Hungry for Love: Online Romance Fraud Tactics and Why They Are So Efficient

okay so my name is thanel carder and today we're going to be talking about a slightly different type of anomaly detection uh today I'm going to talk to you about cryptocurrency romance scam and manipulation tactics that those process and scammers use to lure their victims into huge money losses um so let me just move on to next slide so I'm T CA um I've been working cyber security delivery for the last years and what you need to know today is that my interest is cyber security human factor is particular focus on social engineering fraud and emerging technology products and if you can take anything from this list of everything that I do another important thing that I need to highlight

today is that my educational background is in philology and Linguistics comparative analysis and narrative analysis because we're going to be doing a lot of this today so there'll be messages from the conversations I had with scas so I'm single so I use data apps um and of course from time to time I come across fraud land personas but they usually very easy to spot because they use a lot of heavy Lov wom so it's straight away but last April I connected with darl a Charming 34 year-old man who works in the property business uh has a side hustle as market trading consultant lives just outside London and loves skining uh working out reading traveling just like I do uh darl was very

consistent very respectful and supportive uh in fact no diry messaging at all which is um well a huge refreshment in the field of data NS no goson whatsoever are quite the opposite he was taxed in day and night he literally wrapped me in his tension and so I knew there was something very wrong going on so darl is a cryptocurrency froster or most likely group of frosters and unlike other frosters came across he was quite good at what he was go was doing and it just happened so that a week from that time I was to speak at the niab a panel on the topic of social engineering so I so that was amazing case coming my way so I jumped

into this opportunity engaged in about a week long P the Romans learning about the his tactics and just trying to see how exactly he's going to try and manipulate me into engaging into that cryptocurrency scam but before I do that um I want to tell you a little bit about about what cryptocurrency romance scam is so basically frosters manipulate their victims to create accounts on fake online trading platforms where they're made to believe that they engage in trading activities for weeks even months um until eventually they manipulated to transfer their funds into the frostless accounts and in the last few years theyve been increasingly targeting their victims on dayon apps uh engaging in rances for days weeks even months

sometimes and a few facts in 2022 the national fraud intelligence Bureau received over 8,000 Romans fraud um reports amounting to the total of over 92 million in losses the following year 2023 lyd's Bank research showed 30% increase in Roman scam compared to the previous year with men now being uh making the majority of the victims um and people age between 65 and 74 are more likely to be traed into this scam for obvious reasons um and the average sum of losses per person is about just over 13,000 however there are cases where people were defrauded for um 150,000 and some have lost all of their pension savings so without further Ado I would like to share with you my insights

into Roman scam manipulation tactics and you see there is little FBI sign so as I promised there are a lot of techniques that they use that are used by FBI agents negotiation agents also very good salese use same techniques and any other manipulator will be using them as well so are we're going to start with the most obvious love woman uh it's sign number one uh love woman is an emotional manipulation technique that uses heavy consistent and persistent uh demonstrations of affection and attention for example compliments and um Declarations of feelings however um scammers like uh darl and it's darl and core really because there are more people than just one but I'm going to

call him darl um I'm much more experienced so they would start very lightly because they don't want to push that Target away so his love woman was different uh first of all it was constant check-ins and checkups and constant messaging he would always text me in the morning like on a DOT o clock 7: to 8:00 a.m. and then he would pick from 400 p.m. until very late night he was always available whether he was on a gym or cooking or on a walk he would text me and he made sure that I knew he was available for me uh and that goes along with constant um unnecessary evidence of his routine activities like sneak of video or images like this one

that he sent to me from the party assumably that he attended it's almost like a proof that he's real and he's doing it uh again you can't validate any of this and that goes along with the third moment constant reassurance of his interest and feelings so on day one he started very lightly I was fine but the there are some messages I don't know guys can you read them can you see right so I'm going to read for those who are at the back so on day five he said me I hope to age with you gracefully I don't mind if you did but to me you have and look so organic and natureal blah blah

