Almost All Romance Scams Victims Start Out Confused About Who Scammed Them!

Often scamScam A Scam is a confidence trick - a crime -  is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust through deception. Scams or confidence tricks exploit victims using their credulity, naïveté, compassion, vanity, irresponsibility, or greed and exploiting that. Researchers have defined confidence tricks as "a distinctive species of fraudulent conduct ... intending to further voluntary exchanges that are not mutually beneficial", as they "benefit con operators ('con men' - criminals) at the expense of their victims (the 'marks')". A scam is a crime even if no money was lost. victims associate the scam with the face in the photos, even if intellectually they understand that it was scammers behind the photo!

As of 2021, SCARS has had a little under 12,000 victims pass through its doors in their online support groupsSupport Groups In a support group, members provide each other with various types of help, usually nonprofessional and nonmaterial, for a particular shared, usually burdensome, characteristic, such as romance scams. Members with the same issues can come together for sharing coping strategies, to feel more empowered and for a sense of community. The help may take the form of providing and evaluating relevant information, relating personal experiences, listening to and accepting others' experiences, providing sympathetic understanding and establishing social networks. A support group may also work to inform the public or engage in advocacy. They can be supervised or not. SCARS support groups are moderated by the SCARS Team and or volunteers.. This, plus our other publications and communications has allowed us is to have a very large sample size in understanding what scam victims experience, believe, and how to help them recover.

One of the most common things that scam victims do is to refer to their scammerScammer A Scammer or Fraudster is someone that engages in deception to obtain money or achieve another objective. They are criminals that attempt to deceive a victim into sending more or performing some other activity that benefits the scammer. as HE or SHE!

Yet, the reality – in 98% or more of the cases with romance scams – there is no HE or SHE. There is ONLY THEY!

For most victims (especially those that do not get professional support or who are still early in their recovery path) speak about and think about their scam in terms of the person in the photo, even if they know it was stolen and fake.

Many victims come out of the scam with a variety of beliefs, and thanks to amateur groups they often have a head full of urban legends or misinformation. Sometimes the victim remains locked into the belief that the face in the photo was the real scammer. Or if not the real scammer, that the photo was stolen, and the real person should have known about their photos being used and done something about it. Mostly, they just do not (yet) understand how the business of relationship scamsRelationship Scam A Relationship Scam is a one-to-one criminal act that involves a trust relationship and uses deception & manipulation to get a victim to give to the criminal something of value, such as money! Click here to learn more: What Is A Relationship Scam?, and specifically romance scams really work.

Romance Scams is a Business

Scammers, regardless of what new victims think, are in this as a business. A very profitable business.

Scamming today follows closely the business and organizational models of telemarketing – including the development of teams, and individual specialization.

A typical relationship scamRelationship Scam A Relationship Scam is a one-to-one criminal act that involves a trust relationship and uses deception & manipulation to get a victim to give to the criminal something of value, such as money! Click here to learn more: What Is A Relationship Scam? that is built on a trust relationshipTrust Relationship What Is Trust In A Relationship? Trust is the faith you have in someone that they will always remain loyal to you, honest, reliable, or love you. To trust someone means that you can rely on them and are comfortable confiding in them because you feel safe with them. It is the building block for any relationship without which the foundation will always remain shaky. with deception and manipulations functions with a set of stages.

A Relationship Scam has a basic set of stages to prepare a victim and to move them forward:

• An Initial Lure or Contact
• An Introduction Phase
• A GroomingGrooming Grooming is a form of setting up a victim for a scam or other crime by befriending and establishing an emotional connection with the victim, and sometimes the family, to lower the victim's inhibitions with the objective of the scam or criminal activity.  Grooming includes the development of a trust relationship between the criminal and the victim, getting the victims to the point where they can be more completely manipulated.   Phase
• A Capture & Control Phase – the Application of Manipulation
• A Closer Phase (Get the Money)
• A Wind-down Phase
• And Post-Scam Scam Phases:
  • Threats & Coercion
  • Follow Up Money Recovery ScamsRecovery Scams If you've already fallen for a scam, another scammer may call you and offer to get you your money back for a fee. Their goal is to double-dip and steal more of your money. Unfortunately, in most cases, only real law enforcement or your government can get your money back. There are exceptions, but you are safer to avoid all recovery options.
  • Follow Up Scam Investigator Scams
  • Follow Up Police Reporting Scams

Each of these is being performed by human criminals, either part of one group or by separate groups all focused on extracting as much as possible from each victim! Each group of criminals engages in their own various models and businesses to steal as much as possible.

However, scammers specialize based upon their skills and success – remember this is a business. There is a management hierarchy to makes these decisions too.

In most cases, a victim will be handed off to different criminals over the course of the scam – and they may be males and females, regardless of the gender of the victims.

For this reason, there is no HE or SHE. There is only a THEY.

Taxonomy (Terminology) Affects Your Recovery

One of the many challenges for romance scam victims is letting go of the face in the stolen photos, and associated with this is the use of pronouns such as HE or SHE.

In our SCARS recovery programs, we teach victims to let go of these pronouns and to use only THEY. Why? Because it helps to disassociate the person that they thought they has a relationship with and to turn it into a faceless THEY! Once a victim can control the pronouns, it becomes much easier to accept the rest of the reality of these types of scams:

• That there was NO relationship in reality
• That there was no HE or SHE behind the photo
• That there was a team of scammers controlling and manipulating the victim
• That there may have been many scammers that impersonated just one person
• That the victim was actually talking with multiple scammers over the course of the scam

Each victim that can accept these facts has an easier time recovering from their scam. It makes it easier to disconnect from the romance and the relationship. It makes it easier to see it as a crime. It also makes it easier to overcome shameShame Shame is an unpleasant self-conscious emotion typically associated with a negative evaluation of the self; withdrawal motivations; and feelings of distress, exposure, mistrust, powerlessness, and worthlessness. and self-blameSelf-Blame Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. SCARS seeks to mitigate the prejudice against victims and the perception that victims are in any way responsible for the actions of offenders or scammers. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as the greater tendency to blame victims of rape than victims of robbery. Scam victims are often blamed by family & friends for the crime. Scam victims also engage in self-blame even though they are not to blame..

This may seem like a small thing – what you refer to a scammer as, but in the victim’s mind, this is critically important.

So Remember

There is NO “HE” or “SHE”
Just THEY!