EP 059 'Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You' - A Deep Dive Into Financial Romance Fraud With Author Becky Holmes

Becky Holmes is the creator of and voice behind the popular Twitter account @deathtospinach.
Having been on the receiving end of an annoying number of direct messages from online romance scammers, Becky started to enjoy wasting their time and then publicly ‘outing’ their accounts. No other woman has had so many online romances – from Keanu Reeves to Brad Pitt to Prince William and she is a firm favourite with brave US peacekeeping soldiers and oil rig workers who desperately need iTunes vouchers or Amazon gift cards. Becky's book, Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You, looks at all aspects of romance fraud, from the heartbreaking to the hilarious, the academic to the anecdotal and discusses where we're going wrong when dealing with those affected. 

Twitter - @deathtospinach - but people are welcome to connect via LinkedIn as well.

The link to the Amazon page for the book is https://www.amazon.co.uk/Keanu-Reeves-Not-Love-You/dp/1789651638

Security Circle ⭕️  is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

Transcript

0:02

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Yoyo 0:41

This is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the Security Circle Podcast. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and we are continually dedicated to providing meaningful education and certification. for all levels of security personnel and make a positive difference to our members mental health and well being. And what better than today? We have a very special lady with us today and I am super excited, kind of had a professional crush to be honest with you, because this lady has carved an extraordinary niche out for herself. She has published a book called Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You. What a striking title. Becky Holmes, it's great to have you here on the Security

Becky 1:22

Circle Podcast. Thank you so much for having me.

Yoyo 1:26

Becky, look, it's a title that I think, even going back just a couple of weeks now, it really caught my attention for a reason. But there's a journey, isn't there, to how you got here. What made you write a book called Keanu Reeves Is Not In Love With You?

Becky 1:40

Aside from a slight obsession with Keanu Reeves, perhaps. So my journey started Through being bored in lockdown and realizing that the only thing that was left to do in life was to join Twitter, which is what I did and was immediately wooed by a shed load of blokes who inboxed me and told me that I was great and I was beautiful and I was the best thing in the world. I of course thought no and just started blocking them and deleting them and then after a while thought, absolutely nothing to do. So I just thought I'd play along, see if I could waste some of their time. And I started giving them the most nonsensical answers to any of their questions just to see if they would pick up on anything that I was saying, which of course they didn't. And I started screenshotting these and putting them up on my Twitter account and before I knew it I'd gone from About 200 Twitter followers. I'm now on, I want to say 114 something thousand. But it shot up to 15, 000 almost overnight and then just steadily built. it's been absolutely crazy. Sort of for two reasons, really. The first one is because it was making people laugh, but also because I started getting messages from women and men, mainly women though, who said, I've actually been a victim of romance fraud. And they started telling me their stories. So then I started looking into it a little bit more and realized what a massive, massive subject it is. give us an idea

Yoyo 3:21

about how you were playing these guys along. I mean, it's awkward, isn't it? When you're getting these types of approaches,

Becky 3:28

so normally they start with, Hello dear, are you married with kids? So I would reply, No, I'm not married. I was, but unfortunately I disemboweled my husband. And he's currently rotting in the cellar. They would then reply. Ah, that's nice. Do you have children? I then might perhaps go on to say that unfortunately I'd eaten them, so no I didn't. Oh, okay. Would you like children one day? And you could, you can say literally anything. Absolutely anything. And they just carry on.

Yoyo 4:03

is this because they've got this script? But they're sticking to that. Ultimately, it's irrespective of what you say. They're not there to really sort of finely tune and pick up any nuances. It's literally they're trying to get to the point of whether you could be lonely.

Becky 4:17

It depends on who you're speaking to. So there are, some lone wolves out there talking and they will perhaps be a little bit more attentive. There's also a lot of AI out there now, so you could be chatting to a bot. But yes, you're quite right. There could be people who are sitting there. and they're talking from a script. What I found is that if somebody says, do you have a husband? So rather than launch into something ridiculous, say your first sentence is something that they will recognize, you do that. And then you say something silly because they've got something there that they can see. They disregard everything else. And they hang on to it and they will say, do you have a husband? No. Do you have kids? No. Do you have a family? No. And they think, ah, right. Okay. You're missing something. Here I am. Yeah.

Yoyo 5:07

And it's a bit like that, when you're doing internet dating, it's ASL, isn't it? Age, sex, location. It's part of that preliminary green traffic light kind of thing where you're looking to find alignment.

Becky 5:19

They're sounding you out basically. Yeah,

Yoyo 5:22

but this is a lot more sinister than that, and you're going to tell us why. When we had our pre chat, I have to say, I haven't forgotten some of the things you said. They are, I mean, this is a bit of a warning to anybody listening, they're quite remarkable, the discoveries you've made. Take us through the book now and has Keanu Reeves ever got in touch?

Becky 5:42

Over a hundred of them have got in touch. Well, the actual real one, no, sadly not. Although, we have sent the book to his agent, so Do you know, the problem is though, if he does get in touch, I'll just think he's a scammer and I'll tell him to go away. Can you imagine that? So the book, it starts off quite light hearted. It starts off with some of my silly tweets talks about the various celebrities that have been in touch. Obviously not real celebrities. So we're talking Keanu Reeves, Brad Pitt, Liam Neeson, Jason Statham, Prince William and Prince Andrew, which was awkward. it starts off with that and it, it moves. It's kind of my journey through the process of finding out about romance fraud. So it looks at the psychology of fraud, coercive control, the similarities between romance fraud and domestic abuse in terms of what's used to keep victims in their place, in inverted commas. Then I speak to a scammer. themselves. I speak to a lot of victims and I looked at the geography of where these scams originate from and I suspect that's what you're adhering to when I talked about some of the practices that go on in some of the locations, which frankly are astonishing. And then I finish off with looking at what we are and, well, aren't doing as a society to address romance fraud. So it's a very broad book, but I think hopefully it will show people there's a lot more to the subject than they might think. Let's talk about

