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Romance scammers blend emotional manipulation with cybercrime tactics to exploit unsuspecting ...
More victims around the world. The Department of Justice recently recovered $8.2 million in Tether — or USDT — stolen through a romance baiting scam.
One Ohio woman lost $663,352 of her life savings after replying in 2023 to what seemed like a routine wrong-number text. The conversation began with casual talk about faith and hobbies. It ended in a calculated, large-scale financial ambush.
This is not about love. This is not a mistake. It is a cyber attack.
The damage isn’t measured in gigabytes — it’s measured in wiped-out savings, broken trust and shattered retirement plans. Romance baiting — once known as pig butchering — is a cybercrime built on social engineering. It doesn’t rely on malware, zero-day exploits or system vulnerabilities.
It relies on one thing: human trust. The attacks are personal, deliberate and relentless. And the playbook is both simple and disturbingly effective.
The Hook: It starts with a seemingly accidental message — “Oops, wrong number” or “Is this John?” What follows is casual conversation, often warm and disarming. The scammer plays polite, curious and a little persistent. This is not phishing.
It’s bait — targeted at someone who may be lonely, distracted, in a life transition or simply polite enough to respond. The Grooming: Once a response is received, the long game begins. Scammers build daily rapport around emotionally resonant topics: family, faith, loss, goals.
The dialogue feels real — sometimes too real. Victims may be encouraged to share photos, private stories or even financial aspirations. The scammer listens, adapts and mirrors emotions, slowly building a false sense of intimacy and trust.
The Opportunity: At some point, the conversation shifts to finances. Crypto investing is introduced as a casual side topic — framed as something the scammer is already doing successfully. Victims are encouraged to try it themselves.
Instructions follow, step by step, often pointing to legitimate platforms like Binance or Crypto.com. The setup is legitimate.
The trap is not. The Illusion: Once funds are deposited, the illusion kicks in. Victims are shown fake dashboards or real-looking apps with forged data — showing their accounts doubling or tripling in value.
Screenshots are sent. “Success stories” are shared. Victims see growth and reinvest.
The scammer encourages this — claiming bigger returns require larger deposits. The Trap: Eventually, the victim tries to cash out. That’s when the excuses begin — unexpected taxes, frozen accounts, legal clearances.
These are stalling tactics. If the victim pushes, the tone shifts. Scammers threaten exposure, resort to blackmail or go dark altogether.
By the time the victim realizes what’s happened, the money is gone. This isn’t casual fraud. It’s psychological warfare — engineered to disarm the target’s judgment, manipulate emotion and gain access to assets.
And it’s being executed at global scale using automation, AI and professional-level scripts sometimes developed by psychology professionals. Another case is Judith Boivin, an 80-year-old retiree from Maryland, who spent her entire life helping others. She worked as a nurse, a psychotherapist and a social worker.
She was the kind of person who trusted institutions, believed in public service and had no reason to question the legitimacy of a call from the government. That call came in September 2023. A man claiming to be with the FBI told her that her Social Security number had been used by drug traffickers.
He said her name had come up in a major fentanyl investigation involving the Sinaloa cartel. She was told she was a material witness in an active federal case and needed to cooperate. Judith was transferred to someone who identified himself as “Special Agent Wayne A.
Jacobs” — a real FBI agent’s name, co-opted by scammers to build credibility. Caller ID was spoofed to display official federal agency numbers. Emails followed, complete with government-style formatting, legal language and case numbers that looked authentic.
Judith believed she was helping her country. Over the course of several weeks, she withdrew nearly $600,000 of her life savings. She followed detailed instructions to deliver the cash in duct-taped envelopes to parking lot drop-offs.
The scammer stayed on the phone the entire time, guiding her through each step and warning her not to tell anyone. She didn’t. Not her bank.
Not her children. She believed the secrecy was necessary for the integrity of the case. It wasn’t until months later — when the Maryland Attorney General’s office reached out — that she realized she had been scammed.
