The Manipulation Playbook. S2 E2

Romance scams don’t happen by accident.
 They follow a script.

In this episode of The Romance Scam Rebellion, I'll break down the exact psychological playbook scammers use worldwide to brainjack trust, attachment, and decision-making—tactic by tactic, step by step.

What feels like love…
 What feels like destiny…
 What feels deeply personal…

…is actually engineered.

Drawing from my own experience inside a long-term romance scam, I expose how manipulation works at the neurological and psychological level—and why intelligence, education, and life experience offer no immunity.

This episode unpacks the core manipulation tactics scammers rely on, including:

• Love bombing and emotional flooding
 • Mirroring and manufactured “perfect matches”
 • Future faking and fantasy construction
 • The Ben Franklin Effect (how helping them makes you trust them more)
 • Intermittent reinforcement and emotional withdrawal
 • The sunk cost fallacy and “too invested to quit” thinking
 • Isolation, secrecy, and reality distortion

These tactics don’t operate alone. They chain together, creating a psychological trap that can make walking away feel impossible—even when red flags are everywhere.

This is not a story about being naïve.
 It’s a story about how the human brain works—and how that knowledge is weaponized against victims across the globe.

If you’ve ever wondered “How could this happen?”—to yourself or someone you love—this episode explains exactly how.

Because once you can see the playbook,
 the manipulation loses its power.

Transcript

  There's a playbook for manipulation, a psychological script scammers used worldwide to hijack your brain. I didn't know it then, but I was living inside that playbook. Word for word, tactic for tactic. Every message I thought was love was actually bait. Every feeling I thought was real was engineered, and that to me is the most humiliating part.

But here's the truth I wish I'd known from day one. This isn't about being stupid or gullible. These tactics work because they hijack the same, human biology we all share. whether you're 25 or 75, whether you have a PhD or never finished high school. Today I'm breaking down some of the exact manipulation tactics scammers use on me, and how they link together into a psychological trap.

That feels impossible to escape once you're in it. Welcome back to the Romance Scam Rebellion. This is episode two, the Manipulation Playbook Tactic one. If you didn't catch my drift from the last episode, let me bring it up again. It's the Love bombing. Think for just a moment about the Panama Canal. It's a narrow, manmade waterway connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

Every ship passing between these oceans must squeeze through that one choke point, unless they want to add thousands of dangerous miles down and around South America. No matter where the ships are coming from or what their journey looks like, they all get funneled into the same narrow passageway. Now, how does this connect to love bombing?

Well, scammers do the exact same thing. They craft dozens of different backstories, the lonely widower. The engineer overseas, the soldier deployed. The businessman stuck abroad. Different stories, different opening scripts, different emotional angles, but all of them funnel a victim towards one single choke point.

Their manmade emotional canal, the love bombing phase. Everything they say in the beginning is designed to steer you towards that narrow emotional passageway. Where your defenses drop, your brain chemistry lights up and the manipulation becomes easy because once you've reached that choke point, the dopamine, the oxytocin, those bonding chemicals, that's where they really can take control.

And that's exactly what happened to me. I have 10 typewritten pages of love bombs I pulled off my phone earlier this year. 10 pages! Honestly, I'm going to put them on my website so other survivors can compare notes because trust me, I'm not the only one who received these exact same lines. And yes, my cousin who's been tasked with building my website is listening.

Sorry in advance, John, but we really have to get going on that. But here's the point. Once I took that swan dive off the emotional cliff, it felt frightening and exhilarating in the same moment. Pedro wasted no time. He saw the opening and he used it when he learned how long it had been since I'd been in a relationship, (decades).

He didn't just flirt. He engineered my brain chemistry fast, hard, and on purpose. I thought he was trying to woo me. In reality, he was trying to condition me quickly and it worked. I started believing that maybe finally my luck had changed. Tactic two. Mirroring and idealization the perfect match. Let me take you back how this started with Pedro.

My mantra regarding relationships was always, well, I'm not gonna go looking for a man, but if one happens to drop into my lap, is nice to look at, has the means to support me better than I can support myself and someone I could introduce to my family, then I'd probably go for it. Otherwise, I'm fine just as is.

Well, be careful what you ask for because scammers are listening for those exact same gaps in our lives. The wishes, the fantasies, the hopes. I never told Pedro about my companion mantra in those exact terms, but I'm sure I must have revealed it in other ways, and he took notes. Here's how mirroring works.

Scammers study everything about you, your social media, your conversations, what you value. What you've been missing, and they become your perfect match. They reflect back everything you want to see. You love dogs. Suddenly they've always been a dog person. You're religious. They're deeply spiritual too. You value family.

Family is everything to them. You've been hurt before. They'll take extra care to protect you. After all, you're now their soulmate. Here's the neuroscience. When someone mirrors us, our brain releases oxytocin, that bonding hormone. W e feel understood, validated, seen. It creates a false sense of compatibility and connection. With Pedro, he seemed to check almost every box, but to be honest , I was going to have to overlook a couple of things. First, he portrayed himself as religious, which I am not. Then he quickly reassured me that my lack of faith was not an issue for him. I'm convinced though that he only portrayed himself as religious, so I would think he had morals and values.