Yoyo 7:18

what romance fraud is then from the top. It's a deception, isn't it? To convince somebody of some underlying intentions with an ultimate aim, which is not always very innocent. How

Becky 7:30

would you describe it? Yeah, that's pretty much it. I'd often be talking about romance fraud in terms of wanting to get money from the victim. However, I was pulled up on that fairly recently, quite rightly because somebody who I've got to know through the fraud world and is now a friend actually was a victim of romance fraud, but there was no money element to it. This was just somebody who was leading a double life and he was getting off on the power, the sexual power of it. So actually it's not just financial. What I talk about in the book is financial romance fraud, but I think it's really. It's when somebody is giving you a false persona that they're telling you that there's somebody that they're not, and you're in a relationship with someone who is deceiving you.

Yoyo 8:19

What would you say is the commonality stereotypes within the victim? Becky, are they naive? Are they stupid?

Becky 8:25

Oh, well, you know exactly what I'm going to say. No. So when I was doing my research for the book, I spoke to 35, 40, victims of romance fraud. All ladies, I have to say simply because I had to choose one gender and I didn't have time to do more than just the ladies. But out of those that I spoke to, I didn't come across anybody that was less than intelligent. Anybody that was, this stereotype of lonely, unattractive, unintelligent, middle aged woman, sitting, crying into a coco. That just didn't happen. It didn't happen. With her ten cats. With her ten cats, yeah, yeah. I did meet somebody with an enormous cat that went on to try and attack me on several occasions, but that's an entirely different story. I met a CEO, a lawyer. One of the people that I interviewed for the book, whose story is in there is actually a UK detective who was defrauded. So it's, it's not the stereotype, These women are the top of their game. People always talk about romance fraud victims being vulnerable, but actually that's, that's not always the case. We have this image of if somebody's vulnerable, it means that perhaps they are I don't know, undergoing some form of abuse, or perhaps they have physical or mental things that need addressing, they have needs. That's not always the case. In fact, it's, it's actually rarely the case. What vulnerable can mean is that somebody was vulnerable in a precise moment that they came into contact with a fraudster. Now, it hasn't happened to me with romance fraud, but this is a perfect example. Only three days ago. I had an email from Royal Mail and I was waiting for a parcel. Now I was doing 100 things at once and I was really upset. I'd had a horrible conversation with a friend of mine. I was really upset. Now you could tell him at that moment I was actually, I guess, in a vulnerable state. I'd taken my eye off the ball and I clicked on a link in this Royal Mail site, and it took me all over the place to some godforsaken corner of the internet. And I thought, what am I doing? What, what am I doing? Get a grip, Rebecca. It just goes to show how all you have to be doing is something at the wrong minute, and you let somebody in, or you, you press on a link, or you start talking to somebody, or you start letting somebody in, and being, Vulnerable doesn't mean that you are a vulnerable person, it means that you have just taken your eye off the ball in a, in one particular moment and it's sometimes ended in a very bad way. But that's true

Yoyo 11:24

to say, isn't it, of anything. You could have your eye off the ball driving and before you know it, you've got into a car crash. That's something I think as individuals, we all have to guard against. But I don't think anyone's thought about that in terms of, romance, fraud. Women get a bit of a bad rap as well, don't they? Certainly in the press, around any reports of romance fraud. The press seems to be very tilted against, women being naive and silly and, instead of focusing the right narrative on the perpetrator. What have you discovered?

Becky 11:55

Yeah, one of the things I always find incredibly frustrating is that when the media, and really I'm talking about online news, news channels and newspapers, they'll print a story and it'll be along the lines of how I lost my millions to a fraudster, so it's always, it's never. My millions were taken or it's always, I lost my millions to because it's somehow your fault, a story will go up. It will basically be very sensationalist. It will portray the woman because it is always a woman that they put in these situations. It will portray the woman as. The story will go up and then the commentary in the comments underneath the article will just let rip on her. You're so stupid. You're a clown. What did you expect? You deserve to lose your money if you're going to do this. Did you really think anybody would fancy you? And The conversation becomes about the victim, and we forget to talk about the people who actually have done it. So the focus is on completely the wrong side of the coin. It's absolutely outrageous, and we spend so long talking about how silly these women are, that nobody thinks to have a conversation about who's behind it.

Yoyo 13:20

I know that a number of different prominent outspoken women are speaking out about this. I know the trend is getting better rather than worse, but it's very slow and we seem to be caught in this trap of, it's the same with rape. Becky, a woman was raped it's a huge story, for the, for the press, but the truth was she was forced to have sex and ultimately, they never use those true punchlines. I had a conversation today just about how narratives are still incredibly misogynistic. In fact, you've experienced that yourself. I saw that post you put up on LinkedIn, by the way, follow Becky Holmes on LinkedIn, Becky Holmes, LinkedIn. com you had an interview, didn't you, with somebody and you were, you were labeled as. What was the word?.

Becky 14:06

an activist and campaigner. Yeah. So not an author, not an expert. No, I've got to be a campaigner. Look at her with a little campaign over there. And I did make a bit of a big deal out of it on LinkedIn. I said, what is this? Why am I referred to as this? But at the same time. I think if it was a man that had written a book, I don't think he would have been an activist in a campaigner I think he would have been author and expert.

Yoyo 14:34

I don't doubt you so what sort of response have you had since the book's come out? Tell me about what people are saying.