blah basically on day five he was ready to spend his whole life with me so that's one of the elements of Love boming um oh here we go I want a dance right so it's subtle but it's consistent and persistent if you don't suspect darl to be scammer you just you might just really think that he's really into the person he's talking to and that's what frosters want that targets to believe on the rap was this attention eventually and that goes Al along with reality manipulation constant reality manipulation froess will try to manipulate the perception of reality with um um by creating a picture of perfect romance they do it in several ways um because it's all digital so it's

all messaging so one thing that darlan c did they early they started introducing words and concept of bonding and togetherness um he used he heavily in almost every message words like together we partners team for example you're very luy indeed we are both likey to have connected and it's worth it or then in a few days what are partners for we cope and embrace each other and so on and so on and then another message and the willingness for togetherness and support that comes to engaging each other passions and so on they constantly drop those hook wordss lead the victims to get used to that idea in parallel they introduce the idea that this connection

is very special there's some uniqueness to this bond with the use of words like unique special different meaningful at the same time normalizing it so he will he will say things like normal always creating this long-term partnership idea so here's a message son your special and everyday feels like a new chapter for me I feel different with you so normal and happy different and normal and happy in the same sentence and that was pretty much every day several of those who quarts would appear throughout all of our uh communication third one it always goes with this tactical labeling tactical labeling is a technique basically that names the feelings emotions and thoughts of another per person with the purpose of either

resolving them or reinforcing them toxical labeling is naming the feelings and thoughts that you want and wish the other person to so he would say I want you to feel normal and be yourself to me with me or he would say it's just so normal and the fact that we are genine with each other and we are open well I didn't feel this way I didn't think this way but that constant reinforcement of this things bonding togetherness this connection is special ultimately creates a narrative that there is a very special unique connection going on based on Mutual understanding um we need to get that message and what did does over time when it's repeated consistently is that the

victim will eventually start adopting this perception of reality as a shared experience which in our minds builds um a feeling of familiarity and safety so if we talk about building bonding and connection uh the best way to do that is with the use of empathy and tactical empathy is the term introduced by chce W the former FBI agent and her wrote Amazing book about ly the difference he calls tactical empathy as the act of understanding another person's mindset and feelings and making them feel understood now any manipulator and process use empathy heavily and they use it in two ways so darl and Co started with um empathizing with me so early on they will introduce

concept like care support protection unconditional love and present himself as this CA uh love provider role in every contacts and comment he would just drop something like I'll be there for you as you grow to beer high so I want to see you win and achieve your dreams like said outside context so that was really funny one and then he would say we would talk about G and routine and he would just drop I'll be a personal trainer and we'll trade together you know and all of those things kind of very subtle things but they repeat all the time and constantly um and they will also try to make that Target to empathize with them triggering the V

victims in a hero or in a Healer syndrome so to say and the logic here is very simple everyone wants to be needed and appreciated and when this feeling in US is constantly reinforced then a Target or victim can develop emotional attachment to the source of these feelings which gives the fress a leverage over the victim to further manip them into what they want to do um the way darl andco did it is with introducing some project stories from his past life I'm going to read it to you because well that's fine so yeah obviously he divorced fell out of love at some point Shan stay is the best friend so wife teaching on his best was

his best friend classic and that's how I ended the relationship we had a baby by the named camillea excessive detail but she passed on after birthday early girl that died so since then I have been looking after myself took year to heal but my daughter still L my heart and what they do straight after they introduce these little stories where they want you to empathize with them they will hint that you are the source of their love and healing you are what they need and they will reinforce it so that can create this bonding and connection he immediately text me you gave me that spark of feeling wanted and wanting someone after a very long time

so tactical empathy is extremely efficient techniques because it achieves two goals first it strengthens the emotional bond between two people and second it also allows the user or FRS the manipulator gather information about that Target it allows them to build emotional profile and also fine tune this perfect partner image that they will reflect back at the victim and I also want to I don't know guys if you can see that second line why he dropped he gave me that spark of filling wanted wanted someone after a very long time full stop um this is a very tactical sentence because if the person has started to develop that target has started to develop emotional connection most likely they will respond with

