Catfishing and Romance Fraud: What you need to know now

Someone tells you they love you, mirrors your values, and makes you feel seen in a way you haven’t felt in years. Then they vanish, come back with an excuse, and your body floods with relief. That cycle is not romance. It’s a strategy, and it’s driving a surge in romance fraud, catfishing, and online dating scams that leave victims with financial loss and trauma that looks a lot like PTSD.

In this episode we sit down with Anna Rowe, founder of catchthecatfish.com and part of lovesaid.org, to map the real mechanics behind these crimes against women: mirroring, love bombing, isolation, and trauma bonding. Anna shares how a perpetrator can maintain overlapping relationships, how shame keeps people silent, and why the most damaging moment is often what happens after the fraud is exposed when victims meet disbelief from friends, banks, or even police.

We also get practical about what’s changing right now: deepfakes, face swap video, and voice cloning that can make a scammer look and sound “verified” on calls and voice notes. We unpack celebrity romance fraud, the “pig butchering” romance-plus-crypto investment scam, and the first responder toolkit Anna built to help law enforcement respond without blaming the victim and to safeguard people from repeat targeting, spyware, and data resale.

If you’ve ever dated online, have a loved one who has, or work in victim services, this conversation will change how you spot coercive control in a digital relationship. 

Transcript

Romance Fraud As Abuse

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the podcast on crimes against women. I'm Maria McMullen. Romance fraud is a sophisticated form of psychological abuse disguised as love, aimed at manipulating victims through love bombing, isolation, and trauma bonding. Beyond stealing money, perpetrators often exploit artificial intelligence, break down victims' trust and self-esteem, leading to lasting trauma, shame, and PTSD-like symptoms. The goal of this specific brand of abuse is first power and control. The actual stealing of money or financial assets acts as a secondary victimization through manipulation. Our guest today, Anna Rowe, a subject matter expert on catfishing and romance fraud, is the founder and content creator for catchthefish.com and lovesaid.com.

unknown 0:50

Ms.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

Rowe was also once a victim of catfishing and now works as an advocate to elevate awareness, education, legislative reform, and advocacy assistance to other victims who are currently or potentially involved in catfishing andor romance fraud scams. Anna, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Hi, Maria, and thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.

SPEAKER_01 1:14

It's great to be with you across the pond. We are really excited to talk about your work in the field of catfishing and romance fraud. And we have a lot to suss out on this topic. In the intro to our show, we alluded to your personal story about being catfished yourself.

Anna’s Catfishing Experience

SPEAKER_01 1:35

Can you tell us what happened to you?

SPEAKER_00 1:38

Yeah, mine's a little bit different in respect that he was a real person who was using a fake identity across social media, fake emails, fake Skype accounts, and a dedicated phone number, all for his fake identity. He was using any dating site really, but it was Tinder that I happened to meet him on. He had been on others, that he was using them literally for a hunting ground to find victims. I was groomed for three months online. And then after about four weeks of being on the platform, we'd exchange numbers and come off of the platform and we talked on the phone and texted for a further two months. And then we met in person. So he was grooming, starting the manipulation process, and then meeting us in person. And there was a very different intent to his behaviour. He was doing this for a sexual motive. And then his behaviour changed over time. So when he was doing this at the beginning of him doing this, we've got victims where there were two aggressive rapes and a sexual assault. And then over time, his needs changed. And I think he'd realised that he got as much of a kick out of the power and control that he had over us through the deception and also the adoration that he got. Because if you can imagine being in multiple relationships at once, where you're going through that incredible first flush of love in that honeymoon period, as it were. He was being adored from many sides, which was something he obviously needed for his personality type, which a therapist had said to me, he's definitely a narcissist with psychopathic traits. And I don't throw that around lightly because that word can get thrown around narcissists particularly, but he absolutely is one. But they come from a place of insecurity. So doing what he did was validating what he needed all the time. But in the end, he learned that with what he was doing, adoration and the relationship side where he had control over us was very short-lived because once he met the person and the rape occurred, that was it for him with the relationship. He never saw them again. By the time he got to me, he'd slowed things down. So it was felt much more like a normal relationship. Everything had been really slowed down. But he got 14 months with me. Wow. Rather than it being a grooming process online where he got all that love and attention building up. And then after the first meeting, that was it, gone. So his needs definitely changed, and that's how he adapted his behavior over time.

