The Most Likely Victims

According to FBI data, 82 percent of romance scam victims are women and women over 50 are defrauded out of the most money.

Using fake profiles on online dating sites and social networks, including Facebook, scammers troll for the lonely and the vulnerable. They promise love and marriage and build what feels like a very real relationship to the victim.

Someone who has fallen for a scam before is a favored mark. Once victims send money, scammers put their names on a “sucker list,” Special Agent Beining said. Those names and identities are often sold to other criminals.

“We have seen victims become victimized again,” she said.

A Federal Trade Commission study published in 2013 found another telling commonality among all kinds of fraud victims: People who had experienced a negative life event in the previous 24 months ― lost a spouse, divorced, separated or lost a job ― were twice as likely to become the victim of a scam.

In her 2008 book, Truth, Lies and Trust on the Internet, psychologist Monica Whitty explained that computer-mediated relationships “can be ‘hyperpersonal’ — more strong and intimate than physical relationships.” Participants can control how they present themselves, creating “idealized avatars” that elicit more trust and intimacy than their real-life, face-to-face selves.

“What happens is, you can see the written text and read it over and over again, and that makes it stronger,” wrote Whitty, who focuses on how cyber technologies affect human beings and now works at the University of Warwick in England.

Law enforcement officials say that victims are often embarrassed to let friends or family know they’re sending money to an online stranger. And should they wise up, they may be threatened and blackmailed by their faux lovers. As insurance that their victims will toe the line, scammers may gather compromising information ― commonly, videos of the victims masturbating at their request.

The scammer may even admit the crime to the victim, but then swear he has actually fallen in love with her. Those who believe the excuses and stay involved may enter into a new level of danger as the scammer begins to groom them to launder stolen money, deliver drugs or scam others. They may also threaten to release those “sex tapes” to gain their victims’ cooperation. More than one woman has wound up charged with crimes.

Victims live around the globe. HuffPost spoke to women in Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, Kenya, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States who had been scammed.

Ruth Grover, who lives in northeast England, runs ScamHaters, a website that posts warnings about online profiles that appear to be scammers. She said that currently women in the Philippines seem to be prime targets, although she doesn’t know why. Many victims there and elsewhere are not wealthy and must borrow the money they send to the scammers.

“We warn a lot of women,” Grover said of her 14-month-old site’s nearly 5,000 posts.

The Most Likely Scammers

Currently, the vast majority of online romance scams aimed at the U.S. originate in Ghana and Nigeria, Beining said, although they’re increasingly coming from within West African expatriate communities in Malaysia, Canada and Britain. In fast-developing parts of the world with high unemployment and postcolonial legacies of political instability and corruption, young men and women may turn to “the 419 game,” a common term for fraud that refers to the Nigerian criminal code.

Nigerian scammers are dubbed “Yahoo boys” because of their onetime fondness for using Yahoo email accounts (many have now switched to Gmail). In Ghana, they’re known as Sakawa Boys, “sakawa” being a Ghanaian term for internet fraud.

While Nigerian scams targeting an international audience in particular predate the internet, as The Guardian reported in January, the advent of social networks and email has broadened the potential victim list and changed the game.

These scammers are not just young people set on a career criminal path. Some are students ― one 2006 study suggested as many as 80 percent ― looking for cash. “Many undergraduates in Nigerian universities have embraced internet fraud as a way of life,” wrote researchers Oludayo Tade and Ibrahim Aliyu of Nigeria’s University of Ibadan. Poverty is certainly a factor; almost half of the 10 million graduates from more than 668 African universities each year can’t find a job.

What’s more, cybercrime can carry a certain cachet in West Africa, according to a research report by Interpol and TrendMicro ― especially when the victims are foreigners. The image of the successful scammer ― who owns expensive cars and multiple houses, sports flashy jewelry and earns the admiration of younger wannabes ― has been etched into Nigerian culture by popular songs and YouTube videos. In his 2007 song “Yahooze,” Nigerian singer Olu Maintain appears to glorify the Yahoo boys’ lavish lifestyle ― although he has denied that was his intent. The video shows luxury cars bearing license plates for each day of the week, beautiful women and expensive liquor on tap, and dollars carelessly tossed on the floor like confetti.

That image is light-years away from the typical standard of living in Nigeria, where the average annual salary is about $3,600 ― roughly $10 a day. Many of the early online scams were run out of pay-per-hour internet cafes, some of which would even shut down to the public while the larger scamming operations took over. With better and cheaper internet connections these days, scammers can often work from home.