reciprocate similar feelings s like me too I feel this way and they will reciprocate with a similar painful experience from their past life if there is one and that's exactly what forces want they F out for this information so moving on to next one we're getting close to Target profiling or tactical information gathering so Romans process always look for signs of and theast Trauma emotional psychological wounds and unfulfilled emotional needs they do it in several ways if we're talking about all these digital romance so there will be questions obviously very easy way they will ask questions about the past Family Social surrounding um and it's hard to detect right because you might think they're just interested in me no they're

really interested in your past traumas in your wounds um basically what they problem for how single are you how long have you been single have you lost loved one recently do you have a strong social network support or not right how much do you want to be in relationship are you ready to do anything are you ready to trust me just because you want to be in a relationship um because they're not going to darl never ask me about my work my job what I do even when I dropped hopes and hints unless he's interested in how much money you make so they know how much they can steal from you they're not going to ask questions um and next

one again toxical labeling to test your reactions so what they do and that quite often with darl and Cole they would drop unprovoked statements like I know you've been Hur in the past I feel you've been hurt in the past and here you need to look out for Words wound Pain Suffer hurt they would say that and wait for my reaction let's say there is a person who's been just recently hurt came out of very bad relationship or break up or was teached on most likely that feeling will be triggered they will jump into it and reveal their story and that's again what frosters are looking for here is an example we were having a fun

conversation about ice cream and sink and suddenly he said I'm not difficult to understand because I said well I struggle understanding you I said you just have been hurt a lot before and I want to me m and repair that wound again offering his protection another technique that works really well um in terms of building bonding and connection with someone quickly is mirroring and Darlin Co used it a lot and it's another FBI tactic basically mirroring is mimicking the other person's verbal and non-verbal language their behavior tone of voice um posture and even preferences and likes and what it does it creates that sense of similarity sameness likeliness right and psychologically we all like and

Trust something that resembles us so it builds again the sense of familiarity and safy over time um with darl he used language miring a lot basically he would just use my own words to reply that to me I would say I get a feeling you're a family man I say yes I'm a family man um I say I wonder if you like it say I will like it B uh or what about you are you the one to bring breakfast to bed um and he says yes I have that weakness yes I am the type so it's pretty much like mirroring whatever you want to hear they will say that um and he also mirrored my

preferences this is much more subtle and they use it a lot so all that information gathering that they get from the victim um all the scammers keep their fact shs so they know what is mentioned before and they will reflect it back to you right in the dialogue or from the fact shap so here is a snippit of conversation we're talking about he asked me about preferences where I like to live city or nature Barcelona and so on I said I just need to have access to the greenery and the sea or natural lake I need that peace he responded straight away I don't like the city a lot because I don't get that peace um they are but

the nature as part as what missing in them nature is generally good and bful blah blah blah he just literally reinforced confirm and that yes I'm like you I like nature and don't like say this um and then he said I would love to be surrounded by mountains and a lake um for a moment I thought that last statement was genuine I was thinking oh my God that's what I love until I remember that two days before i s him a picture uh of the Belfast log with Belfast Hills because that's the image from my uh home so they kepted a file and they already back to you so there is some you know if there's too much

preference miroring it's not normal so watch out for this one and lastly they will start weeing their own agenda into the conversation over days um in a way that kind of normalizes the thought of getting into this cryptocurrency of productivity with a complete stranger they do it in several ways they always disguise it as help and support and that might be a very big mission statement it can be even in the profile uh description he's a man on a mission Safe poverty or he might sh it early on so listen to that one on day one when we were talking about it he just dropped well I'm passionate about helping other people in life and have the ability to

eliminate poverty and attain Financial Freedom that's why I'm very serious about digital currency now how lovely of him right he's here to save the world from poverty um and then he would just drop things like I travel read cook going out to walks do analysis of digital currency markets and he would just casually drop it you know by the way I'm taking markets today by the way I'm did this by the way is I made money at the same time he constantly literally massaged the topic of learning and helping each other um on every single occasion so watching out for like learning helping each other so he would say we can learn a lot from each other I

