What to do when scammers target you (note, I say “when” not “if” because it can be a challenge to avoid this type of situation):

Don’t send money or take part in the scam in any way.
Don’t tell them you are onto them.
Report the account, the profile to the site administrators.
Do NOT give this individual your email address, IM information or any other details that can identify you, such as your real name or where you work.
Block the person from contacting you on the site and report the profile.
Warn your friends if they were on a common social site with you.
Cease contact immediately. Do not engage in messaging with them and don’t look back.
If the person has already engaged in what could be criminal activity, gather all data on how to locate and identify them and report it to the proper authorities. Collecting their contact information like IM, email, phone, Skype, etc. can help the authorities locate them.
Please, if you are a victim of a scam using the internet the internet, please file a report with the FBI www.ic3.gov. Our law enforcement officials use this information to track scams and trends.
Congratulate yourself for taking this step. What they do has nothing to do with you and who you are. They are treating you just like they would an ATM. For some of them, it is a business, and that is how they interact with the world.

Avoiding scammers when you are widowed involves being alert, cautious and slowing down. There are very few situations that are so urgent that you need to act immediately. If an organization asks you to verify a suspicious transaction, they already have the information in their records. You can ALWAYS reach them by the main customer service number or email address. It may take a little longer to reach the correct party, but it is worth it for your peace of mind.

Fortunately, these criminals are a minority of the people we encounter. It helps to remember truly good people out there who help us when we are widowed.

Have you run into a scammer? Did you recognize them as a scammer right way? Were there things in this blog post that resonated with you? Hit the subscribe button and hit the “Leave a Comment” button to add your feedback on the substance post:

Recognizing Scammers on and Off Dating Sites

When "Romeo" Or "Juliet" Wants To Steal More than Your Heart

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