Scammers operate everywhere—job recruitment sites, across social media, on dating apps and in your text messages. Arguably the most hurtful and damaging of these scams is romance scams, where the perpetrator spends weeks or months seducing a victim and earning their trust before conning them out of as much money as they can get. While people are getting better at spotting these scams, scammers are constantly advancing, too. So what's it really like when you fall for one? WIRED Senior Editor, Security & Investigations Andrew Couts goes in depth with a real victim of a romance scam and shows us what warning signs to look out for.
Director: Efrat Kashai
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: J.Y. Chun; Brady Jackson
Host: Andrew Couts
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: Niklas Moller
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Malaia Simms
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Special Thanks: Evelyn
Director: Efrat Kashai
Director of Photography: Brad Wickham
Editor: J.Y. Chun; Brady Jackson
Host: Andrew Couts
Line Producer: Joseph Buscemi
Associate Producer: Paul Gulyas
Production Manager: Peter Brunette
Production Coordinator: Rhyan Lark
Camera Operator: Mar Alfonso
Gaffer: Niklas Moller
Sound Mixer: Sean Paulsen
Production Assistant: Malaia Simms
Post Production Supervisor: Christian Olguin
Post Production Coordinator: Rachel Kim
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Andy Morell
Special Thanks: Evelyn
Category
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TechTranscript
00:00I was on Hinge for just a couple of months and matched with one of the profiles, seemed
00:09like a nice guy.
00:11It escalated to him asking if I knew about cryptocurrency.
00:16He said he ran a studio on the side that did some currency exchanges and I ended up taking
00:26all my savings, even tapping into my IRA.
00:31We're talking like $300,000.
00:34Okay.
00:36That's a lot of money.
00:37Yeah.
00:38It still, to this day, a year and a half later, boggles my mind that I could be victim to
00:48a scam, especially of this financial magnitude that seems incongruous with the image I had
00:55of myself.
00:57You've probably noticed that online scams are everywhere.
01:00You see them on job recruitment sites, in your text messages, on dating apps, and across
01:04social media.
01:05And while people are getting better at spotting these scams, scammers are constantly advancing
01:09too.
01:10Arguably the most hurtful, personal, and financially damaging of these scams is romance scams,
01:15a type of investment scam where the perpetrator spends weeks or months getting to know the
01:18victim until ultimately conning them out of as much money as they can get.
01:22So what's it really like when you fall victim to one of these scams?
01:25How do they fool you?
01:26And how much money can you really lose?
01:28Today, we'll do a deep dive into relationship scams and speak with Evelyn, who experienced
01:33this firsthand.
01:34This is Incognito Mode.
01:41In 2024, cybercriminals stole over $1 trillion from unsuspecting targets around the world.
01:47Americans were by far the biggest victims of cyber scams, losing an average of $3,500
01:52per incident, more than double the losses reported in China.
01:55The fastest growing scams are investment scams, which grew nearly 40% year over year.
02:00These scams are based on gaining the victim's trust.
02:03Most investment scams begin with an attacker cold contacting people through text, social
02:08media, dating, and other communication platforms.
02:11You've probably gotten these texts before.
02:12They'll often simply say, hi, or something like, hey, Josh, it was fun catching up last
02:17week.
02:18If the recipient responds to say that the attacker has the wrong number, the scammer
02:21seizes the opportunity to strike up a conversation.
02:23To do this at scale, criminals will often message hundreds of Facebook users at a time
02:28or match with every profile on a dating app.
02:30This is very similar to what happened to Evelyn, who asked to appear under a pseudonym.
02:35Wired's Joel Kalili was the first to report Evelyn's story in 2023.
02:39I am a 50-year-old woman living in Los Angeles.
02:44At the time of the scam, I was 48 and had just gotten out of a long 20-year relationship.
02:55The breakup came out of nowhere for me, completely unraveled my life.
03:01I had been not working.
03:04I had an early retirement.
03:05I had to up and move out of the house we had been living in for 20 years and start all
03:13over, completely all over in my personal life, in my career.
03:18I was stressed out financially, and so I wasn't feeling great.
