Online Romance Fraud-Financial (local location)
Online financial Romance Fraud can sometimes be a local (or national) connection that remains online. These connections are often made on dating platforms. The same manipulation takes place. It is the first deception used in the fraud. You can read about this here. The fraudster will know places in your country (or around you specifically) in detail and will be happy to video call (not deep fakes) and make phone calls and have a recognisable accent or writing style in texts, associated with the area they say they are from. At some point, before a meeting has been arranged (excuses are made much like other online romance frauds) there will be a situation arise where they will ask for money. There will be a fabrication created as to why they don’t have the money right now and how and when they would aim to pay it back. This is the second deception used, the first associated directly with financial or personal gain. As with other fraud, when the aim is to use the victim purely for money without them realising the intent, the fraudster will sometimes make small repayments, just a token amount, to create the sense of trust that they mean what they say. When they realise that there is no more money or that the victim has come around to realising what is happening, they can turn nasty and abusive. The victim, although seeing the real persons face, may or may not have been told the correct name or other details.