Romance scam
A romance scam essentially occurs when strangers pretend romantic intentions, gain the affection of victims, and then use that goodwill to gain access to their victims’ money and bank account or by getting them to commit financial fraud on their behalf.
Romance scams rely on creating strong emotional ties that by-pass logical thought and appeal strongly and exclusively on emotions. These feelings are triggered by using appealing photos, dream profiles on online dating sites, persuasive and flattering words, poetry and love song lyrics. The strategy is essentially to get victims to fall in love and lust so strongly that they want to be with the scammers by whatever means possible. The promise of marriage is very common in this con because they know that no one will refuse to do a small favour for their ‘husband’. Marriage (or the promise of it) also increases the element of trust and the resulting mind control. The key motivator for the victim is love and romance. The motivation for the perpetrator in is greed.
Most of these scams originate from West Africa (especially Nigeria) although they are becoming increasingly common in Russia and Eastern Europe. Another emerging region is Thailand, the Philippines, or any other country where ‘mail order brides’ are available.