SPEAKER_01 4:42

I want to back up a little bit and make sure that I understand what happened here. So when you say us, were there was he grooming multiple people at the same time as he was grooming you?

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah. So I know of 17 women with just the same man. When I went public with my story, lots of people started coming forward because they recognized the name that was being used. And when I'd worked out the timeline around some of those victims, there were five of us over the time that I was with him. So I had been the longest. 14 months was the longest out of all the victims. But over that time, I had five people overlapping with me.

SPEAKER_01 5:27

And during that 14 months, did you believe that you were in an exclusive relationship with this person?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

100%. When people first said to me about going on Tinder, it was the last platform that I'd used. So I'd been on online dating prior to that. And I'd had an amazing relationship with someone for two and a half years. There'd been a year that had passed in between before I thought, okay, it's time to get out there and try again. I had used all of the dating platforms for a month each because I'd kind of tested them all out to see what they were like. And what I'd learned very quickly was that if you were putting in the same age range, distance, that kind of thing, it was the same set of faces on every single dating app.

SPEAKER_01 6:15

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

Didn't matter whether it was a paid one that was presumably very great, or you moved right down the scale to the free ones. It was the same set of faces on all of them. So the second time I came back, I initially went to the app that I'd been on when I met the last guy, the only guy that I'm still ever friends with. But also on that app met some amazing people that I'm still friends with today. There was never a romantic connection, but I've still got friends. So for me, it was a really great way to meet people. But I didn't meet anyone this time on there. And Tinder had just come out at that point. So some friends had said to me, why don't you try that? And I was like, I'm not using that. It's a hookup app because that's really nothing that I wanted to do with. And they were going, no, no, no, it's not like that now. It might have been when it started, but people generally put on their profiles what it is that they want, whether they just want to meet for friends, whether they want hookups, or whether they're looking for something long term. And friends had got friends that had met and married. So I was like, oh, okay, if they're putting that on their profiles, I'll give it a go. So I went on there. And sure enough, as I was swiping through, there were very obvious ones where you had a faceless picture of a guy holding a rose saying, Don't judge me, I'm married, but I just want a bit of fun. Or there were people saying, Yeah, looking for a hookup, da-da-da-da-da. And then I came across this profile that said, looking for a long-term serious relationship, loyal, honest, humble, read through, said he worked in legal in aviation, not a gym rat, into yoga, that kind of thing. And I was like, oh, this sounds interesting. And then kept reading. And at the bottom it said, dislikes, poor communication, and mind games. And it was that that got me. And I thought, that sounds to me like he's been hurt before. He won't do it to me. Because there's nothing I hate more than people playing mind games. I just can't be doing with it. So that was the hook on the profile for me. So I swiped on it. And the next morning it came through. You've got a match, you've got a message. And he'd messaged first and said, Hi Anna, this is Anthony. Let me start. Where are you based? And that's how the conversation started. So that was how we met. And like I say, we chatted on there three to four weeks before we exchanged phone numbers. And then we chatted a lot over the phone. But right from the start, and hindsight's a fantastic thing, isn't it? When I look back now, and now that I have the education and understanding about how those kinds of relationships work, because it's very much a behavioural personality, and they follow a very, very set path of manipulation. So when I look back now, I clearly can see that whole period of grooming going on. What they do, which is so clever, is to open up about themselves first. Over texts or over the phone, he was telling me about what had happened in his past. What that does is give you permission to open up about yourself. You feel that they've trusted you with something, it's okay for you to trust back.

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, exactly. Making yourself vulnerable and being compassionate and empathetic about their vulnerabilities. Yeah, bravo, right, Anthony. Good job. So this is an example of catfishing, right? In romance fraud. Yeah. Can you give us a definition of those two terms?