03:24I was on Hinge for just a couple of months and matched with one of the profiles.
03:30His name said Bruce, and we started chatting.
03:33We exchanged pleasantries and talked about like, what kind of movies do you like?
03:39What kind of things do you like to do?
03:42Just like the basic get-to-know-you kind of things.
03:44Seemed like a nice guy and quickly became very, I guess, via text affectionate, saying,
03:53I really like chatting with you.
03:55I don't want to be chatting with anyone else, like that kind of thing.
03:58He said he lived in Sunnyvale in California, and that he also had a second home in Beverly
04:06Hills.
04:08Okay.
04:09How did that make you think about him, feel about him when you learned he has two homes
04:13in California?
04:14Presumably, he's pretty well off, it sounds like.
04:17Yeah.
04:18Even his few profile pics kind of gave off the vibe that he had some money, and the second
04:26home was more important in that it anchored him also in Los Angeles because I didn't want
04:33to start a long-distance relationship.
04:35So he'll be in town at some point.
04:38At this point, you can probably better understand why Evelyn kept chatting with Bruce.
04:42He seems smart, kind, caring, and that's exactly what relationship scams are based on, basic
04:47human feelings like a desire for connection or feeling stressed out about money.
04:51Knowing this, it's no surprise that since the pandemic, fraud has reached epidemic levels.
04:56They hit a record high in 2021, with people losing something like $550 million, up nearly
05:0380% from the year before.
05:05A rise in social isolation and more online interactions created a perfect breeding ground
05:10for online scams.
05:11Gareth Norris, a lecturer in psychology at Aberystwyth University, published a paper
05:16in 2019 on the psychology of internet fraud.
05:19According to Norris, scams in the digital age are much more effective because they happen
05:23behind a screen.
05:24Behavior that might normally raise suspicion, sweating or fidgeting, is concealed.
05:29Not only that, but scammers have become experts at manipulating human psychology.
05:33David Modic, a professor of computer and information science at the University of Ljubljana, says
05:38the chances that someone will fall for a scam has no connection with intelligence.
05:42Rather, it's about the ability of the scammer to take advantage of personal context, like
05:46a recent breakup, to erode someone's self-control and blind them to the warning signs.
05:51Basically, scammers are really good at getting people to do what they want.
05:54And once they have you locked in, it can be really hard to notice the warning signs, no
05:58matter how intelligent you are or tech-savvy you think you may be.
06:01At this point, had you only been talking to Bruce via text message, or had there been
06:06phone calls or video chats or anything?
06:08Definitely no video chat.
06:11Pretty quickly from our chatting on Hinge, he asked if I use WhatsApp.
06:16So we did, and that's where all the conversation happened since.
06:20And then it escalated to him asking if I knew about cryptocurrency, which I knew some.
06:29And then he said he ran a studio on the side that did some currency exchanges and made
06:39money, and if I would be interested in putting some money in it.
06:43Day trading or something, but with cryptocurrency.
06:47He led me to a third-party website, as far as I knew.
06:52The website, I believe, was c-e-g-a-m-a-s dot com.
06:58I don't know what it stood for.
07:00He walked me step-by-step, sometimes with screenshots, sometimes just telling me, like,
07:06this is what you do to transfer the money.
07:08This is where you put it in.
07:10And it looked colorful, but it looked legit.
07:13It even had, like, the footers on the bottom.
07:16It had a support chat, and, you know, it had all the bells and whistles you would expect.
07:21It wasn't like some 1990s website or anything like that.
07:25Right, I understand.
07:27When did you start putting money in, and how much was that?
07:31I think the first amount was probably like $1,000 or $2,000, because I already had that
07:38much in my Coinbase account.
07:40It was already, like, money I didn't consider as having.
07:43So I was fine using that as my first transaction money.
07:50It seemed low-risk at that point.
07:52Exactly.
07:53So his logic was that, oh, I have a team of people who have been studying the trends,
08:00and they know when to do the transactions and when it's going to hit higher.
08:06So he would be like, okay, well, the next peak is going to happen in two days or something
08:11like that, which I'm sure to a finance person, it would be ridiculous to hear that.
