Somewhere between 'delightfully keen' and 'declares undying love by Tuesday' there is a line, and romance scammers love nothing more than sprinting straight over it. The tricky part isn't spotting an obvious scam – most people can smell a Nigerian prince or a lonely 'oil rig engineer' from several suburbs away by now. The tricky part is doing it without becoming the sort of person who assumes every keen, kind or slightly awkward message is a con artist warming up. Nobody wants to spend their single years treating every new match like a suspect in an interrogation room. This isn't a guide to trusting nobody. It's a guide to knowing which behaviours genuinely deserve a raised eyebrow, and which ones just mean someone is a bit enthusiastic, a bit nervous, or simply not very good at texting.
Key takeaways
- Genuine interest and love bombing can look similar at first, but genuine interest doesn't demand your trust, your secrecy or your bank details within a fortnight.
- Any excuse for never meeting, never video calling or never appearing on a normal call is worth noticing, especially once it becomes a pattern rather than a one-off.
- Money requests of any size, dressed up as an emergency, an investment or a shipping fee, are the clearest and most reliable warning sign there is.
- A five-minute reverse image search and one genuine video call will tell you more than weeks of lovely messages ever will.
- Healthy scepticism means checking claims calmly. It doesn't mean assuming everyone who's kind to you online is secretly running three other conversations from a call centre.
Caution and Constant Suspicion Are Not the Same Thing
There's a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from being told to 'stay vigilant' so many times that you start interviewing every match like they're applying for a mortgage. That's not safety. That's just misery with extra steps.
Being scam-aware means knowing the handful of behaviours that consistently show up in romance scams, and noticing them calmly when they appear. It doesn't mean treating a slightly slow reply, a shy first message or someone who happens to travel for work as evidence of criminal intent. Most people online are exactly who they say they are: a bit nervous, a bit hopeful, and doing their best in a system that makes dating harder than it needs to be.
The Love-Bombing Speedrun
Real affection tends to build. Scam affection tends to arrive fully formed, like flat-pack furniture that's already been assembled somewhere overseas and shipped to you complete with 'soulmate' printed on the side.
Watch for intensity that outpaces the actual relationship. Declarations of deep love or a shared future after a handful of messages, constant flattery that feels slightly generic, and language that pushes for secrecy or exclusivity ('let's keep this between us', 'you're different from everyone else, I feel it') early on. None of this proves anything on its own. Combined with everything else in this article, it starts to form a pattern worth paying attention to.
- Professing love or a shared future within days rather than weeks or months
- Excessive flattery that could apply to literally anyone
- Pressure to move off the dating platform and onto private messaging apps almost immediately
- Language encouraging secrecy from friends or family
The Ones Who Can Never Quite Meet You
Everyone has a reasonable excuse for one delayed meeting. Work trips happen. Kids get sick. Flights get cancelled. The problem isn't a single postponement. It's a rolling schedule of postponements that always seem to arrive right as you're finally about to see their actual face.
Video calls are one of the simplest checks available and romance scammers avoid them with the enthusiasm most of us reserve for dentist appointments. Common excuses include a broken camera that never gets fixed, a job that apparently prohibits video (deployed military personnel, oil rig workers and doctors on humanitarian missions turn up in these stories with suspicious regularity), or a request to 'get to know each other properly first' that somehow never resolves into an actual call.
- Repeated excuses for avoiding video calls or in-person meetings
- Claimed occupations that conveniently explain unreachability, poor internet or long absences
- A pattern of near-meetings that always fall through at the last minute
When Money Enters the Conversation
This is the one that matters most, so it deserves its own section rather than a polite mention in passing. Any request for money, from someone you haven't met in person, is a serious warning sign. It doesn't matter how small the amount, how good the story, or how much you've come to care about this person over the preceding weeks.
The stories vary wildly in creativity, from customs fees on a gift they're supposedly sending you, to a medical emergency, a stranded relative, a failed business deal or an investment opportunity that's 'guaranteed' to pay off. Cryptocurrency 'investment advice' from a new romantic interest deserves particular suspicion, since it combines two things that shouldn't really be mixed: your heart and your superannuation.