I would only find out much later that he had nothing of the sort. The other thing was his accent was so strong. I had a difficult time sometimes understanding some of what he was saying. Even though he told me he'd lived in the US for 20 years, I questioned why his English wasn't better. He had an answer ready for that too.

He reminded me that he worked out of the country regularly and that's why it wasn't better. I told myself it would just take time and we would work that out. And looking back, that should have been my first red flag. Real people have flaws, differences and friction. Perfect matches don't exist. They are manufactured.

Tactic three. Future faking building castles in the sky. Here's where the fantasy really takes hold. While the love bombs kept my brain chemistry firing, Pedro was busy building an entire imaginary life for us, and I was buying every brick of it. Here's how future faking works. Scammers don't just tell you they love you.

They paint vivid pictures of your life together, marriage, retirement, travel, business ventures, the house you'll build, the life you'll build. They make it so real, you can almost touch it. And here's the trap. Once you see that future, once you've emotionally moved into that fantasy, you'll do about anything to protect it.

Pedro knew I loved to travel, so we'd spend time talking about where we'd go once he got back from his job, I remember him asking me if I'd ever been to Zanzibar or Cyprus. I told him about wanting to see Machu Picchu and Ankor Wat. Suddenly, these just weren't my dreams anymore. They were our plans. He started calling me his wife, not girlfriend, wife, as if we'd already crossed that threshold as if it were already real.

He told me he'd work for five more years after he got back, then retire. Then we'd start a business together. He'd already mapped down our entire future, and here's where that gets insidious. He tied those dreams. Directly to the investment money that I had sent earlier. He'd say things like, once these investments pay off, we'll be able to buy that new house together.

We'll use the extra money to travel all those places we talked about. The psychology here is that future faking works because humans are wired to plan ahead. When we envision a future with someone, our brain starts treating it like it's already happening. You're not just emotionally invested, you're living that future in your mind, and once you're living there, any threat to that future feels like a threat to your actual life.

That's why when doubt creeps in, it's so hard to just walk away. You're not leaving a person. You're abandoning the entire life you've built in your head, the house, the trips, the business, the retirement. All of it evaporates. So instead of facing that loss, you double down. You send more money, you ignore more red flags, because as long as you keep going, that future is still possible.

Future faking isn't just manipulation, it's architectural manipulation. They're building a structure in your mind and then making you the primary investor and keeping it standing. Scammers don't just build a future with you. They build a future for you and then they trap you inside it. Tactic four, trust through actions.

Here's a sneaky little brain hack I discovered while researching. It's called the Ben Franklin effect. It's based on when doing someone else a favor. You'd think that that makes them like you more, right? Actually, it's the opposite. When you do a favor for someone, it makes you like them more. Here's how that played out in my story last season, I told you Pedro asked me to handle his bank wire transfers, and at that time I thought, he trusts me with something important. That means he must be a good person. Why else would he put himself in this vulnerable position? But that's exactly how this trick works. Your own actions convince you the scammer is safe and trustworthy.

Every time I helped him, my brain rewrote the narrative. I must trust him. Otherwise I wouldn't do this. It's cognitive dissonance working against you by asking me to handle those transfers, he wasn't simply getting help. He was creating an illusion of partnership, trust, and mutual dependence. He was making me complicit.

He was making me invested. The psychology. When we do someone favors, our brain needs to justify why we would do that. The easiest explanation is, I must care about this person and they must be worth it. It shows the person is comfortable being indebted to you, displaying vulnerability, and that taps straight into the bond forming parts of our brain.

And it worked. It made me feel trusted and loved, and I turned those same feelings back on him. Tactic five, the withdrawal game. This is where they really hook you. It's called intermittent reinforcement, and here's what that looks like. Sometimes there were longer periods where I wouldn't hear from Pedro. A pullback when he had temporarily withdrawn attention.

My brain felt the loss, like a withdrawal from a drug. Then when I thought he'd have time to text me and nothing came, I worried, is he pulling away? Did I do something wrong? Is he safe? Is he losing interest? That craving is exactly what they want. Then just when you're spiraling, they return, they provide a plausible excuse, they reassure you.

They're still there for you. The relief you feel is intoxicating. The neuroscience. This manipulation tactic works on the same principle that makes slot machines so addictive. When rewards come unpredictably, your brain becomes hyper-focused on getting the next hit. Consistent attention would actually be less addictive than this push pull pattern.

And here's what's happening chemically. Those small strategic silences create a drop in oxytocin. And when that dips, our brain panics and goes searching for the fix, usually from the very person causing the drop as like a mini version of the Stockholm Syndrome, where hostages develop feelings for their captors.  In romance scams we're brainjacked in a similar way, we develop affection and trust, not because they've earned it. Because they've manipulated our emotional wiring.  Scammers know this brain trick. Creating silence makes you crave them more. Your brain thinks you're about to lose something precious, and that fear drives you to hold on even tighter.

