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February 9th, 2026
With 44.2 million people actively using dating sites every month, the online dating industry is booming. Dating platforms give millions of people the opportunity to meet single people in their area, and after just a few swipes, they can be in conversation and heading towards a fruitful relationship. But some of these interactions are less than ideal. When you’re looking for a date online, catfish photos can be annoying, but in a lot of cases, scammers lurk on these platforms waiting for their opportunity to manipulate you out of your money. In fact, romance scammers on dating sites like Tinder have scammed people out of around $304 Million in 2020.
This might seem like a ridiculous amount of money. But these scammers have a system for making this money, and it all starts with a little 20-page-playbook full of all their secret dating manipulation tactics that they use to recruit all of their members.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to spotting these tactics and to help you spot when you’re talking to a romance scammer on Tinder and other dating apps.
Starting Conversations
This playbook is like the scammer bible, and the catfish you meet on platforms like Tinder and Bumble are devoted disciples. They read this playbook day and night to keep their scamming skills sharp. And every scam starts with a memorable first impression.
The first half of the romance scammer playbook covers how to get your Tinder matches interested in you. It talks about how every guy or girl’s opening line is the same.
“Hey, I think you’re beautiful”
Instead of this, the book has a long list of pickup lines that are designed to make your match laugh and let their guards down
Emotionally Engaging Fake Stories
Once you are in conversation with these scammers, they will come up with emotionally engaging, grandiose stories that heighten your sense of adventure and make you feel excited to be a part of their lives.
Next, the playbook offers tips to help scammers cover their lies. It teaches them how to come up with answers to questions about location, marital status, long-distance relationships, religion, family, hobbies, and more. These scammers usually tell you that they are stationed in someplace that doesn’t allow them to come and visit or give them an excuse for not being able to video chat. The most common excuse is being in the military or being an oil rig worker.
Gaining Your Trust
Tinder scammers, use the same tactics as scammers on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook. , will try to make you feel like they’re genuinely looking for love and they’re someone you can trust. However, the playbook contains all the answers to different topics during the conversation. For example, if asked about what turns them off, they would say “anything fake, lies, deceit, and cheating.” This way, you won’t think they’re capable of doing the things that they hate.
They would also establish how they’re God-fearing people and family-oriented. Then, romance scammers will make you believe they are financially stable. This is to convince you that they’re not after your money, when in fact, that’s their only goal.
Capturing Your Heart
To make you fall for them, romance scammers will appear invested in your life stories. They’re willing to hear more about your experiences, past relationships, your family, and dreams in life. They’ll also shower you with all those romantic words, including how beautiful you are and how you’re always on their mind despite the distance. They’ll emphasize how distance does not matter as long as you love each other.
Then, these Tinder scams usually go into the intimate part. They’ll share in detail how their dream of making love with you went. However, these are all from the romance playbook, which instructs them to just “copy and paste” the story.
Asking for Money
Once they’ve gained your trust, romance scammers try to take these scams of Tinder by luring you to another platform. This is where they will start asking for money. They will use different sob stories, like medical bills, taxes, family death, oil rig repairs, and other forms of emergency. If you ever get suspicious during one of these Tinder scams, the scammer usually resorts to Gaslighting to make you question your own sanity.
If you refuse to give them what they want, they’ll start to become more forceful. They will make you feel guilty for not granting their request. Sometimes these scams will even turn into sextortion, where they threaten to send you naked photos to everyone on your friend’s list if you don’t send them the money they demanded.
Disappearing After Receiving Money
After these Tinder Scams have gotten to the point where you’ve been tricked out of most of your money, they’ll disappear. At social Catfish, we’ve seen thousands of Tinders scams, Plenty of Fish scams, and more, and it usually leaves victims devastated emotionally and financially.
Verify Your Tinder Matches With Social Catfish
Getting matched with an attractive partner on Tinder is one of the best feelings in the online world. But, before you get your hopes up that this could be the one, screenshot their Tinder card and run a reverse image search to make sure they’re real.
Use the search bar below to run your first search