08:18But, like, there have been so many coins that have been influenced by the news and whatnot.
08:24So I thought, like, okay, sure.
08:27Where did things go from there?
08:28It made like a couple hundred dollars or something, which was like, okay, I could see that.
08:33So that happens a couple more times.
08:36And then I said, I want to take some money out, because I wanted to make sure I could
08:42take money out.
08:44He walked me through the steps, and it was easy.
08:48And I had screen grabbed that process and written down notes on how to do it, because
08:53I thought I was being smart, figuring things out and having a just-in-case emergency plan.
09:00And so I was able to withdraw the money.
09:03Do you remember how much you withdrew, or if you had any temptation to just take it
09:07all out and kind of be done with it, but since you were up already?
09:11Oh, Andrew, if only I had done that.
09:15But it's like a gambling person at a casino, I guess, right?
09:18When you're up, you just keep on putting in the money.
09:21I took the fact that I could take out money as a sign that it was safe.
09:29So how do scammers perform investment fraud?
09:31Adrian Sheik, an independent security researcher based in Canada, says the methods used in
09:35these scams are almost always the same.
09:37A cybercriminal organization develops a template for a fake crypto trading site and, in exchange
09:42for a kickback, hands it to other criminal affiliates who perform the scam.
09:46Data gathered by Sheik suggests that at least 439 distinct web addresses have been used
09:51to host the CEG exchange.
09:53It's absolutely textbook, he says.
09:55A quick scan of the crypto scam tracker on California's Department of Financial Protection
09:59and Innovation website tells a similar story.
10:02The scams reported are almost identical.
10:04An unsuspecting target meets someone online, on a dating site, messaging app, or similar.
10:09After chatting for a while, the person they met brings up the possibility of helping them
10:13invest in crypto and introduces them to a trading website or app.
10:16Some reported names include Capital Handle System, ICE Crypto Trading App, Topex, and
10:21GCC Money.
10:23The apps or websites appear trustworthy and may even impersonate the platforms of legitimate
10:27financial institutions.
10:29Once inside the portal, targets can often see curated, real-time market data meant to
10:33show the potential of the investment.
10:35And once the target funds their investment account, they can start watching their balances
10:39grow.
10:39So now you've taken some money out.
10:42What's your opinion of Bruce?
10:43What's the vibe at that moment?
10:45Very friendly still.
10:47We were still chatting on a regular basis.
10:51And then at some point we had chatted on the phone.
10:54He had an accent, but whatever, like people have accents.
10:58I didn't think anything of it.
11:00Of course, the whole time on the relationship side, I had been wanting to see when he was
11:06going to come down to LA so we can meet in person.
11:09What I should have at least pushed for is the next step would have been a video chat
11:14of some sort.
11:15I don't know that would have done anything to change the outcome, but I didn't even do
11:20that.
11:20And it was always like, oh, in a couple of weeks.
11:23And the whole scam didn't last that long to a point where it was like he kept pushing
11:29it back and I was getting like frustrated or anything like that.
11:33But it wasn't to a point where I was like, oh, OK, something's up.
11:37You're hiding from me.
11:38And then he's also pushing to invest more.
11:42That part never died down.
11:46In fact, it increased where he was saying like, hey, the more you put in to trade, the
11:52higher your return, which, again, also makes sense.
11:56You need money to make money.
11:58Right.
11:58He eventually wore me down and I ended up taking all my savings and even tapping into
12:07my IRA to, I guess, I don't want to say like to appease him because there was obviously
12:15a part of me that wanted to do it.
12:17But it eventually got to that point.
12:21And he succeeded in talking me into putting in all that money into this website and, quote
12:28unquote, trading with it.
12:29The fact that I had withdrawn money was like this big green light in front of me in being
12:35like, well, you know, you might lose some money, like let's say the timing was off or
12:41something.
12:41But you can always take it all out if something starts to go south.
12:45So do you remember like how much at that point you were in for between your savings
12:50and what you took out of your IRA?
12:53Oh, we're talking like $300,000.
12:57Okay.