Becky 14:42

It's been really good. I can't, I'm still waiting for something awful to happen. But so far it's been really good. So the people that I sent it off to, to get reviews from absolutely loved it and that was some time ago now. So that was Jeremy Vine, Daniel Finkelstein from the times Jane Fallon. And then I went for some. Funny people. So I went for Dave Gorman, Charlie Hickson Ed Byrne and Peter James, who is one of my favorite crime writers. Now, all of these people came back and said, we love it. I think it's great. They gave me amazing quotes. And still at that point, I was thinking, wow, they're probably just really nice people. They probably just don't want to say anything horrible. But now that actual consumers have started to read it and I'm starting to get people message me to say, Oh my God, this was amazing. I've just bought one for my mom because I think that perhaps she's in a situation where she's starting to talk to somebody unsavory. That's the stuff that really counts. And more so I've had a couple of the victims who I, interviewed for the book have messaged me and said how much they love it. And that was so important because I wanted the book to be fun and engaging, but at the same time really honor them. Yeah, exactly. So the fact that's happened or, so far that the feedback has been that's happened, I feel really, really pleased about that. It was really important for me to get that right.

Yoyo 16:12

Tell me about the origins then in the sense of where is all this romance fraud happening, Becky? We all know that there are certain countries that have a predominance of fraud in their ethos. This

Becky 16:25

is organized, isn't it? Yeah. So when I first started out, I thought I'm going to squash the stereotype of it being Nigeria. I'm not going to be standing for this. And then I started researching it and thought, Oh, oh dear. So currently there are three areas in the world. Which are really running these organized groups, and that is Ghana Nigeria next door to Ghana, and largely Southeast Asia. Now, Southeast Asia, I would say, is the most organized. And actually, what they do is incredibly technologically advanced, and I think very, very frightening. So they call them pig butchering scams. Now I'm a vegan and I accidentally put in pig butchering into Google many moons ago and immediately thought, ah, right. Okay. So if anybody wants to Google that, please put in scam after you've done it. But anyway, they call it that because they liken it to fattening a pig up for slaughter. That's horrible, Becky, isn't it? That's horrible. Absolutely revolting. It's a very interesting type of crime because it's a cross between romance fraud and cryptocurrency fraud. So it will start off often like a traditional romance fraud. So you will be approached and you'll be wooed and you'll believe you're in a relationship. And then after a matter of weeks, months, maybe even a year, You'll be, they'll start to talk to you about investments and how they've made some money or how perhaps you could go in something with them to build your future. And this is where it becomes so, so clever. So they have trading sites that they've built. You can put money on, you can take your money out once it looks like you've made some money. So it gives you. this real feeling of confidence. Time goes on and you invest more and more and you're taking some out again. You're thinking, God, this is great. Your supposed partner is saying, this is fantastic. We're going to make so much money. You put in one big lump sum and what do you know, the site goes down and your supposed beloved disappears. So it's absolutely horrific. But what is. As bad, maybe worse, is that pig butchering scams also comes with the horror of human trafficking. So people are forced to scam. There was a lot of press in the 90s, early 2000s, if memory serves, of Girls, particularly from Eastern Europe, coming over here thinking that they could have a job as a nanny or a cleaner. And they were brought over, they were trafficked, and they were forced into prostitution. And it's exactly, it's the scam equivalent of that. So people are trafficked and they are forced to scam. they're told that if they've got computer skills, there's a highly paid job waiting for them.

Yoyo 19:38

It's like catfishing, isn't it? To a certain extent. it could be anybody at the end of the day who's trying to

Becky 19:44

defraud you. Absolutely. I saw a really interesting documentary now in Ghana, the young men that practice romance fraud, they call themselves Sakawa, I never quite know if I'm saying that right. I saw a documentary about it, it can be in places, quite a homophobic country still. But there were young lads talking to men on the phone. they were talking to American men, the ones that I saw. And these young lads were putting on very high voices, pretending to be females, having phone sex. with these Western men. Now the Western men obviously are completely convinced that this is a woman they're speaking to. It was a really uncomfortable viewing. Yeah. What else did you discover? So getting to the more grisly side of it, when I looked into the practices in Nigeria and Ghana, there's an influence of voodoo and there are a lot of examples of People employing the services of magic men, juju men to make them a better scammer and it's not done hidden away. So again, this documentary that I saw, there was a juju man in Ghana and he walked into a radio station and he put an advert out. He said, do you want to empty the pockets of the white man? If you do, you need my help. And it's broadcast. Legally. Now some of the more horrible things that I discovered, and unfortunately it does appear to be on the rise when you research it online, is that a lot of these, this can sometimes involve people being kidnapped because people want organs to put into their spells. It's like something from the Dark Ages, and something that you read in a horror film but is actually happening right now. That's horrendous.

Yoyo 21:52

I'm utterly shocked, Becky. How have you got through this and still such a sensible, rounded young woman?

Becky 22:00

Oh, well, you've only seen me the other side of a screen. I'll spend the rest of my time just running around my flat.

Yoyo 22:06

Um I mean, that's pretty dark, isn't it?

Becky 22:10

Yeah, and actually I had to take a few breaks when I was writing that particular part of the book, because some of it was really quite horrible. There's been a rise in the use of child's body parts. in some of this as well. And there are some things where, I don't know, I was in danger of going down a bit of a rabbit hole and I didn't really want to get into that side of the internet. So I did my research through, news sites, through Nigerian news sites, and just made sure that I, scratched the surface. If I'd wanted to, there are a lot of places you can go to look up things in more detail, which I wasn't interested in doing. Mental health is incredibly important. And when you're looking up subjects that can get quite dark, the last thing you need to do is to damage yourself.

Yoyo 23:02

I'm going to give you an example, and I'm quite happy to talk about this, but it's quite a moving thing for me. I've always been, as a police detective, interested in the psychology of murderers. I've loved all the documentaries, I've watched the movies and stuff like that. And there was this really good book and the book basically talks about, Bundy and other notorious serial killers and the sort of psychological makeup. It was quite a sort of, a sensible adulting book rather than a light touch. And there was this one particular piece where you know, in my curiosity. I think I had to stop and I had to stop because there was this, there's this part where this man realized when he was very young. That there were definitely some very serious tendencies to be able to commit harm when, he came by this kitten, this very, very young kitten. I've got to tell you this because he literally,

Becky 24:00

I don't think I want to listen to this.

