So picture this. You meet someone online. You instantly connect and the messages are
non-stop. And then suddenly out of nowhere they ask you for money. This type of scam is called
catfishing. Catfishing is when someone pretends to be who they're not and they usually ask for money.
There are huge networks of catfishers who steal people's photos, fake identities,
and lure strangers online out of money and a lot of them operate here in West Africa.
People have this misconception when they think of romance scams. Oh it must be Nigerians. And no,
there are a lot of scammers all over the world. They just were ahead of the game. They were the
first group to actually start looking at advance fee frauds large-scale and they were doing this
before the internet anyway. Snail mail, the good old-fashioned way of doing this,
of conning people. Snd of course then cyber cafes started emerging in about the 90s and so they were
the first ones to adapt and they took advantage of this platform. The playbook that I found was
traced back to one of the Nigerian scam groups and it was fascinating. What to say, what not to say,
when to say it, what songs do you want to dedicate to the person that you're speaking with. So
everything from like Celine Dion and you know all like the classic romantic songs. I've spent
the past year investigating these groups, trying to understand more about their lives and why they
do what they do. In Ghana I managed to track down and speak to someone who's been active in romance
scams for a number of years. Here's what he told me about the work in his business. I started
without getting anything so after a year I started I'm getting small amounts of money. It's not easy
for you to just get the money from them because you have to build trust. You feel bad definitely.
You know it's because of work, because of money. If you have a family you have to, I mean,
take care of one or two things. I always feel bad for that. Some romance scammers I spoke to told me
this was a kind of payback for slavery. For others it's what they see as a path from poverty towards
wealth. There's issues of poor economy. There are infrastructure challenges. There's a lack
of legitimate jobs. You have well-educated people who just can't find work through legitimate means
and this is also a culture that really celebrates wealth. And so you have the younger folks that
are looking at them as wealthy as successful and that, not surprisingly, makes recruitment really
easy for scam networks. It's not just Nigeria or Ghana. You do have substantial numbers originating
from Turkey from China from UAE from the UK so it's happening everywhere. So what can one do
to be safe whilst dating online? For the younger generation that feels that this can't happen to
them: it can. It's going to look different but they're coming for you. One of the things that
scammers do is they do not discriminate. When you start to connect with someone, do a reverse
image search of the person's profile photos. See if they're associated with other names.
Let's say you're in the love bombing stage. Try to switch things up to see how they react. If
your go-to let's say is text messages, try phone calls, try video calls. Ask for details about
their personal lives. I'm talking about beyond just a superficial stuff right like I have a
sister. Well tell me more about your sister and then go start looking this information up. Can you
find the family members let's say on LinkedIn? When they start sort of asking you for money,
how are they asking you for money? Is it a wire transfer is it gift cards? Gift cards
should definitely set off red flags because how are you going to use that to pay hospital bills?
Right? Like, you can't do that, it doesn't compute. Don't be afraid or embarrassed to talk
about the fact that you were conned. There's a shame and a stigma that is associated with
being victimized by a romance scam. How could you have been stupid enough to fall for that?
That's what makes victims retreat. They don't want to share their experience. They just don't
want to report it. So that further complicates things when you are trying to address this issue.