It’s important to protect your personal details and money from scammers. Scammers often target populations they consider to be vulnerable. This includes people with low technical proficiency, people who are socially isolated, and people who they have previously successfully targeted in the past. Interchange WA is committed to our responsibility to safeguard our customers and increase awareness of how to avoid being scammed to remain safe online. That’s why we have written this guide to identifying romance scams, to keep our communities safe and informed.

What are “romance scams”?

A romance scam is a scam where the scammer pretends to fall in love with the scam “target”. Over the course of days, weeks or even months, the scammer builds an online relationship with their target, expressing a fake affection for them to earn their trust.

This often involves the scammer pretending to be someone they aren’t. This is known as “catfishing”.

Eventually, the scammer asks for something from their “target”. This is usually money, gifts, or another financial favour such as fake investments or transferring money on their behalf. This can also take the form of gaining private information, such as account logins or explicit photos of the target.

Romance scams can continue for years, for as long as the target continues to give the scammer what they want.

How to recognise romance scams?

The first part of a romance scam always involves the relationship moving fast as the scammer overwhelms the victim with affection that breaks down emotional barriers. This is commonly referred to as “love bombing”.

However, love bombing can be difficult to detect for people with small social networks, a lack of romantic experience, or low aptitude for recognising deceit. For some targets, it’s the first time a person has shown them this kind of affection, and they don’t want to believe it’s a lie.

Because of this, it’s important to try to recognise the other telltale signs of a romance scam:

  • Avoiding in-person contact: Scammers will always avoid meeting their targets in person. Even if they claim to live locally, they will make excuses to avoid meeting such as sudden travel or life emergencies.
  • Moving conversations off platform: When the conversation moves off the dating app or social media service, and onto encrypted messaging services (such as Telegram or Signal) or SMS, it’s likely the scammer is trying to become harder to trace.
  • Putting a price on love. Even if they start small or appear justified, requests for money are a red flag. Never send money to someone you haven’t met. Asking for money for gifts or emergencies is a strong sign they are scamming you, even if they seem apologetic for asking, and asking for gift cards and cryptocurrency are a strong sign they’re scamming because those transactions can’t be tracked.
  • Keeping secrets. Scams break down when more people start looking at it from the outside. If someone asks you to keep your relationship secret and not talk to family or friends about it, that’s a sign they’re a scammer or have bad intentions for you.

Where do scammers find targets?

Unfortunately, scammers are common across all dating apps and social media platforms, as well as emails, phone calls and texts.

If you receive a message or email from an unfamiliar account, phone number or email address, it is highly possible that it is a scammer attempting to bait you into a conversation that leads into a scam. It’s recommended that you do not respond to these random messages unless you can verify who it is from.

For example, if you receive a call from someone claiming to work for Interchange WA, but you weren’t expecting this or doubt it, you can ask for their name and immediately hang up and call the Interchange WA office number. Verify with us though our official number if the call you received was legitimate.

Signs a social media account may be a scam:

Although it can be hard to tell from phone numbers and email addresses, there are a few ways to tell if a social media account is being used by a scammer:

  • Photos look professionally taken. You can put these into a reverse image search to see if they were downloaded from the internet.
  • Photos look too blurry or unclear, making it difficult to identify who is in them.
  • All photos appear to be AI-generated or heavily edited with filters.
  • Accounts that are only a few days or hours old is a big warning sign.
  • Very little personal information. If they have no post history, no real details about themselves, or no connections with other social media accounts, they may be scammers.
  • Very little interaction with other accounts. If nobody has liked their posts or commented, or they follow a lot of seemingly random personal accounts but have very few followers, they may be a scam account.

What to do if you think you’re being scammed:

Scamwatch recommends you follow three simple steps if you think you are being scammed:

  • Stop. Before you give money or personal information to someone, stop and think about it. Scammers will create a sense of urgency and pressure you to act quickly so you don’t consider things fully. Think about it, because if it feels wrong, it probably is.
  • Check. Make sure the person you’re talking to is really who they say they are. If it’s a business, look for an additional way to contact them and try that. If it’s a person, look through their profile for warning signs. You can also ask for opinions from your friends, family, carers and support workers. If things don’t add up, it’s probably a scam.
  • Protect. Take steps to protect what you may have lost or risked. Contact your bank immediately if you think you’ve lost money or shared financial information. Contact IDCARE if you think your identity is at risk of being stolen, Scamwatch to share information about the scam to protect others, and the police if you want to pursue criminal charges. Make sure you change your passwords and check your bank statement as well if you think scammers could have compromised them. Romance scams can be very upsetting, because they play with the target’s emotions, making them feel special and loved in order to enable the scam. If you are a victim of a romance scam, you can contact Lifeline for emotional support.

What if I’m being blackmailed?

Blackmail is when a scammer threatens to release compromising images, videos, or intimate details about their targets to their friends, family, work, the press, or social media unless their target follows their demands.

The majority of blackmailers do not follow through on their threats.

Never give in to blackmail. If someone threatens to blackmail you, use this method to stay safe:

  • Stop all contact. Don’t reply to anything else they say and be sure to block them after collecting evidence.
  • Never send a blackmailer what they want. They will not delete your data or move on, and they will attempt to continue to harass you and gain what they want from you again in future.
  • Collect all the evidence possible. That includes usernames, places you contacted them, any bank accounts they said to send money to, and the times and dates they contacted you.
  • Protect yourself. If they are threatening to share images or videos of you, you can use StopNCII.org to prevent them from being shared online. If you are under 18, use takeitdown.ncmec.org instead.
  • Tell someone you trust, such as a friend, family member, carer or support worker. Having help and perspective can help you fix things.

Blackmail is a crime in Australia and is punishable by imprisonment. A blackmailer does not need to follow through on their threats for it to be a crime. Even threatening blackmail is a criminal offence.

Where can I learn more?

Interchange WA is committed to the safety of our customers in all forms. Our Support Workers are here to support you through difficult topics such as scams, blackmail, abuse, and neglect. Interchange WA also runs intermittent information sessions on valuable topics such as these to keep our community informed.

For more information about scams in Australia, visit Scamwatch.

Take their scam-sense quiz to test your knowledge and see how skilled you are in detecting scams.

Protecting our people from scams is another part of Interchange WA’s commitment to safety and rights. You can learn more about our values and approach here.