12:58That's a lot of money.
13:00Yeah.
13:01Yeah.
13:01So it was everything.
13:03Oh, man.
13:05How did that go?
13:06How did you feel, you know, converting $300,000 actual dollars into cryptocurrency at that
13:13point?
13:14Were you excited?
13:15Yeah.
13:16Unfortunately, I was excited.
13:19While this is happening, I had asked about his work and he sent me a photo of his office.
13:27Like, hey, here are the guys working hard or something like that.
13:30Only later, I reverse image search that photo and realized that it was a two-year-old photo
13:38from someone else's Twitter.
13:40Oh.
13:41And this was after you realized like you'd been had by this guy?
13:45I think so.
13:46Or like I was starting to get suspicious.
13:48Like it was somewhere in the ramp up.
13:50The photo tied to a company that was charged with being fraudulent.
13:57And of course, that freaked me out.
13:59What also freaked me out was the first time I made a big transaction with most of the
14:05money, the return on it was some ridiculous amount.
14:11I thought, no way.
14:12Something's up.
14:13And so it wasn't that you lost money.
14:15It was that you made so much money that you were like, this can't be real.
14:20Or why is everyone not just making money this way?
14:23Exactly.
14:23Okay.
14:24So in the timeline, we're at this point where you've put in your life savings.
14:29You're up a suspicious amount.
14:32What happens next from there?
14:33I tried without Bruce to take out all of the money.
14:40Going through the steps that I had noted and screenshotted.
14:43And it didn't work.
14:44So I thought, okay, well, maybe I have to do it in smaller chunks.
14:49Maybe there's a limit or something.
14:51So I try to take out a little bit of my like a couple thousand dollars.
14:55It's about the same amount probably that I did before.
14:58I still couldn't do it.
15:00So then I messaged the support saying like, hey, what's going on?
15:04And I get a message back saying, you have to put in 15% of the value of your account
15:12to prove that you are legitimate in order to take out the money.
15:17Oh, boy.
15:18I'm getting stressed just thinking about this moment.
15:23Were you freaking out at this point?
15:25Oh, yeah.
15:25My blood ran cold and I kept trying without the tech support anymore.
15:31Like, no, no, no, no, no.
15:32This isn't happening.
15:34First of all, even if that was true, I no longer had 10% of the value of this ridiculously
15:40fake amount of money that I now had allegedly.
15:44I think it was when I got that information and I turned to Bruce.
15:48I said, what is this?
15:50Like, what does this mean?
15:51Why can't I get any money out?
15:53And his response was, oh, didn't I tell you?
15:56Like, yeah, that's their policy to weed out the scammers.
16:03Yeah.
16:03Once he said that, I was like, oh, you're in on this.
16:07This is bad.
16:09And then he tried to convince me to borrow money to get my money back.
16:15So I just stopped communicating with him and just tried to come to grips with what I had
16:22done, what I, on my own two feet, walked into the bank to do.
16:28I still drive by that bank on a regular basis and I inwardly cringe because I did that.
16:36And I, for a little bit, could not bring myself to tell anybody.
16:42It was so shameful.
16:45It was so embarrassing.
16:47Mainly, it was embarrassing.
16:49I did eventually go to the police, the local police, and then I also filled out the FBI
16:57digital scam, something, some department of theirs.
17:00Like, the police was very upfront in saying there's nothing we can do because the pictures
17:08you have, the information, the phone numbers, like all of that could be fake.
17:11In a Hollywood ending, there'd be a duffel bag full of money that they walk out with
17:15and hand over to me.
17:16Right.
17:17But none of that happened.
17:19And he flat out said, like, the volume, the lack of information that could be true just
17:27wasn't there.
17:31So what happens if you try to go to the cops?
17:33The likelihood that a victim will get their money back is slim.
17:36The only hope lies in tracing the movement of cryptocurrency.
17:39An analysis of the movements of the crypto stolen from Evelyn, conducted by Chainalysis,
17:44a firm whose tools are used by law enforcement to inform investigations, reveals the length
17:48scammers will go to cover their tracks.