You start chasing the highs and fearing the lows and the scammer controls both. Tactic six two invested to quit by month 3, 4, 5. With Pedro, I was in deep. Here's where another psychological trap kicks in. It's called the sunk cost fallacy. This means the longer you stay in something, a relationship, a job, a bad investment, the harder it becomes to walk away even when leaving would clearly be your better option.

You think I've put so much time, money, so much energy, so much emotion, I just can't throw all of that away now.  Here's how that played out for me. I was in this relationship for about nine months before the federal agent snapped me out of my trance. And honestly, I don't know, maybe I'd still be in this mess today if he hadn't intervened.

By that point. I'd invested everything, my emotions, my time, my finances, my hope for the future. Walking away would mean admitting the unthinkable.  That he never loved me, that I was only used as an ATM. That my money was gone, and I have to explain all of this to the people I loved. No one wants to face that, but prior to coming out of the trance, your brain screams, don't give up now.  You've come this far is going to pay off just one more item to be checked off the list, just one more month. He's almost home. Your entire investment becomes the reason to stay rather than the reason to cut your losses and leave. I was so desperate at that point that I was even considering unknowingly of becoming a money mule for these crooks because they would give me a cut for helping them with another opportunity they offered me.

That's how warped my thinking had become, and this is how the Sunk Cost Fallacy works. You're not making decisions based on what's best going forward. You're making decisions to justify what you've already lost. Tactic Seven. Cutting off your safety net. And here's a critical piece that keeps victims trapped.

Isolation through secrecy. Why does secrecy matter to scammers? If you keep the relationship secret, no one can warn you that you're being manipulated. No one can give you that reality check you need, you're operating in a bubble where the only voice you hear is the scammers. My experience with this, well, I wasn't actually keeping Pedro so much a secret as I was actively lying to the people who loved me and who have tried to keep me safe.

I lied to my sister, I lied to my sons. I kept questions about this relationship to a minimum with my friends. When they'd ask how things were going, I deflect or minimize, and that's exactly why the scammers encourage secrecy. They might say things like. Let's keep this just between you and me for now, or I'm afraid your family wouldn't understand what we have, or people will judge us because we haven't met in person yet, or don't tell anyone I asked for help,that's embarrassing. The psychology is that this reinforces the emotional trap. The less input you had from the outside world, the more you depend on your scammer for reassurance, validation, and now your warped sense of reality. You become an island. And on that island, the scammer is the only other person, which means they control the entire narrative of what's true and what's not.

This isn't a personal quirk. It's a critical part of their strategy. Isolation increases dependence, and dependence makes you controllable. Isolation isn't an accident, it's architecture, but here's the terrifying part. These tactics, they don't work in isolation. They work together in sequence, like a combination lock.

Here's that manipulation chain.  The love bombing, first it floods your brain with the feel good chemicals and lowers your defenses. Then mirroring comes in and makes you believe you found your soulmate, somebody who truly gets you. Then we've got the Ben Franklin effect makes you trust them through your own actions.

Intermittent reinforcement creates an addictive cycle of craving and relief. Sunk cost fallacy makes it nearly impossible to walk away once you're invested and isolation removes any outside perspective that might wake you up. By the time they ask for money, you are in so deep that the psychological trap feels impossible to say no.

Your brain has been completely rewired to trust, defend and protect the very person that's out to destroy you. Let me zoom out for a second because this isn't just about me and Pedro. This isn't about personal weakness. This is a universal playbook. The setups will vary. The oil rig worker stuck overseas, the deployed soldier in a war zone, doctor on a humanitarian mission, business owner stranded abroad, contractor on a remote project.

Different characters, different cover stories. The manipulation tactics are exactly the same because every human brain, regardless of culture, age, education, or background, responds to the same emotional triggers. These tactics work in Utah, they work in Japan, they work in South America, they work in Norway.

The psychology is universal, and that's what makes this crime so devastatingly effective worldwide. The accents change. The scripts change. The lies change. The psychology never does. So now you know the playbook, how they mirror you to become your perfect match. How they use your own helpful actions to make you trust them.

How they create these addictive push-pull patterns. How they trap you with your own investments and how they isolate you from anyone who might help. These aren't random tactics. It's a system carefully designed, globally deployed, and frighteningly effective. But here's the good news, the spell only works if you don't see it. Now you can see it.  Now, you know what to look for. And as we all know, recognition is power. Next time on the romance scam rebellion, we're going even deeper. I'm sitting down with psychologist, Jennifer French. Who survived 11 years in a cult. We're exploring the parallels between cult manipulation and romance scams because here's what I've discovered.

Coercive control by any other name is still coercive control. Whether it's by a cult leader, or a romance scammer the tactics are disturbingly similar, and understanding how coercive control works is the key to breaking free. You won't wanna miss it. Until then, stay aware. Stay rebellious and remember you are not alone.