If you’ve ever tried to form a relationship with someone on a dating app, then you’ve probably run into a romance scammer or two without even realizing it. Romance scammers know how to blend in with the crowd of many potential matches and go as far as to steal images from social media influencers, pretending that they are the ones actually in the pictures. Once they have you falling in love with them, they come up with clever tactics to steal your funds. Why are they so desperate for your money and what do romance scammers do with your money? We will examine these questions in this article.
Why Are They So Desperate to Steal Your Money?
In Africa, many Nigerians are broke and can’t afford to support themselves. They are desperate and don’t know how else they are supposed to get their hands on a livable income. Because of this, many Nigerians have turned to the Nigerian romance scam industry.
The Nigerian romance scam industry is kind of like a job at the office. A Nigerian romance scammer goes into the office, starts their shift, clocks out after eight hours, and then leaves the office to go home and go to sleep.
The only difference between our normal jobs and their job is that we are actually following the law, while they are breaking the law by catfishing people, pretending to be in a relationship with them, and stealing their funds. This is how they make their income, and unfortunately, it has become one of the most secure ways to earn an income in Nigeria.
What Do Romance Scammers Do With Your Money?
Romance scammers need your money so that they can have more than enough money to survive for years. In Nigeria, $250 American dollars is enough money for someone to live comfortably for an entire month. By doing the math, this means that only needs $3,000 to live for an entire year!
This is their motivation to scam you out of your paychecks. Scammers will come up with any lie or fake emergency that they need to in order to scam their victims out of thousands of dollars. With this money, many scammers will then have an income that will last them years.
Some scammers will even reach millionaire status in Africa just by stealing money from their victims. With that money, they can buy themselves a nice house, a nice car, food to eat, and more to live a luxurious comfortable life.
How to Avoid Romance Scams
- Don’t give money to someone on the Internet that you’ve never met in person.
- Don’t give out your personal information to someone that you are talking to online.
- If someone is moving the relationship super fast, be cautious by slowing the relationship down.
- Don’t get too serious with someone without at least video chatting with them first.
- If they have a job overseas, this is a huge red flag that they might be a romance scammer since they usually use this an excuse to not see you or video chat with you.
- If someone is randomly contacting you out-of-the-blue on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter this usually means they are a romance scammer.
- Report any scam that you’ve been a part of to the FTC.
And Lastly…
Run a reverse social or image search using Social Catfish!
At Social Catfish, we want to help you verify the identities of those who might seem suspicious to you. If you have their name, email address, phone number, social media username, or image, you can reverse search and see who the suspected person was that you’ve been in contact with if you think you’ve been a victim of romance scams and wondering what do romance scammers do with your money.