Yoyo 24:02

He, yeah, he, he put it in the water and basically to watch it swim back. And then he kept doing it until it could no longer swim back. And it was about understanding the mentality of a psychopath. And it was at that point that I thought, yeah, I need to stop reading this book. I don't want to know, I don't want to go down that dark hole. And I think I really identify with what you're saying there because I think as curious as we are, as keen as we are to learn, I think I realized that was my limitation to wanting to know anything more about that man.

Becky 24:36

Yeah, and I think it's really healthy to be able to recognize that and stop because I know that probably a few years ago, and I wasn't as sensible as I am now, I would have kept going and kept going because my thirst to know everything was so strong. And I've done that before with things. And I still think about them now and wish that I hadn't gone into those parts of my own mind and, research things that I wish I hadn't. So in order to get this book done and to do a good job of it. And also, I'm not unbiased because I'm very much on the side of the victims, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't going to be completely prejudiced against every, everybody and everything. So I just wanted to make sure that I drew a line and stayed one side of it. So

Yoyo 25:25

balance is key, I think. Like you say, there's victims everywhere, even on the sides of the perpetrators. let's talk about our victim psychology then, after. They've been defrauded. I think the hardest part, certainly from being a, an ex, I was going to say an old police detective from the old an ex police, I know, an ex police detective is that I think certainly professional women probably find it quite hard to tell their friends what's happened. It feels like it's a crime of complete and utter shame. And it really does, for anybody who's remotely proud. It just makes you feel so utterly foolish, even saying the words out loud. Take us through some of your stories from your victims.

Becky 26:11

There's one lady in particular who it's always affected me and I think it always will. This lady, when we first spoke, she was in her 60s. And she had stage four cancer and she had been sending money over to this person first of all, believing that he was a Western man and that he was a soldier. When it turned out that he wasn't he came clean. She continued to send him money. She was under his spell by this point. She was thought that. He'd fallen in love with her during the period that he'd been scamming her under a different identity and it all, it was all quite confusing. Anyway, he knew that she had stage four cancer and she was continuing to send him money. And she said to me that the only time that her son would ever know about this. is when she died and he didn't get his inheritance. And I obviously did what anybody would do and say, you really have to tell him, he needs to know this. You need to unburden yourself. It needs to be fair to him as well. So he doesn't have this horrible shock. Now, unfortunately that lady died very quickly and I was sitting. In my flat one night and I got a message from her Twitter account on a Friday evening, and it was from her son, and he said, mom's passed away, but I've seen this Twitter conversation that you've had. What on Earth is going on? And it was left to me. To ring him late on a Friday night and tell him that his mom had been scammed and he didn't have an inheritance. Now, the reason that it was so sad and it will always stay with me is because he was brilliant. He didn't kick off. He didn't say anything horrible derogatory about his mum. He just said, I would not have been angry. I wish she told me because even though the money's gone and there was nothing we could do about that, I could have made her feel better. And it was a real, oh, it's always been a real moment for me where I think. We don't tell people things because we worry about what their reaction is going to be, but often it's not the reaction you think you're going to get and friends and family can be more supportive than perhaps we give them credit for sometimes. Is there

Yoyo 28:35

a particular age group that we think are more vulnerable that we should be looking out for if they say they, met a guy online?

Becky 28:43

The stereotype is that it's middle aged people that they approach and they tend to be people in their sort of 30s to 50s. But if I'm honest with you, I've seen everybody, every age approached from every age. So there are some ladies in their 60s talking to men in their 20s and there are women in their 20s. Talking to men who they believe are in their 50s. So there's almost, if they're a scammer that's done their homework, they will be looking into somebody's profile. So for example, if they're being, if they're a fraudster and they're particularly prolific on dating sites. If somebody says that they're a widow, then, that's absolutely perfect. they can go in. If they say that I'm retired, they know how old they are, so they might pick an appropriate age to approach them with. Some of them can be very, very sneaky and approach you under the age that they think you would like to be approached under.

Yoyo 29:49

This is where we've got to be super careful, isn't it? About what we are putting on social media, especially if we have, for example, an open Facebook these unscrupulous people can see maybe what car you drive. And it would be an indication of wealth, even pictures of your house. These people are always looking for key things that would indicate that you've got surplus money. And like you say, they're profiling you to see if you fit into what they would call their capture market, really. I hate it when I get into taxis and, Uber are better at this. Uber drivers are not allowed to ask you if you're married and have children. But if I use a local firm, five minutes, it's like, oh, you're going to work? Yeah. He's passing the day. Be nice, be a nice human. You never know who you're talking to. And then before you know it, that little bit of just being nice and being friendly is turned into, you're married, you've got kids, and it's like, really, this is where I want to drop the F for, I'm like, so bad. And it's you never know, because he's seen your house, he's seen where he's picked you up. How do you not know if he's got a mate somewhere that's going, yeah, she's on the road

Becky 30:52

and Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Yeah. There was one woman I spoke to, she was approached via Instagram and that's how she met the man that ended up defrauding her. And she blames it on the fact that she put a load of pictures up on her Instagram of her and her kids at Disneyland, because even though she had saved up. for years to take them there. That person who approached her wouldn't have known that. He would have just seen a woman with her kids, no man in the pictures, at Disneyland and thought, brilliant, rich, single, probably needs a dad for her kids. automatically he'd found a way to fit into her life.

Yoyo 31:36

It's just horrendous, isn't it? After reading this book, Becky, are there going to be hundreds of thousands of women who are never going to trust a man ever again?