Catfishing Vs Romance Fraud

SPEAKER_00 9:53

Yeah, so catfishing in its rudimentary form, when it was very first coined, as it were, is from the American TV series Catfish. And the host, Nev Shulman, went through his own experience and he had met someone online where he believed he was talking to a young woman, particular photograph. And it turned out a lot of months down the line that it was actually a much older married woman that he'd been talking to all this time. He eventually met up with her, and it was her husband that coined the term catfish in the original documentary. It's basically using a fake identity for the purpose of creating a romantic connection. And the thing that we now know as catfish, that particular T B series evolved is that the motive behind that can be very different. The difference with mine was that he was using a fake identity and coming offline. So it wasn't so much that his photo was fake, it was that his whole identity and character had been created for a purpose. I think the least nefarious purpose is when somebody suffers with really low self-esteem and they don't believe that as themselves they will be able to connect with people that they really want to connect with. So doing that, no relationship, whether it's platonic or romantic, is ever going to go well if you start with a lie. But for them, it's the only way they believe that they can connect. So that's one side of catfishing. And then you get people that do it for revenge, for a joke. You get people that do it so that they can bully others. We had a young guy here that actually ended up taking his life because he'd met two girls online and they had got into his head so much that they told him that he was that useless that he should end his life. And he did, because that's where they'd bought him to when he started realizing what was going on, which is just awful, isn't it? Yeah. You have some people that do that for the purpose of extorting intimate images. Sometimes that can be a next partner. They call it revenge porn or intimate image abuse, is the newer term that they use for that now. And then you start moving into things where money is involved, whether it's sex tortion on its own, which is normally much more short-lived, and it's our younger generations that tend to get caught up with that. But it's normally fairly short-lived. It's normally 24, 48 hours, but it's still using that human connection for a reason. And then we move into what is much more commonly known as online romance fraud, which is where we've got overseas criminals that are harvesting pictures off of lots of different people's social media, normally specific professions that are used because we've got military professions, offshore worker professions that are right up there with their favorites. So they will harvest those off of real people's social media and then create a character behind it for the purpose of defrauding a victim.

SPEAKER_01 13:23

What is the objective of defrauding someone in that way? Is it to steal money?

SPEAKER_00 13:29

Absolutely. All of it is about stealing money. Whether someone breaks into your car, steals your handbag or your purse, takes money from you or steals your credit cards, whatever, it's still theft. This is just theft committed in a different way. It's theft that's committed through a deception of creating that romantic connection because ultimately it's a very long fraud, but they get high value from the fraud. So it can go on for years and years and years.

Deepfakes And Voice Cloning

SPEAKER_00 14:06

More so now with the technology that's available, because they really can legitimise that the person will believe, just like we are now, that they are sitting in front of the person whose photographs they've been sent. The AI technology that is out there now, we call it deep fake as a whole, but it's actually shallow fake or face swap technology, where one photograph can be used to the AI maps it over the face of the scammer, basically. So the victim will literally sit there and it looks like they are talking to the person in the photograph. And voice cloning along with that used to be 30 seconds of a voice they needed. Now they need three. And they have cloned that person's voice. So if they've managed to get hold of videos from the real person, they can literally pull the audio from those videos, clone the voice, and then either do it live or they can send it in voice notes on WhatsApp, or they can literally manipulate other videos to say what they want the video to say using lip syncing software. It's frightening.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Do any of these predators use both techniques at the same time? So catfishing and romance fraud, are they kind of hand in hand sometimes?

SPEAKER_00 15:20

With the online criminals, 99% of it is done that way. They are hiding behind stolen photographs. The character that they create is crafted purely and uniquely for that particular victim. So while they are grooming that victim, that's part of the grooming process, is that they draw the information out of you, they find your vulnerabilities, they then are discovering what you like, what you don't like, what your morals, what your ethics are, and they literally create a character that mirrors back at you yourself. It's called mirroring in psychology. So what you're seeing in that other person is you, someone that is like you. Finally, it's someone that really gets you because they're mirroring back you. And it's for it's how they create what we would call a soulmate connection. We all think that at least once in our life we're supposed to come across someone that is our perfect match. And by grooming you and drawing all that information out and then literally mirroring it back at you, it feels familiar because it's you. It feels safe because it's you. And it's someone that really, really gets you. So that whole process creates a character that's crafted perfectly for that victim.