17:50After Evelyn handed over the crypto, it was divided into different wallets and eventually
17:54cashed out through a selection of exchanges based in multiple countries, where it was
17:58blended with funds stolen from other victims and converted on multiple occasions into different
18:03crypto tokens.
18:04Each of these hops is designed to further blur the origin of the funds and limit the
18:08likelihood an exchange might identify wrongdoing and freeze the assets.
18:11This indicates a high level of organization, says Phil LaRotte, director of cybersecurity
18:16investigations at Chainalysis.
18:18The sheer volume of scams like this one, coupled with the lack of resources and technical
18:23expertise among law enforcement, means investigations are rare.
18:26These scams are extremely hard to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt, says Nikola Staab,
18:31a former cybercrime prosecutor and now CEO of security startup Cybera.
18:35The estimates vary, but all told, only a minute percentage of victims ever see their money
18:40again.
18:41Others even get scammed again by recovery scammers who ask for upfront payment in return
18:45for helping retrieve lost funds.
18:49So who are these scammers?
18:50Pulling off long-term investment scams can take hours of communication and relationship
18:55building, and researchers say that criminal organizations develop scripts and playbooks
18:59that allow them to offload the work at scale onto inexperienced scammers.
19:03And these inexperienced scammers are often victims themselves.
19:07Many of them have been subjected to human trafficking and are enslaved at compounds
19:11controlled by criminal gangs.
19:12In Southeast Asia, for example, it is believed that hundreds of thousands of people have
19:16been trafficked to giant scam centers.
19:18They're then forced to scam victims abroad and can be beaten or tortured if they refuse
19:22or try to leave.
19:23A 2022 ProPublica investigation into human trafficking and cyber scamming has also shed
19:28light on how victims are smuggled and sold into forced labor.
19:31One example is Fon, a 22-year-old from China.
19:34In March of 2021, Fon was offered a marketing position with what he thought was a well-known
19:39food delivery company in Cambodia.
19:41The proposed salary was $1,000 a month and was enticing by local standards.
19:46Fon was so excited that he told his older brother about the opportunity, who then quit
19:50his job and joined him.
19:51By the time they realized that the offer was a sham, it was too late.
19:54Their new bosses wouldn't let them leave the compound where they had been put to work.
19:58Fon was taken captive in 2021 and sold twice in 2022.
20:02Each time he was sold, his new captors raised the amount he'd have to pay to buy his freedom.
20:07His debt more than doubled from $7,000 to $15,500 in a country where the annual per
20:12capita income is about $1,600.
20:15ProPublica also found that human traffickers use apps like Telegram to sell their victims.
20:19One ad reads,
20:21Selling a Chinese man in Sahanikville.
20:23Just smuggled from China.
20:2422 years old with ID card.
20:26Typing very slow.
20:27The problem of human trafficking is likely to get worse, especially with the dismantling
20:32of USAID as many efforts addressing forced labor compounds that fuel digital fraud like
20:37investment scams are being cut.
20:42Scammers are often constrained by their language skills and ability to keep up conversations
20:47with potentially hundreds of victims at a time in numerous languages.
20:50However, AI developments within the last two years, including the launch of writing tools
20:54like ChatGPT, are making it easier for criminals to break down language barriers and create
20:59the content they need for scamming.
21:00Perhaps the biggest AI paradigm shift comes from deepfakes.
21:03Scammers are increasingly using machine learning systems to allow for real-time face swapping.
21:08This technology allows criminals to change their appearance on video calls with their
21:12victims, making them realistically appear to be a different person.
21:15Such services are a game changer for scammers because they allow attackers to prove to victims
21:20in photos or real-time video calls that they are who they claim to be.
21:24Stephanie Baroud, a criminal intelligence analyst in Interpol's human trafficking unit,
21:28says the impact of AI also needs to be considered as part of an investment scammer's tactics
21:33in the recruitment of other scammers.
21:35Baroud says the recruitment ads that lure people into being trafficked used to be,
21:39quote, very generic and full of grammatical errors.
21:41However, AI is making them appear more polished and compelling.
21:45It really is making it easier to create a very realistic job offer, she says.