Becky 31:45

I really hope that's not the case. I have thought that so often. I thought, oh God, what if people just stop?

Yoyo 31:55

What if this lovely, gorgeous man comes into a woman's life and she's like, hmm.

Becky 32:01

I know, it would be awful. So now actually I've read a book recently and it's put me off completely. Go away. Take your yacht with you.

Yoyo 32:10

What's it teaching us though? It's teaching us to be more wary to maybe even when you know your own vulnerabilities, and if you know that you're lonely or prone to periods of loneliness at certain times, then that's the sort of time you don't drink wine and go online. It's

Becky 32:29

exactly what we all do. Well, I'm

Yoyo 32:31

usually on Amazon. There's no one defrauding me there. Highlight of my weekend, no romance for me, thank you, but I do have a shit load of stuff arriving on Saturday. And then, when it comes through the door and you've ordered too much stuff really, and you're like, I don't even know what this is. Oh, it's that.

Becky 32:50

I've got a friend who gets drunk on a weekend and orders random Amazon stuff. And some of it's for me because he looks at it. So I've got a cardboard cutout of Greg Davis because he He's tall and gorgeous. Oh, God is lovely. But anyway, my friends said, Oh, I've got something for you. It turned up the next morning and it turned up one morning and I thought, Oh, I don't remember that, but I know who that's probably for. So I've just got this random Greg Davis cut out. So God bless Amazon.

Yoyo 33:16

We've all seen home alone. It might come in handy one day.

Becky 33:22

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.

Yoyo 33:26

Any success stories out of the people that you've spoken to? What have been some of the big learnings?

Becky 33:34

In terms of success stories, one lady that I interviewed actually got her money back. Shock, horror. Yeah. So this lady in particular lost 120, 000. She remortgaged her house. She borrowed money off friends and family. And it was all taken from her. from her in a matter of months by somebody who she believed she was in a relationship with. Now, this all fell apart. She had to face up to what she'd done sending this money over and she thought her life was, completely falling apart. Sometime later. She started thinking that perhaps the fact that she'd been sending huge chunks of money out to a foreign country should have been picked up by her bank. But nobody had said anything. And she said it was really interesting because if she spent 200 at John Lewis she would get a notification to say, Is this you? Do you want to do this? And she would press yes and off it would go. But tens of thousands of pounds. Didn't get picked up. She was just allowed to send it. So she looked into it a bit more and she said to her bank, I won't say which one, but she said I don't think this was right. I don't think you should have let this go through. And they said tough. It was a while ago, anyway, on your bike. Now, this lady is very clever. She's very tenacious but she's absolutely fabulous, in fact. And she thought, no, sod you. So she went to the financial ombudsman and there was a, quite a long backwards and forwards, but eventually the ombudsman ruled that actually the bank should have picked this up and they made the bank repay her money plus interest. So she paid off The second mortgage, she paid her friends and family back. Unfortunately, the relationships had gone by that point, which is often the way, but she got her money back. Now, one thing I will say is that is so rare. That is so rare. And it was apparently the ombudsman said that one of the reasons that they felt justified in making the bank send her money back was because at the time, romance fraud wasn't really known about. So they were saying,

Yoyo 35:56

and it should have been triggered under irregular spending amounts. It should have just automatically triggered.

Becky 36:03

It should have been, but do you know what? She's not the first person I've spoken to where the bank has just let things go. And in fact, Sue and I can use her name because I've got her son's permission, the lady who sadly died during this, she said to me that she sent two lots of money to Nigeria, and the first lot went Without any question. The second lot, she went into the bank. She said, I want to send this. And the customer services rep said, do you know this person? Now Sue, who believed she was in a relationship with him said. Yes. And she was answering very honestly because she believes she did know him. And because she'd said yes, they said, Oh, okay then. And let it go. So there's this real question around, there needs to be some education as to how to talk to people who are potentially in romance fraud situations. Because that's not by any means adequate. And the other thing was they asked her. When there are people in a line behind her, so there's sort of these things where you think well that could have been prevented and Sue herself had said to me that she feels very strongly that if somebody had asked her something different or maybe taken her aside that she would have perhaps put a stop to it. Wow I

Yoyo 37:28

mean look it's I'm, I feel for the generation slightly older than us because they are less technologically savvy in the majority, as opposed to the minority that are pretty cool with tech and staying ahead of the curves. I mean, in my role, and certainly, fortunately with the podcast, I stay. At the top end of the curve in relation to changes moves and shakes and I make it my job I'm in a job where I do need to stay current and relevant and that means you know Going on to all of the We Fight Fraud webinars, which by the way, we'll put the link to the We Fight Fraud team. Really glad you hooked up with them. You can tell me about that in a minute, but just staying ahead of the curves of all of the threats. Now I'm learning something crikey almost every time. and yet I know there's a generation of people, a big generation of people that are so much easier to exploit because the. dangers of these very advanced frauds and deceptions are taking a long time to filter down. To the kind of things that they would source their information from and just like you say, I think if I had an aunt who says she met a guy online and they haven't met yet. I think most people who are quite technologically sound and ready and would. Instantly be saying, okay, so what are you planning to meet him? And then whereabouts is he exactly? And, is he English? And, you start going through all these kind of normal, and then it's difficult because I've been on the other side where I've had someone say to me, I'm not even going to mention I've met him online because I'm just going to get loads of questions. And, I don't want to be answering all these questions and maybe there's a bit of denial going on. So I definitely feel for this group that I think are more easy to exploit. I

Becky 39:13

completely agree with you. The thing is, I'm 45 and my best friend, he's 48. And we often talk about how we just want things to stop now with technology because we've just about caught up. The very bottom of the term catching up, but I can use some social media. That's enough for me. So can we stop that now, please? I don't want to be in a world where we're just beaming holograms around everywhere. I just want things to stop as they are. And today, and I, I think I'm fairly savvy when it comes to fraud, but I saw something on LinkedIn today where somebody had put this website address is not the same as this website address. And I looked and I was staring at it for ages. And I thought, well, it is. And I was looking at every single letter, exactly the same. And then when I scrolled down, the A

Yoyo 40:07

was in a different typeface.