Mirroring Love Bombing Trauma Bonding

SPEAKER_00 16:45

The next bit of psychology that kicks in is love bombing. So love bombing is a fast, intense version of what every healthy relationship goes through, which is that honeymoon period. But you don't realize it's different at the time because it just feels amazing. So every healthy relationship goes through this, and it's because as humans we are made to survive. The whole thing about any race, any animal group is survival and reproduction to do so. As animals, we are built to replicate that so that we don't go extinct. So, what happens in our bodies when these connections get made, our bodies are literally filled with hormones and chemicals. So after they've got the door open, and the majority of victims you will find were in a vulnerable state to start with, not vulnerability as everyone might think, and that's why people think it might not happen to them. There are so many things that make us vulnerable at different times in our lives, and we don't always recognise it, but that is an open door to abusers and criminals to commit fraud. Once they've got the door open, they're replicating human nature, you're reaching for a connection, and the intense nature of love bombing is that three times the amount of these hormones and chemicals are pumped through your body than in a normal healthy relationship. If you equate it to, I always I love coffee. So if you think about the same amount of caffeine that is in a latte, that imagine that that's the amount of dopamine that is released, that feel-good hormone, when you meet someone and you're starting to go through it's exciting, there's chemistry there, the dopamine is released in your body. Think about it being the same amount as caffeine in a latte. The intense nature of love bombing means that you've got three times that amount of dopamine being released into your body. It's like having the biggest hit of a high that there could be. So they've crafted the character, they're mirroring you, it feels like your soulmate, and then the love bombing starts. All of your body is flooded with these feel-good chemicals and hormones. At that point, they will then move into something called trauma bonding. So, with trauma bonding, and this happens in all of these relationships, they will suddenly disappear. They might wait for a time where you don't answer a question or comply with a request in quite the way that they've wanted, or it might just be that they will vanish. But what that does as a human, when you've suddenly, when you've been experiencing this extreme high, and then they're gone, you go into panic mode and fear mode. What have I done wrong? Is the normal feeling of a victim. Cortisol levels then spike. It's the fear, adrenaline starts pumping. And when that happens, your serotonin drops, and that means that those feelings of low self-esteem and self-worth resurface. They will always come back because this is part of the plan, whether it's an abuser or a criminal, exactly the same psychological manipulation is built into their scripts. So they will come back, and what that does is bond you to them because they're the ones that have stopped that feeling of fear. They come back making excuses of I'm so sorry, da da da, I can't believe this happened. The dopamine hit is back, and they've saved you from that awful feeling that you've experienced when they've not been there. And what that does is bond you through that trauma to the abuser or the criminal. They become the person that saved you to your body, they're the person that made you feel relief, and they become the only person that can do that. It's really clever. The relationship will continue in that way. But rather than it going back to being amazing as it was just to start with, but that's all you'll remember in your mind because the hit was so high from that dopamine, all you can remember was how good it felt. So when things don't go back to that, it's what you hold on to. I'll keep holding on to it because it will go back to how it was. But they keep you on this emotional roller coaster, they will make you feel amazing, then something will happen and they make you feel terrible. And what that does is keep the cortisol spikes high in your body. And when you've got a lot of cortisol spikes, your logical and rational thinking is compromised, and they're Doing it on purpose to keep you in a psychological hot state so that when the demand comes for whatever their intent is, you will comply because you need to feel good again. You need to have that pain released from you. So with online romance fraud criminals or in-person romance fraud criminals, because there's plenty of them that do this in person as well without the catfishing element, when they ask for money, which is normally comes attached with something terrible's happened. Can you help me out? You've got that cortisol spike again. You've got the fear, if I don't do this, if I don't help them, they're not going to love me anymore, or they're going to be in really trouble. I feel responsible for them. I don't want anything bad to happen. And that's when the money gets sent. So they've literally kept you in this hot state so that by the time they ask for money, you're completely compliant to what they want.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

So a couple of thoughts. This sounds like a very sophisticated form of manipulation. Do these abusers like understand what they're doing? Absolutely. Okay. And then also, this is the ultimate definition of abuse. This is about power and control, having power and control over someone in order to get them to bend to your will or isolate them, all the things that you can think of. And it's just a great example of a gender-based crime because most of the victims are women, correct?