The money was gone. There were no agents. No case.
No investigation. Just a sophisticated criminal operation that had used fear, trust and patriotism against her. Judith was careful.
She verified names. She called the FBI switchboard. She received emails with case numbers and legal-sounding language.
But the scam was engineered to pass those checks. That’s what makes these attacks so dangerous — they’re built to fool logical people. The criminals are calm, fluent in American cultural touchpoints and responsive.
They aren’t rushing. They’re grooming. They exploit values like patriotism, trust in institutions, religion and faith in people.
The moment a victim feels like they’re doing something good — they’re vulnerable. Scammers count on victims staying quiet. They warn them not to talk to anyone.
That’s not a courtesy — it’s part of the control. Silence is the scammer’s insurance policy. Judith broke that silence.
Her story , documented by The Washington Post , is rare — and it matters. Most victims never speak up. They feel embarrassed.
They fear blame. But silence protects the criminal — and leaves others exposed. According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network, Americans lost $1.
14 billion to romance scams in 2023 — more than any other category of imposter fraud. But this is not petty crime. These operations are run by transnational cybercrime networks and, increasingly, by actors with ties to terrorist organizations.
Many of the campaigns originate from well-documented scam hubs in India, China, Nigeria, Russia, Southeast Asia and parts of the Middle East. But in recent years, U.S.
and allied intelligence agencies have flagged a more serious development: the growing use of romance scams and online financial fraud to fund jihadist terrorist activity — including operations linked to ISIS and its affiliates. These groups have adapted to financial sanctions by turning to decentralized revenue streams, including cybercrime. Romance baiting has become one of several methods used to generate untraceable cryptocurrency flows from Western victims.
These funds are laundered through layered financial networks and routed to hostile regions to support recruitment, logistics and propaganda operations. The tactics are professional and increasingly automated: Caller ID spoofing makes phone numbers appear to be from trusted U.S.
agencies Email domain mimicry creates messages that resemble .gov communications Stolen credentials from real law enforcement officers are used to reinforce legitimacy AI-generated conversation scripts adapt to a victim’s faith, occupation or emotional state Deepfake video and audio tools are deployed to impersonate live agents and fake relationships Judith Boivin’s stolen money didn’t just vanish — it moved through laundering channels overseas, likely touching India, Turkey and borderless digital wallets across hostile jurisdictions. The FBI is coordinating with foreign counterparts, but recovery is improbable.
The funds are gone — and in some cases, repurposed for use by enemies of the United States. Judith now faces a $177,000 tax bill on money she never received — money that was stolen and is long gone. Because of changes to the U.
S. tax code, personal theft losses can no longer be deducted. That means victims of organized cybercrime are punished twice — once by the scammer, and once by the IRS.
Young adults are increasingly being targeted due to their digital fluency and online exposure, but it’s older Americans — like Judith — who suffer the largest financial losses. Romance scams are no longer isolated fraud schemes. They are being used to generate real capital for hostile threats — including ISIS and its affiliates.
This is not just personal. It is national. And it’s time policymakers, platforms and the public started treating it that way.
Romance scams exploit gaps in cybersecurity infrastructure, legal protections, financial oversight and international cooperation. The result is a perfect storm — and American citizens are paying the price. Tax Code Reform: Victims should not be penalized twice.
But under current U.S. tax law, they are.
Congress eliminated the deduction for personal theft losses. That means someone like Judith Boivin, who lost her life savings to an international scam, is still expected to pay taxes on income she never received. It’s a cruel, outdated provision that must be reversed.
Unlike large corporations, Judith doesn’t have a cybersecurity insurance policy that casually reimburses fraud losses. She has no safety net. No legal team.
No one to protect her. Financial Institutions Should Be Responsible: Financial institutions and trading platforms bear the utmost responsibility. High-risk patterns — rapid crypto onboarding, large transfers to foreign wallets, repeated withdrawals — are visible in the data.