believe that two hats are better than one we should learn from each other and I'm positive that you will get a lot from me again um B in reality so that you can also have the courage to continue in your own save more money for the future and then again on another day and learning new stuff from each other every single topic we discuss ice cream Walkin dating anything we learn from each other because that's what they want their victim to believe and also he dropped randomly large numbers that he makes or either his clients or his friends make through that business so that's constant massaging reinforcing of that narrative so all of these techniques

right sometimes they can be obvious but if they used skillfully they can be very subtle and imagine if the victim is trapped in this constant reassurance of their love tactical empathy these togetherness special uniqueness Bond and someone who just stps them in this environment 24/7 um and uses mirroring so when it's done consistently repetitively over time what it does um amazingly is it makes new and suspicious look very familiar and safe normalizing the idea of engaging and Shady currency trading activities with a complete stranger so the trick is always reputation consistency and volume so okay not jumping ahead right so as I said some of these techniques it can be obvious depend on who's sexing

with you but they can be subtle and if you don't spot the SS of man manipulation early on it can be too late further down the line so how can we protect ourselves in our left ones and how can you sport it early enough so a couple more slides so there are all stail SS we all know that right we're all sensible logical people just to let you know again remind that cognitive biases play this trick on us once our emotional uh thinking is triggered we throw logic down the drain but there are a few things obviously simple not going to even go into details perfect Mr Mrs profile they will be too perfect uh

goodlook successful curing attentive big mission statement they care about the world just too good perfect compatibility to good to be true and there is a reason for this when they constantly use love bombing mirroring and tactical empathy it eliminates any sign of contradiction and conflict and that makes this relationship feel or engagement feel like it's it's a good we understand each other we are so perfect for each other so this is a huge red flag well whether it's a scam or not it's a huge red flag Persona inconsistencies most often these are groups of frers they work together but they have different Lifestyles they have different Communications style so if you're not talking them over the fall

there will always be some inconsistencies most likely in the language uh with darl from time to time his very polished language would change into some mistakes uh typos or he would start calling me H baby Sweetie out of blue and then one morning he would say I wish you a blessed morning I pray for you I was like oh spiritual man so next day I ask him like you sent to be spiritual and his response was l l not really but I believe so kind of you know it's it's it feels like very different people talking to you but most importantly it will always be long distance and it's very likely that at any cost they will avoid phone video

calls or sharing any information that can potentially identify them or locate them um now this is a tricky one with AI deep fakes because this is changing right and if you're a high-profile Target well let's say you have high stakes millions or hundreds of thousands someone is going to use Aid def fake on you but this technology is still expensive so and for process is all about numbers so they're not going to be using deep fake modulating someone voice and images for every single call the easiest solution is to avoid those calls and when confronted they will just pour reassurance and laugh and more promises about like it's okay I still love you baby steps we're not going to get on a

call but you know I care about you and so on so this is conent reassurance going on there but most importantly the last one is sudden changes in Behavior this is a red flag in any situation especially with frosters if confronted when they feel their victim or Target is not biting the bait their behavior can change 180 degrees from that very caring loving supporting person to someone who will be very cold detached passive aggressive cruel or even aggressive and that happened I tested it twice with darl when I confronted him and second time when basically I told him goodbye baby so he turned really nasty but that's not all you can do you can do

more you can use the same scammer tactics uh against scammers so here's the beautiful things that darland Co showed me a lot scammers do not expect to be scammed and they also suffer from same cognitive biases and they're not immune to selective memory selective attention fluty and cognitive biases of soty and the illusion of soty and the bias of control they believe they are in control and they will always been consistencies because here's a fact it's really hard to lie consistently over time especially if it's not just Dar but there is a whole company behind him so you can use I just listed three simple four simple techniques for how to try and uncover those inconsistencies dig

them in and you can use them as pretty much any manipulator liar so one is try and question pick a fact and question it over time by changing your type of fashion different version of question um for example like I tested it with spraying or especially when they give mirror answers to your questions right so like om me too also so if you say I like reading books and they come back and say oh I love reading books too then in a day to ask them well how do you like to spend your quiet time and see where they come back to so dig for those in consistencies Mirror questions these are really effective in unearthing