21:49Unfortunately, this will make it much more difficult to identify which is the real and
21:53which is the fake ads.
21:55I'm sure in some of your research or reading some of the coverage of this, you've heard
21:59about the scam compounds that are really prevalent in Southeast Asia.
22:04And obviously, it seems unlikely we will ever know Bruce's identity.
22:09But has it crossed your mind that he might have been, you know, potentially a victim
22:13of human trafficking himself and also be not necessarily just a perpetrator in this whole
22:19system?
22:20Yeah, I found that out afterwards that whoever he is himself could be a victim too, just
22:27like you said, which complicates it a little bit as far as how I feel about the perpetrator,
22:34because I thought I was the only victim in this situation.
22:38But to know that somebody is having to do this against their will on that end is so
22:47tragic.
22:48And to me, there's a special place in hell that is reserved for scammers, because you
22:56are putting in so much effort just to take from somebody else.
23:00Yeah.
23:01And that's a lot of brainpower that went into creating this scam, creating this fake
23:06website, making fake profiles, sourcing all those fake profile photos.
23:11It is tremendous amount of work.
23:14And all it is, is to con somebody else out of their hard-earned money.
23:22The criminal enterprises behind these scams run complex logistical operations, both physical
23:27and digital.
23:28Since beginning in China in the late 2010s, investment scammers have grown in number and
23:32they've begun to spread globally, with scamming infrastructure emerging in the Middle East,
23:36Eastern Europe, Latin America and West Africa.
23:39Surprisingly, since 2021, Dubai has emerged as the largest epicenter of investment scams
23:45outside of Southeast Asia.
23:46At least six alleged scam compounds believed to be operating around Dubai have been identified.
23:51The research, based on testimony from forced laborers, data leaked from a cyber attack
23:55and social media posts, identified potential compounds around industrial and investment
24:00parks.
24:00These organized crime groups typically set up in countries where they can take advantage
24:04of instability, whether it's poverty, lack of government regulation, limited law enforcement
24:10resources or other favorable factors.
24:12Regardless of where these scammers are located, their tactics are all pretty similar and the
24:16results can be devastating for targets around the world.
24:19To this day, about a year and a half out, not a whole lot has changed.
24:26And that's very disappointing and also disheartening.
24:30I'm worse off financially than before, that's for sure.
24:34I am still single, not that that makes or breaks my life, but just in terms of, well,
24:42at least in the year and a half, things have turned around.
24:44Like, that's not my story.
24:46Logistically and financially, every day, every day I think about it and can't believe it
24:53happened.
24:53That's the main reason why I wanted to do this interview and wanted to do the article
24:59in the first place, because I'm very comfortable with technology.
25:03I like to think, like I said, I'm a logical, smart-ish person who knows better than to
25:09fall for the Nigerian Prince scam.
25:12So I thought I was pretty well prepared.
25:16I thought I had been following a lot of smart things in, like, making sure I can withdraw
25:22the money, in the fact that the website looked fine, you know, to the naked eye.
25:28But yet it still happened to me.
25:30And I want people to not be so confident to think like, oh, that was obvious.
25:37Like, that would never, like, that's what I thought too.
25:44So are there any ways to protect yourself?
25:46There's so many scams out there, it's hard to give a one-size-fits-all answer.
25:50But some red flags that you can look for are if a stranger contacts you out of the blue
25:54and tries to befriend you on a text message that you wouldn't expect.
25:57If you meet somebody who starts talking about investing and telling you how to get rich
26:01quick.
26:01If somebody asks you to send them money or pay for them or send a gift, that's going
26:05to be a red flag.
26:06If they ask you to move to a specific platform that's different from the one where you met
26:09them, that's also something you got to watch out for.
26:12If something feels off, it probably is.
26:14So take a minute to consider what you're doing.
26:16If this does happen to you, it's important to talk about it because the more awareness
26:20that comes to this, the more law enforcement can put resources behind combating it, the
26:24more people know how to avoid scams, and the harder it is for the scammers to get away
26:28with it.
26:28This has been Incognito Mode.
26:30Until next time.