Happy Valentine's Day - The Tinder Swindler and the Romance Scam problem

A bittersweet coincidence, but during this year’s romantic holiday, we are seeing a very special documentary trending on Netflix: the "Tinder Swindler" tells the story of international con man Shimon Hayut, who stole over 10 million Dollars from victims around Europe. Hayut set up the Gatsbyesque persona of diamond heir Simon Leviev to initiate relationships with various victims and eventually asked them for financial support based on a swashbuckling backstory.

What’s especially remarkable is the high degree of digitalization that is employed by Hayut, and that is pictured in the documentary, which tells many storylines of the various cases via digital media snippets like Whatsapp messages, voice mails, Instagram posts and Tinder conversations - hinting at the big problem Romance Scam has become in the cybercrime economy.

Leveraging desires in solitary times: Romance Scams are a huge cybercrime problem

The case of the Hayut might be a very extreme example of "romance or relationship scamming", which describes the act of tricking victims into paying substantial amounts of money based on love and affection.

It is one of the most unsettling and unethical forms of scamming, but maybe also a sign of our modern times, where the number of singles is rising (https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2021/10/05/rising-share-of-u-s-adults-are-living-without-a-spouse-or-partner/) – not to mention a global pandemic that increases feelings of disconnectedness and loneliness (https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/coronavirus/loneliness-during-coronavirus).

But it is also a truth we need to face: Social Engineering is almost always a play with people’s strongest desires, motivations, hopes or fears. Social Engineers and con artists are working based on economical principles – they want to have the highest impact for their input. Hence, it doesn’t surprise that romance or relationship scamming is the single most fraud type according to the FTC: “For three years running, people have reported losing more money on romance scams than on any other fraud type” (https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/data-spotlight/2021/02/romance-scams-take-record-dollars-2020).

And it is a very costly problem.

The monetary…

The FBI recently reported over 1bn Dollars in losses that can be attributed to romance scam in 2021 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacharysmith/2022/02/10/americans-lost-1-billion-to-romance-scammers-last-year-fbi-says), which is a three times increase from the year before. In fact, romance scam numbers have been on the rise for the last couple of years: “In 2020, reported losses to romance scams reached a record $304 million, up about 50% from 2019. For an individual, that meant a median dollar loss of $2,500”. But that is not the only damage that is being done.

?…and the emotional fallout

Some people might raise a brow towards the victims – and I personally think the producers of the Netflix documentary are doing a very good job at addressing social media’s tendencies to “blame the victim”, a phenomenon that has long been part of the psychological discourse: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/supersurvivors/201803/why-do-people-blame-the-victim).

And this is it what makes romance scams so vile: not only are victims paying a huge financial price but also an emotional one in the form of shame, insecurity and oftentimes a severely affected ability to establish relationships with other people.

So how is this possible?

A seemingly complex backstory

It is almost hard to believe: Hayut created an extraordinary persona of a billionaire’s son, working in the diamond trading business. However, he made sure that all details added up to another. He stitched together the eclectic persona based on real pieces of information. If you googled his name, believable and coherent pieces of information popped up, supporting the picture of a flamboyant diamond heir that engages in a jet set lifestyle: an instragram profile with over 100k followers, videos and pictures of five star hotels and an alleged diamond mogul father (who in fact isn’t related to him at all).

And while this is a very colorful example, fake personas are a standard tool for romance scammers. They create more or less complex backstories of their personas, in many cases drawing real elements from other people or even stealing entire identities (https://scambusters.org/romance.html).

What to do about it? Raising awareness!

In all that negative premise, I like one aspect about the movie: the victims take action and fight back. And they do so by teaming up with the press (Norwegian newspaper VG setting up an own website around the cases: https://www.vg.no/spesial/2019/tindersvindleren/english/), creating awareness, and spreading the word.

And in that sense the Netflix documentary hopefully helps to improve the situation a bit: by increasing knowledge about the problem, by telling more people about the techniques employed, and thus decreasing the foundation romance scammers are operating on.

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Resources

?The FBI gives the following recommendations when interacting online in a romantic context:

• Be careful what you post and make public online. Scammers can use details shared on social media and dating sites to better understand and target you.
• Research the person’s photo and profile using online searches to see if the image, name, or details have been used elsewhere.
• Go slowly and ask lots of questions.
• Beware if the individual seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave a dating service or social media site to communicate directly.
• Beware if the individual attempts to isolate you from friends and family or requests inappropriate photos or financial information that could later be used to extort you.
• Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always comes up with an excuse why he or she can’t. If you haven’t met the person after a few months, for whatever reason, you have good reason to be suspicious.
• Never send money to anyone you have only communicated with online or by phone.

?Some more resources about romance scamming and how to avoid it:

• https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-you-need-know-about-romance-scams
• https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety/common-scams-and-crimes/romance-scams
• https://www.actionfraud.police.uk/a-z-of-fraud/romance-scams