Becky 40:09

I didn't notice that. And I was staring at it for ages. So if I didn't notice that, and I think that I'm fairly savvy with fraud and I spend my entire time talking to people about fraud, what hope is in average person who doesn't talk about fraud all the time got. It was insane. It really opened my eyes.

Yoyo 40:31

Yes, so you've got the lower case version could be written in two forms, the double story A and the single story A. You could give it to 100 people, and 86 percent of them will not see it. It absolutely

Becky 40:45

blew my mind, because I sat there for ages, I should have been doing something else, but I was thinking, I can't stop myself, what is going on here? I play lots of games on my phone, like spot the difference games and stuff like that, so I was thinking, what can't I see? Why am I going crazy here? it was Simple as that.

Yoyo 41:03

Becky, you know how to rock. Do you know that? But seriously, these scams, are they also known as other names other than pig butchering scams? Are there other names at all for this or is it just that the main horribly denigrating

Becky 41:15

one? Yeah, that's the revolting one, unfortunately. I think the rest of it we just tend to refer to as romance fraud, romance scams.

Yoyo 41:24

And we're talking about significant amounts of money out of the people that you research. What was the highest or what was the common average value and what was the highest to, to your experience?

Becky 41:34

So in terms of the people that I personally spoke to it was the lady who lost 120, 000. However, I also spoke to somebody who lost a thousand and it absolutely crippled her. It's not really the amount that you lose, it's proportionate to what you have. Do you know what I mean? It's, that's where the damage comes in. I don't think there is an average. I've spoken to other people who have spoken to victims. Some who have lost half a million pounds. Somebody took their own life because they'd put everything into it. They'd sold their house, this half million pound property, given the money to this person. And they'd been away with it. There are stories of people who've lost over a million pounds, obviously you have to have a million pounds to lose, but there's all sorts and there's everything in between. And a lot of the times a romance fraudster will start with asking for a very small amount. So they might say, I've got no credit for my phone. I can't keep talking to you from this war torn village in Afghanistan. If I don't have credit for my phone, please, can you send me 10 worth of credit? So it might start off with that. And once they've Once you've sent them 10, they think, there's somebody that will send me money. Now, at this point, you might then suddenly think, Oh, God, what have I done? I've spent 10. I've, sent 10 to a stranger. And you might stop. But that's still, you've still been defrauded. But I think those kind of amounts, people don't really tend to report. So they'd never get put into any stats.

Yoyo 43:10

Do we think that there's a percentage of unreported?

Becky 43:14

Romance frauds. Oh god, I think An abysmal percent is reported. I would say that's probably less than a tenth of actual reports are put in. I think it's shocking and I think it's because of the way we treat victims make them feel that they're silly, make the reporting process really hard. I write in the book about the similarities between romance fraud and domestic abuse. Now, domestic abuse decades ago. was where we are now with romance fraud. We are up against people who think that we walked into it, we deserved it, or what you do to deserve that love. We're reporting to the police who we don't believe will have our best interests at heart, even though everyone I've spoken to from the police has been absolutely fantastic when it comes to romance fraud. People don't know how to report it. They've been groomed by the fraudster or the abuser. To not report it, or to think that they're too silly, no one's going to believe them. And I think we are, in terms of domestic abuse, things are getting a lot better. There isn't so much stigma anymore in saying, I have been a victim of this. We've still got a long way to go, but there isn't so much of a stigma. Women are coming out of the woodwork and saying, this happened to me. It happened to me, I was in an abusive relationship. So I was able to spot some of the signs. And I think we need to get to that point with romance fraud, where we treat the victims of it with kindness, rather than derision or scorn. Yeah,

Yoyo 44:58

because in fact, making that parallelism between where domestic violence was 20, 30 years ago is really profound, Becky, because, you can imagine, the response, that was a bit silly, wasn't it, and this whole silliness thing, and I know that we've done a full circle around the kind of narratives that go into why women behave in a certain way and in the media, it's always perpetrated, but it's therefore, I think we're now, it's now emerging, Okay. Thanks to you and what you're doing and people that are doing very similar things that this is a very sophisticated crime. That's measured and planned, and you are targeted as a victim, and and I think that kind of makes the reality of it a lot more easier to put the education and knowledge now behind the sensible narrative. No longer is it a silly thing, a silly woman made mistakes, made silly error of judgment. Now it's the realization this is serious. This is specific targeted and quite sinister.

Becky 46:03

Absolutely. There was a person that I'm sure you'll be aware of called Dr. Elizabeth Carter, and she is a criminologist, but her specialism is in linguistics around romance fraud. So you can imagine, I was on her like a shot. Oh, please speak to me. Now when I met up with her, I said to her, Oh, I've seen all these links between romance fraud and domestic abuse and aren't I clever? And being as absolutely lovely as she is, she was, very sweet and listened to me and then said, Oh yeah, I've actually written a couple of papers on that. Oh God, okay. Embarrassing. She very nicely carried on speaking to me as if I wasn't a complete idiot. But the work she's done, it really looks in depth at this. And the approach that the fraudster slash abuser and how they will keep you under their spell. And it's incredibly interesting. And I think We take domestic abuse very seriously now which we didn't do decades ago. And that's where we need to get to because it is, romance fraud is a crime. It's not just a bit of a misdemeanor. It's a crime. Yeah. We need to get to a point where we take it as seriously as we do anything else that happens to somebody. I think it's pretty

Yoyo 47:25

horrendous, really, because you're defrauding somebody's heart and soul and their judgment, every single part about a person that they have validates themselves, to the point where I should imagine people even doubt their own sanity as to how they could be so duped or convinced, do you know what I mean?