If someone you've never met in person asks you for money, gift cards, cryptocurrency or your banking details, stop and step back. This applies even if, especially if, they've been wonderful company up to that point.
- Any request for money, however small or plausible the reason
- Requests for gift cards, cryptocurrency, wire transfers or banking details
- Sudden emergencies, medical bills or stranded-relative stories
- Investment 'opportunities' or crypto advice from someone you haven't met
How to Actually Check Someone Out (Without Turning Into a Private Investigator)
You don't need surveillance training. A handful of ordinary, five-minute checks will tell you almost everything you need to know, and they're a completely reasonable thing to do before meeting anyone new, scam risk or not.
A reverse image search on their profile photos takes about ninety seconds and will quickly reveal whether their face belongs to a stock photography model or a completely different person on a completely different continent. A proper video call, not a photo, not a voice note, an actual live call where you can see them respond in real time, is one of the best tools available. So is simply noticing whether their story stays consistent. Scammers often run multiple conversations at once and occasionally forget which version of themselves they told you about.
- Reverse image search their profile photos
- Ask for a genuine, live video call, not a pre-recorded clip
- Notice inconsistencies in their story, job, location or family details over time
- Search their name alongside their claimed job or workplace
- Be wary if they seem to have no social media presence at all, or one created very recently
Trusting Your Gut Without Turning It Into a Full-Time Job
There's a difference between 'something feels off' and 'I have decided to assume the worst about everyone until proven innocent'. The first is useful instinct. The second is exhausting, and it will quietly sabotage perfectly good connections with perfectly genuine people who are simply a bit awkward, a bit shy, or dealing with a broken laptop camera like the rest of us.
If a specific behaviour from this list shows up, it's worth paying attention to. If nothing on this list shows up and you're still suspicious purely because someone seems too nice, that's less a red flag about them and more a sign that dating apps have worn you down more than you realised. That's a completely understandable place to end up. It's just worth noticing when it happens.
What to Do If You Think You're Being Scammed
Stop sending money immediately, even if you've already sent some and feel embarrassed about it. Scammers rely on that embarrassment to keep the story going. Tell a friend or family member what's happening, because an outside perspective is genuinely useful here and there's no shame in it, plenty of intelligent, sensible people have been targeted.
Report the profile to the platform you met on, and if you've lost money, report it to the relevant authorities as well. In Australia, Scamwatch and the ACCC handle exactly this kind of report. Keep records of messages and any transactions, since they may be needed later. And then, once it's dealt with, allow yourself to be annoyed rather than ashamed. The person who lied is the one who did something wrong here.
Frequently asked questions
Is it a scam if someone won't meet up straight away?
Not necessarily. Plenty of genuine people take things slowly, live further away than ideal, or simply have busy lives. The concern isn't a slow pace, it's a pattern of excuses specifically for avoiding video calls or meetings, especially combined with intense declarations of affection or eventual money requests.
Can a scammer still video call me?
It's rare but not impossible, since scams evolve. A single video call is a strong positive sign, but it doesn't make later requests for money any less suspicious. Treat it as one useful check among several, not a guarantee.
What if I've already sent money?
Stop sending any further money immediately, tell someone you trust, and report it to your bank as well as the platform and Scamwatch. It's understandably embarrassing, but acting quickly matters more than feeling awkward about it.
Are older adults more likely to be targeted by romance scams?
Romance scammers target people of all ages, but adults returning to dating after a long relationship, divorce or bereavement are sometimes specifically targeted because scammers assume less familiarity with current online dating norms. Awareness, not suspicion, is the best defence at any age.
How do I raise concerns with a match without sounding paranoid or rude?
Simple, direct questions work best. Asking for a video call, asking a specific question about their claimed job or location, or gently noting an inconsistency is completely reasonable. Someone genuine won't be offended by ordinary caution.