SPEAKER_00 23:29

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm really glad that you brought that up because I don't know if you recognized patterns of behavior when you were saying that, and it actually parallels exactly the same behaviors as in domestic abuse. Yeah. Domestic violence relationships.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

That is what was running in my head was this sounds like domestic violence. This is intimate partner violence, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 23:52

It is.

SPEAKER_01 23:53

Now, a couple of things I want to relate to that, I want to get your thoughts on. Because at the conference on crimes against women, there was a blog article that identified, you know, how all of this relates to women specifically with a few concepts that we'd like you to weigh in on. Let's talk about gullibility, chemistry of vulnerability, psychological seduction, and sophisticated crime syndicates, as well as enablers and facilitators. Can you give us some insight on those topics?

SPEAKER_00 24:23

Yeah.

The Romance Abuse Spectrum

SPEAKER_00 24:24

So I want to take you back to the beginning for the sophisticated manipulation there. And what we've just had that tiny little bit of it it's like a light bulb going off that what I've been explaining to you is the same as domestic abuse. And what I'm literally just launching here is to create a term that brings understanding as an umbrella term, romance abuse, for this not just psychological manipulation, but what that triggers in our bodies on a chemical level as an umbrella term that is covering a whole host of abuses and crimes. That spectrum starts with domestic violence, this same psychological manipulation that triggers all of this that goes on in our bodies, along with conditioning that we have in society as human beings, that we're conditioned to trust, all the cognitive biases that are attached and woven through all of this as well. So that process, romance abuse, is the mechanism of harm that covers domestic abuse, in-person exploitation, like mine was, in-person romance fraud, like Cecilia and the girls from The Tinder Swindler. And then also reproductive fraud, again, affecting women, where women are deceived into having that relationship as a way of control over them, and the reproduction comes from that. And then we can move over into the financial elements where we've got sexual exploitation through romance fraud rather than the standalone crime that is, moving into what we mainly know as online romance fraud, but then also little talked about is the fact that visa fraud and marriage fraud is also part of the romance fraud spectrum. So those online criminals, either as a what's called a follow-up scam, when that fake relationship finally comes to light, they will often come back as themselves because at that point in time the victim is at their most vulnerable. You should imagine the most intense relationship they have ever experienced has suddenly stopped. This person that has been in their life for goodness knows how long. I've got some that are between like seven and ten years that have gone on all of that time, has suddenly ended. It leaves this massive hole in your life and this realization that your trust has been absolutely destroyed, along with blaming yourself for it ever happening. And the criminal will come back with their own face and they know how vulnerable the victim is, and they will say something like, I'd never done this before. And I realized while I was with you that I actually had feelings for you. I know this is a big ask, but if we could keep talking, I don't think I want to do this anymore. It's awful. I hate the way that I've hurt you. Can we start again being honest with each other? And the victim is in such a vulnerable position at that point. And they want to be that person because we're very often fixers.

SPEAKER_01 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

That's I can help them because they don't realize that this is huge organized crime. I can help them to stop doing this. And if I can do that, they're not going to hurt anyone else again. So they're pulling on every human nature to try and keep that victim connected. But what that either leads to is them then using that victim in a different way. Whether it's saying, My mum's been taken into hospital, I need to feed my brothers and sisters, can you help out with a birthday gift or something? Or it will be I really want to meet you. Can you help me get a visa for your country? Or if there happens to be a romantic connection because uh the victim is attracted, that can lead to marriage fraud. And I've got cases where people have started the relationship online, they've ended up getting that visa, they've come over, they've ended up getting married and had children, and then they abandoned the victim. But they managed to stay in the country because they used that child.

SPEAKER_01 29:13

Well, that's really taking things very far, right?

SPEAKER_00 29:17

It is, it really is. I don't know if you have the same over in America, but we have something here called predatory marriage, which again, when we have our elders that have perhaps ended up being widowed, and they might go online because loneliness is a huge vulnerability, as we know. They're always going to be craving a connection of some sort. Young families are busy, families don't often have the right amount of connection with their relatives. So, again, leaves an open door for these criminals, and they may come with their own faces and pretend that they are in love and they will do the whole manipulation around age. We don't have the same feelings about age differences here. You're an amazing person. But what they're doing is creating that connection on purpose because they know that person's not going to be around for much longer and they want to get in on the will. And I see this so much with friends and family coming to me where this is happening, and this person has now arrived in the country and they've moved in to their elderly parents' house and they've taken control of all the finances, or the elderly relative, and this is more dangerous, has flown out and things happen, and we do get reports coming back where people have ended up being killed.