Becky 47:44

I wrote about this in the book and until I wrote this book, only three people in my life knew about this. I went out with this guy who gaslighted me something. chronic. And I absolutely went crazy. He would tell me certain things and then immediately tell me something else and then question me when I asked him about it. There are all sorts of things that he did. Now he, I was paying off his debts. I was paying for him to change career. I was paying for this, for that, for the other. And. When I look back on how I was under his spell, some of the people around me were starting to get the measure of him. He was saying things to me like, of course they don't like me. They're probably going to tell you that I'm like this and I'm like that. And I was like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. So when friends and family would say something like that to me, I'd think, Oh my God, he was right. And it would push me closer to him. And this is exactly what happens in romance fraud situations, the victim is groomed into thinking that it's. It's those two against the world and they're told that friends and family won't understand, certainly the bank won't understand, that they're told what to say when they go in. It's incredible. Psychologically, it can be very, very sophisticated.

Yoyo 49:13

It's very similar to grooming, actually, in the sense of you can imagine, someone saying to a victim, I wouldn't tell anyone about us because they're just going to ask you loads of questions. They're going to be suspicious that we haven't met yet, even though we're trying to work out how we're going to meet, blah, blah, blah. And then you can just imagine them even manipulating them into not saying anything so that their suspicion has ever been arisen. It's commonly done. Yeah, I can see that. I actually had a member of my staff arrested at seven o'clock in the morning once for romance fraud and, the police are fairly open with me to the limitations because he worked in what would be considered a very sort of high risk security area. And so we needed to. confirm the reason of his arrest rather than anything else just to make sure that it didn't conflict with anything professionally. And that's when they said it was romance fraud, which is still a deception and which is still negated his ability to be able to return there due to the fraud element. But that's when I started thinking, he worked night shifts. He refused to work in the daytime where he could be managed and supervised and engage with management in a positive way. And I just think in a sense, sometimes people who, thrive on working nights and shying away from the light of. being supervised and having healthy relationships with managers. I think you sometimes have to ask yourself why that is. So it always, from that point on, it was quite a long time ago now, but from that point on, I always remember thinking, there's plenty of time on night shifts to do things that are certainly outside of what your roles and responsibilities and duties.

Becky 50:55

Was he prosecuted? I don't

Yoyo 50:57

know anymore. The police certainly weren't in a We did ask if there was a charge, but my understanding was he was released on bail. They obviously seized his phone, computer, any assets and devices that could be used bank records and stuff like that. But he was then removed from the location where he had been working and literally sent to where somewhere else was less of a security priority.

Becky 51:26

But doesn't it go to show that you can work alongside somebody or above somebody or below somebody for years and yeah. It's like, when you watch these serial killer documentaries and stuff and they always say to the neighbors, I seem like a nice quiet guy, kept himself to himself, but everyone's always really shocked. It's the same when you find out that somebody is part of any crime, isn't it? Particularly something so ruthless and you think. What? Old Barry from Accounts?

Yoyo 51:56

not on my street. I know all the dodgy ones are. you're absolutely right. I, I certainly don't see everything. And, even though this is the kind of, if we laugh about it, we say, I'm an ex police detective who had somebody working under me who was arrested for committing romance fraud while he was working night shifts. And I'm thinking, That's how ridiculous if you want to sensationalize that headline, because there's, there's no way of really tracking what people are doing on night shifts and when they're away from management, really, it's a huge level of trust.

Becky 52:28

Even if that person works in the day next to you, what they do on the phone, you don't know.

Yoyo 52:38

I mean, I think I'd probably be questioning why they're on their phone so much, but let's face it. We can pick up our phones now to turn our heating up, to turn our heating down, to turn lights on, turn them off. We could be sending a message. We could be renewing a direct debit. We could be just giving a green light on renewing car insurance. There's so many things. It's not just about. Sending texts anymore. Is it using a mobile phone? It's for so much, it could be making notes, so I think it's really hard especially after COVID where there's also a lot of remote workers who quite clearly the ability to just have that management oversight is diminished because you can't see what we're doing and of course it just gives us breeding room where evil people will

Becky 53:22

work. And COVID was a romance fraudster's dream. There were more people who were isolated. So they weren't seeing friends and family. They were spending more time online. look at me. I joined Twitter during lockdown because I was bored and a bit lonely. So it was absolutely ideal for a romance fraudster because they know, they also have an amazing excuse not to meet up.

Yoyo 53:52

So let's just say somebody's listening now and they're thinking, Oh shit, Oh, this is making me feel really uncomfortable because what kind of checklist are we going to give them now to do a sense check or maybe a daughter or an aunt or a niece or a cousin? Let's talk about the top things, the top three things