details um that reveal in consistencies and it works as such for example he says I love reading books your question will be do you like read reading books and see what they come back with so that really helps to show some details that they don't plan for in advance third one ambigous questions and I love this one so ask questions that that leave room for interpretation and here is a trick behind it when we have a certain purpose or goal on our minds right we focus on it it will influence how we interpret ambiguities so when you're asking a bigest question most likely they will respond with what's in their mind here is an example so we will actually FLIR

in here talking about music and I ask him I can't help but ask what would you like to teach me so any normal genuine man would kind of respond with a flirt right no darl jumps straight into business we said we can start off from the cryptocurrency if you're willing to learn the basics on how to trade so how normal is that um and the last one label their lives tactical labeling right if you're not sure something is going on you need to be able to confront someone if you're not comfortable confronting you can messages nicely use labeling label what you feel is wrong so I use that with DAR on day four when I needed

to say kind of more me to prove that um there is a whole team of scamers so I basically called it out saying unreal and I use some words unreal uncomfortable a lot and I called him out saying you seem to avoid wanting to make sure I'm real too and so on and so on so his response you know after days of courting me being super tense he replied if you feel it's unreal then feel free uh feel free and comfortably to delete me I don't want to force isses anywhere I'm not the type good day so you know that's very different Behavior right that's not the person ha K that's a person who just doesn't realizes oh

she's of the bait potentially we have a problem here but before we finish I also want to point out this response is also very tactical the thing is this process usually work with people who have certain emotional trauma experience certain trauma wounds right and let's say if this conversation has been going on for several weeks or so um so at this point the target is very likely to develop emotional connection and attachment to this source of reassurance to darl so when you receive such message that suggests delete and end with done what it does it triggers what it may trigger the spars of Abandonment and rejection in a person as they realize they might just lose this source of love

that they've been subjected to over the last days and the person is most likely to reply was like no no no I would stay in this relationship and so on and that ties the victim and Target even closer to the froster so this is very tactical and I want to summarize and finish this presentation with a quote from Isaac Aima story liar it's a story about the robot who lied to people and the people who believed him because basically he told told them what they wanted to hear he loves you I tell you he does he does but not here not now this is an illusion and I love this quote because it reminds me that everything is an

illusion until it's proven otherwise mind is a very powerful thing our minds can make us believe anything especially if we want to believe it and in this digital age in World there are always people and they're getting more of them and they getting very technically and Psych ically in terms of manipulation tactics educated they will use it to that Advantage always so it's our responsibility to train our attention to identify this manipulation tactics early on uh and that's it thank

you oh by the way I have more snippers from the conversation that was such M Jes so um I couldn't include them but I have them on appendix in case I have any questions uh any questions okay I think I think you were first actually well okay you go

ahead yeah it it is actually when you think about it it's such an attractive picture of real it isn't it and that's exactly what they want oh you to believe and that's why I engag with him because yeah initially I I had doubts you know you can see these responses and you also have doubts and that's our human nature we are going to pick the most positive plausible scenario because we don't like to be lighted we don't like to be fooled but it's pretty much most of you are probably familiar with the concept of zero trust in technology in this reality we have to apply the same concept when we deal with people until you prove

until he proves that he's real and for me the first abnormality was he didn't want to get on a call or with me like I mean how real is that did he not want to and they dropped a few lines like I not worried that I'm scammer myself you know I could be a big fat lady or something like this well I I actually study blockchain so I kind of I have quite a big we blockchain cryptocurrency Community trading and that's why I think they jumped on to me because when he started talking about it for me yes that's normality I know lots of people who trade I know lots of people who work in

legitimate blockchain cryptocurrency businesses so that sparked my uh interest initially but when he started talking and presenting about it that was kind of like things not patching up um and again so if you let's say if someone only wants to share what they do with you and that passion they're not going to massage those topics into you they're not going to jump to help a stranger so watch hard if someone is so nice that I can teach I can learn you yeah every man can say yeah I will teach you I will learn you he will forget about it because he's not here to teach me about blockchain and cryptocurrency right Junior M has different interests in mind

so yes what is it okay sorry guys no more no more time of questions but I'm still here so if you have any questions I'm happy to answer them after another presentation thank you