SPEAKER_01 30:46

Yeah, I thought that maybe one of the outcomes, and that's extremely unfortunate. I don't know if we have the exact same term predatory marriage here in the United States, but there are similar uh examples of it for sure that happen in this country.

Celebrity Impersonation Scams

SPEAKER_01 31:03

Tell us a little bit about celebrity romance fraud.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

Yeah. So it's really clever, and people scoff at this. Why on earth would you believe a celebrity would be talking to you? But as always, the criminals are absolutely up on all the new things that are happening. And I don't know if you've seen on any of the public figures or celebrity accounts, but many of them to make money will have subscription services now. And you can pay a subscription and get to talk with that celebrity in a group chat, get regular updates and things like that on a more individual nature than if you're just following, you wouldn't get to speak to them. They utilize every single thing like this that happens. So, in the majority of cases, you'll have fans that follow big real celebrity accounts. And what these criminals are very good at doing is cloning those real accounts. And it's not necessarily that the victim will have gone and followed a fake account, but they come in the comment sections on the real ones. And we know that those big celebrity accounts are not manned properly or moderated or monitored. So they come into the comments and they will say to certain victims, I can see that you're always commenting on my posts. Thank you so much for being a loyal fan. We're offering special offers of a subscription service or a reduced meet and greet or a VIP meet and greet for people that we can see that have been loyal fans for a long time. Please come and talk in the messages here and we'll set you up. So they click on that profile that's commented. It looks like the real one. They're using exactly the same photographs. They go to the direct messages, and that's where the manipulation starts. Or it will be the manager. They'll set up a different profile and say, I'm the manager here, I monitor and moderate the pages. We can see that you're a loyal fan, and they'll go in that way and then send them to a private fan page where they will then start talking. Of course, if you're a big fan, you know that this kind of thing is happening, and someone's said that they'd like to offer you a special offer, blah, blah, blah. You want to believe it as well. And that's where those cognitive biases kick in. Bad things happen to other people. God, how lucky am I that I've been given this opportunity? Now, in the past, it wouldn't have been easy for them to do that. But with the AI that's about now, all they do is stick the picture over their face and they will sit there on a video call with that victim. Thanks so much for subscribing. It's really lovely to meet you. They will send a few personal messages with a cloned voice into the private messages. And then over time, the exact same manipulation starts to build that connection. So there will come a story. The victim might say something like, It's really amazing. I can't believe that you're talking to me. And they will come out and say, So many people think that being a celebrity is amazing, that we've got so many people around us, but actually it's really lonely. We never know who we can trust, who wants us just because they like us as a person, or do they just want us because we're famous? They start building the connection that way. It builds and builds and builds, and that's how that connection is made. And then they start exploiting in the same way.

SPEAKER_01 34:44

It's incredible how much people are taken advantage of and how many people are affected by these types of schemes.

Pig Butchering Investment Fraud

SPEAKER_01 34:54

There's another term I'd like to ask for you to define for us, and that is pig butchering. What is that and how does it relate to romance, fraud, or abuse?