These firms already have the tools to detect fraud. What they lack are the ethics and regulatory obligation to act in real time, before the money disappears overseas. Tech companies are no different.
They’re sitting on oceans of behavioral data. They know who is being targeted, how the scam is unfolding and what scripts are being deployed. But without regulatory pressure, they default to plausible deniability.
Ignorance is not their problem — liability is. Law Enforcement Will And Jurisdiction: Meanwhile, U.S.
law enforcement faces a capacity and jurisdictional gap. Agencies may have the technology, but they lack the authorities, resources and cooperative frameworks to pursue scammers operating across borders. Criminal networks in India, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Africa and conflict zones are beyond the reach of a domestic-only response.
Romance scams are just the visible symptom. What they reveal is a broader national failure to treat psychological cybercrime as the geopolitical threat it has become. And now that big corporations have offloaded the risk onto cyberinsurance carriers , there’s even less will to fight for the individuals and families who don’t have that protection.
The system shrugs — and moves on. This is no longer just about protecting individuals. It’s about cutting off financial pipelines that fund transnational crime — and in some cases, terrorist activity.
The current approach is fragmented, reactive and far too slow. The absence of coordinated public and private policy is allowing criminal scale to thrive. Most people don’t think they’ll ever fall for one of these scams.
That’s the problem. The moment you believe you're immune is the moment you become a target. If someone contacts you out of the blue about money, crypto investing or a government investigation — hang up.
Don’t engage. Verify independently through known, trusted channels. Government agencies don’t operate through anonymous texts, unsolicited calls or social media chats.
And they don’t ask for payment in crypto, gift cards or physical cash drops. Isolation is the scammer’s most reliable weapon. If a new “friend” or self-proclaimed government agent tells you to keep quiet, that’s the time to get loud.
Tell someone — a friend, a colleague, a family member. The moment you feel the urge to keep it secret is often the moment you’re being controlled. The Federal Trade Commission has published clear patterns to watch for: The Sad Story Scam — the scammer claims they (or a loved one) are sick, hurt or in jail and urgently need help.
This tactic showed up in 24% of romance scam reports in 2022 The Crypto Investing Angle — they claim to be making a fortune and want to help you grow your savings. These schemes accounted for nearly one in five scam reports Excuses To Avoid Meeting In Person — they say they’re deployed overseas, stuck on an oil rig or trapped abroad. These stories are manufactured to avoid face-to-face accountability Photo Manipulation And Identity Theft — the profile picture is usually stolen.
A reverse image search often reveals multiple aliases and fake accounts. If you send explicit photos, they may be used for extortion Requests For Secrecy — they discourage you from telling anyone. That is not romance — it’s isolation by design If you’re human, you’re a potential target.
Romance scams do not discriminate. Young professionals, retirees, college students, business executives — no one is exempt. These scams bypass intelligence and education and go straight for emotion.
This isn’t a love story like When Harry Met Sally . It’s more like the 2017 psychological horror film Get Out — a slow, calculated trap that begins with charm and ends in emotional and financial destruction. Romance baiting scams don’t start with a request for money.
They start with trust. With empathy. With carefully scripted manipulation designed to disarm the target over weeks or months.
Victims believe they’ve found connection — a friend, a confidant, a partner. What they’ve actually found is a threat actor running a sophisticated playbook to break them down and drain them dry. This is not a case of online dating gone wrong.
This is organized crime and terrorism posing as intimacy. The money stolen is not staying in the United States. It is moving through layered laundering networks, ending up in hostile regions — and in some cases, reaching terrorist-linked groups like ISIS and others, who use it to fund operations that actively work to harm the U.
S. and its allies. The people getting scammed are not foolish.
They’re not naïve. They’re human. They’re acting out of loyalty, faith, compassion or loneliness — and those very instincts are being turned against them.
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