Becky 54:08

they can do. It's a really tricky one. I always sigh a bit inwardly when it gets to this part of the conversation because it's so difficult. It's very difficult to bring up the conversation with somebody who you feel might be under the influence of a fraudster because chances are they have already been groomed to respond to any accusations, let's say. Something that. I've talked to victims about how would you have wanted somebody to approach you? They've said, maybe if somebody had said, look, I've been reading this, this is. This is really weird. This is really odd. Have a read of this. I'm not saying it's happening to you, but God, it makes you think, doesn't it? Something kind of to throw it in there. Something like that is, is not confrontational. And I think sometimes if people feel backed into a corner, they might perhaps not take on board some of what you're trying to say. But in terms of if it's you yourself, you need to be wary of the stories. that people come up with. So military men, oil rig workers, doctors obviously in the case of my book, Celebrities people whose jobs are very rugged, very manly and dangerous. So if a job is dangerous, it means that they are in a war torn village somewhere. So what do you know, they don't have any access. phone or they can't get any money out. If it's an oil rig worker, while he's having problems on the rig, he can't get a signal, he can't get this, he can't get that, there will always be a problem. It will also be perhaps the case that if you are even able to video call with somebody, because some fraudsters are able to do that, it doesn't last for very long, so it will only perhaps be. I don't know, a half a minute or something, and then suddenly it goes black or it freezes, and the person messages you and says, I'm really sorry about that signal's not very good, but you saw me, didn't you? You know it's me. There's this, obviously, asking for money and it will be money that's needed as an emergency. So it doesn't give you time to think. You're with somebody, you have feelings for somebody and you want to help them and it's got to be done quickly. They need to send money to an agency. They need to pay for a flight really quickly. They need something that needs to be paid for at a hospital. If it's not done straight away, it's a calamity. I used to tell people to listen to their gut and I've realised over the past few years that's actually not always a good idea because sometimes As humans, we're fallible and sometimes we're wrong.

Yoyo 56:46

And we convince ourselves into something as much as we convince ourselves out of something. Confirmation bias. I've convinced myself out of coming to the gym like loads of times. So I know somebody, I used to know somebody who had been having a long distance relationship for 10 years, whom she'd never met. And every year, Christmastime and he always made promises to her, sent loads of photos. Of course, he was devilishly handsome, very masculine, her dream man, you could say. And every time it came down to him coming over to England to meet her from America. He would cancel and something really excitingly tragic would come up. And his backstory is that he was in the special services and that's why he wasn't around very much. Oh yeah, he claims to have written songs for John Legend. This guy is very creative

Becky 57:44

He sounds very talented,

Yoyo 57:46

very talented. Yeah. I'd like to meet him. Yeah. I'm thinking it was very difficult when I had a number of conversations with this friend. And there were times where I even doubted her mental sanity because I thought, how can you continue to still keep believing this? Like he said, he actually said to her book the Range Rover to come and pick me up from the airport. I'll pay for it, but book it. And then at least, I'm definitely coming because we're doing this. And so she booked the Range Rover to go and pick him up from the airport. And of course he doesn't turn up. And every time, sometimes she'd kind of blow him out and she'd say, right, I don't want anything to do with you. And then, three months later they were talking again and he's making arrangements to come and see her. And I almost felt that she was so. Entrenched that she couldn't step back because it was like she was on a mission to meet him and he was promising to come and live with her and everything and I had some very exasperating conversations with the ex police detective and I just said, listen, you have to draw a line and if he doesn't come and see you this Christmas, he's going to massively let you down, make you miserable and you have to make a decision to Move on. And then I'd feel like I encouraged her and she was more determined and confident and then he'd worm his way back in. So it's something that I had to take a step back from. Because I just thought I can't do this. I can't do this anymore. I can't watch this happen to you. And I can't watch the insanity of you believing his outrageous

Becky 59:21

excuses. I think it can be incredibly frustrating when you can see what's happening to somebody. It's very difficult. And one of the interesting things is that whenever I talk to anybody, they always say, Oh, I know someone who that happened to, it's like a, it's a constant theme. And normally there is some tragic element to it. And it's often that friends walked away,

Yoyo 59:49

which isolates her even more. Sounds awful. I know, but they're just, there comes a point where you think. And this is a person who's got an incredibly sensible job with an incredibly important safeguarding responsibility. And you just can't help but think, Oh my God, how can this person be so utterly sane in their job? It's almost like you get hooked on this. When you break up with somebody, it's usually the future you haven't have that you dreamed of. That is the thing that you mourn for the most. And I can't help but think there's a similarity here into why she won't let go because there's this part of her that thinks, what if, and we could actually end up being together and I'd be giving all of that up. And I genuinely think there's a kind of a future that's based on the trickery

Becky 1:00:37

of hope. Yeah, it's interesting and it's another parallel that I draw in the book. So I'm an ex gambling addict, online gambling. And when I was gambling, I was pouring money into these things. And I knew that this was silly. I knew that it was, it had no good ending to it. But I also knew that the second that I stopped this. I would have to absolutely admit to myself what I'd done and I'd have to pick up the pieces and start again. And I refer to it in the book as that moment. And I think that in romance fraud, there's that moment plays quite a large part. People have invested so much time, sometimes money and emotional effort that they think, Oh, I'm just going to keep going for a bit longer because. If I put in another, another month, or in some cases another hundred quid, you might just get that back and I won't have to face up to that moment. And I think it's a similar parallel. It's an addiction. A lot of romance for victims I've spoken to, it's got to the point where they've thought there's something wrong here. There's something that doesn't sit right. But it's human nature to want to just. Go a little bit further just in case you're wrong in case actually everything will be okay and like with the gambling I'll just put an extra hundred quid in because I might actually make all my money back something might come of it. That's good Yeah, it never does and you have to face up to that moment where you need to start again And that's really tough.

Yoyo 1:02:17

In fact that lived experience Becky if you don't mind me saying it's probably been fairly constitutional in you developing the research and the story behind your book, don't you think?

Becky 1:02:30

I've made a lot of mistakes in my life in one form or another, whether it's money or whether it's men or God, yeah. Whatever it might be, I've made a lot of mistakes, probably more than the average person. But I think because of that, I have a lot of empathy with other people who have. And I've been able to draw a lot of parallels between stuff that I've done and wished I hadn't and people who I speak to who have lived, certain lives and made their own kind of mistakes. And so I think it has helped.

Yoyo 1:03:03

Becky, uplifting, sad, a realization of a very shocking truth in solidarity for all women out there. Don't hesitate to get in touch. We'll provide a bio for Becky Holmes, we'll provide a link to the book to downloaders as well. Have a look for yourself, Becky Holmes, thank you so much for joining the Security Circle Podcast.

Becky 1:03:27

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.