Many of these cybercriminals believe the use of “spiritual elements” in conjunction with their internet surfing will increase their chances of success, a 2013 research paper that looked at Nigerian cybercrime explained. They cast a Vodun spell, which is akin to voodoo, to essentially hypnotize their victims into giving up the money. In some cases, this means wearing a “charmed ring” on the right index finger ― the one that hits the enter key to send messages ― and licking a “black powdery substance mixed with honey” before speaking to “maga” (fools) on the phone, according to The Guardian, a Nigerian newspaper, and a 2011 research paper on Ghanian media depictions of occult rituals involved in cyberfraud.

Whatever the power Vodun actually exercises, virtually every expert who spoke to HuffPost for this story noted that many victims seem to fall under the scammer’s spell. When the scam is over, the victims still can’t believe the romance wasn’t real.

Doug Shadel, head of AARP’s fraud watch team and state director of AARP Washington, said the scammers seek to get the victim “under the ether,” so that “the thinking part of their brain just goes numb.” He interviewed a woman scammed out of more than $300,000, who described the experience like this: “I felt like something ― a power outside my control ― took over my body.”

How victims respond after learning that they’ve been scammed ― when they continue to desire the men who they understand are not actually real ― is “certainly not rational,” Shadel told HuffPost. “But then again, the whole transaction is pretty irrational when you think about it.”

How The Scam Unfolds

While the scam story lines vary in detail, they all tend to follow the same trajectory: The victim is identified; a close relationship is rapidly established online; a small amount of money is asked for ― perhaps for a child’s birthday gift ― to test the victim’s readiness; a crisis occurs and a larger amount of money is sought with the promise of it being returned quickly; a series of additional “bleeds” occur until the scammer is exposed or the victim can’t get any more money.

Scammers often work in teams of five or six, with each member playing a specific role, according to experts who study and prosecute online fraud. One person opens communication as the faux lover. Teammates sometimes impersonate a doctor or a nurse demanding to be paid after a medical emergency. Or they pose as work associates or friends of the paramour, to whom the victim can send the money. Young women pretend to be teenage daughters, eager to call the victim “Mom.” If the victim gets suspicious, an accomplice may reach out pretending to be a private investigator offering to track down the scammer for a fee.

It is all scripted: the words the faux lover uses, the love poetry he plagiarizes, the events that unfold in the “relationship.”

One scammer managed a workload of 25 cases at once, impersonating both men and women, according to AARP’s Shadel.

The criminals can download their scripts off plenty of online sites. Last year, a 55-year-old British woman was sentenced to two years in prison for being a scriptwriter for romance scammers. One script she wrote tried to capitalize on an American tragedy. The scammer was supposed to say: “I am a widow. Lost my husband to 9/11 terror attacks in New York. He made it out of the collapsed building but he later died because of heavy dust and smoke and he was asthmatic.”

Even with a script, there can be warning signs for the victims. Sometimes, the scammer may “forget” what was discussed previously or call the victim by a different name. Most scammers go with the generic “honey” or “babe” to avoid the latter mistake.

When the victim seeks a face-to-face meeting, the script offers creative ways for scammers to say no or to cancel later. Some claim they’re working overseas or on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, where internet and cell phone service is spotty so they can’t stay in contact as frequently as they would like.

These Men Are Collateral Damage

To build their false identities, scammers steal a real person’s photos from dating sites, Facebook or even old MySpace accounts. Sometimes thousands of phony online identities are created from one set of stolen photos. The person whose pictures are taken has no idea anything is amiss until victims start to contact them hoping to get their money back or continue the “romance.”

Member of the military are big targets because women gravitate to photos of strong men willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country. Soldiers represent protection, another appealing trait. Plus, being “deployed overseas” provides scammers with a great cover for erratic communications and no face-to-face meetings.

The Army Criminal Investigation Command (CID) receives hundreds of complaints a month from victims who say they formed an online relationship with someone claiming to be a U.S. soldier. The fake soldier asked them for money to cover needed costs such as transportation, “communication fees,” marriage licenses and medical care. (There are no circumstances in which a member of the U.S. military would legitimately ask a civilian to pay for transportation, medical care or administrative fees.)

“I get calls every week and it is very troubling to hear these stories over and over again of people who have sent thousands of dollars to someone they have never met and sometimes have never even spoken to on the phone,” said Army CID spokesman Chris Grey in a press release.

When it comes to photo theft, rank offers no privileges. John F. Campbell was the top U.S. general in Afghanistan when his photos were stolen. Campbell, now retired, took to Facebook to warn people after he and his staff uncovered more than 700 fake profiles using his image in the first six months after he took over the U.S. military command in Kabul.

He wrote: “I am happily married and my wife Ann is very much alive and my children do not need money for any medical procedures. I DO NOT use any dating sites, Skype, Google plus, Yahoo messenger or any other account.”