SPEAKER_00 35:06

Yeah. Okay, so whereas traditional romance fraud by the overseas criminals very much originates from West Africa, it's a decades-old crime over there, and I mean decades old. It was started, you might remember hearing about Nigerian prints emails or letters. So that started out as pen pal letters, where they would try and make a connection like that. When emails came into conception, it suddenly opened the door to a lot more people. But at that point, they still had to get hold of the emails to start with. And it was actually the fact that Yahoo was one of the very first messaging services that those criminals are actually known as Yahoo boys, because that was the colloquial term that was given to them because they used Yahoo Messenger to communicate people that they were going to defraud. So that's how it started. Then we had the conception of dating platforms and social media, all completely unregulated. And then we had an open door where they could get at anyone. And that's when it exploded and evolved into what we see today. They will call it a dating format. We call it romance fraud. That's West Africa. Over in China, they have got a decades-old scam of investment fraud. That is when crypto came into being and they started doing trading with crypto, and they had people that wanted to make some extra money for themselves. We're traders, we can help you to trade in crypto, we can teach you how to do it. They created these incredibly sophisticated platforms that look like trading platforms. The victims then go in and put money in. They're then given the return on that money. They're actually allowed to withdraw the money that's made, not the initial investment, but the money that's made. And then they invest money back because it worked. Then they get more. And this goes on and on for months and months until they get to a point where they're so confident with doing that that they deposit the biggest amount of money. And at that point, the criminal will either say, When they ask to withdraw the money, you need to pay a fee to withdraw it, or they just go with the money and everything's locks out of the account and it's gone. What criminals are doing so much better than the good guys is collaborating. Now, whereas romance fraud was a huge moneymaker over in West Africa, investment fraud has been a huge moneymaker over in China, they have collaborated to create a hybrid, which is a mixture of connecting with romance fraud, but using the investment fraud format to steal the money. So rather than with the West African ones where they will normally attach to people through dating platforms or social media, these mainly started out as a missed call or a text from someone that you didn't know. We call them cold calls when it's from a number we don't know. This would be a cold text. Or a message appears on WhatsApp saying something, oh hi, it's such and such. Fancy coming over for a barbecue at the weekend, a new message back going, sorry, I don't know who you are. Oh, I can't believe this. I thought it was such and such his number. And that's how they initiate that connection. It will then move on after they've been chatting, the connection has started to build. Then they will say, I've been really fortunate that I started investing. Have you ever tried it or thought about it before? I've got someone that works on the inside that's been giving me some really, really good tips. If you want to try it, let me know. And then that's how they're drawn in to that side of the fraud. The term pig butchering is the criminal name for it. So it's a vile name. And what it does is it's absolutely vile, isn't it? But what it does is describe what happens with pigs, as they are taken as suckling pigs when they're babies. They are literally fed to make them fat and then they are slaughtered and then they are eaten. That is the process in that industry. And that's how they define victims. So they go through the hunting process to choose the suckling pig or the victim. They then feed them up with the grooming and the love bombing to make them really happy in the relationship. Then the butchering comes when they start to steal the money. And the eating part they call is when they disappear with everything.

SPEAKER_01 40:16

Yeah, it is a vile term, but the way that you just described it now, it really makes perfect sense why you would use a term of that nature to describe what is being done to defraud people and just exploit people. Uh that is it's completely disgusting in its in its own right.

First Responder Toolkit For Police

SPEAKER_01 40:36

Let's talk about your work in particular, because law enforcement and first responders are instrumental in prevention and intervention in crimes. And you and your team have developed a first responder toolkit. Can you describe that toolkit and what has been the law enforcement reception to it in London?

SPEAKER_00 40:59

Yeah. So it was the year that I'd gone to the police with my experience, basically. And because they'd refused to investigate with my case, I wanted somewhere to put everything that I'd learned. So that's how Catch the Catfish came into being. And I was getting lots and lots of messages, not only from people that had experiences like mine with someone in person, but that's when I got to know about these overseas criminals. I'd never heard of them before. But what had struck me in those very first interactions with people where it was clear there was a financial motive and that they had never met the person in person. It had remained online. But when they were sending me their messages from their criminals, they absolutely paralleled mine that I had been through with the individual. And it was then that I started realizing that whoever was doing that online was using exactly the same psychological manipulation as mine. So I am a bit of a learning nerd, and if I don't know something, I will always go and investigate it to death. So I found out very quickly that these criminals were called Yahoo! Boys, like I explained earlier. And I started hanging out in their training groups. So I was then in a really unique position supporting victims because I not only had my lived experience of knowing exactly how they had become compliant, but I was hiding out in the scammer groups where I could see where all the new tools and tricks were coming from. And it was then that I learned that the bigger groups had psychologists working with them who would have been very aware of the very well-documented behaviors of narcissists and psychopaths and how powerful that process that they put their victims through. And they had built it into the scripts that the online criminals were then using. Exactly the same with the Chinese ones that we've just talked about for that part of it. So I also then had more and more victims coming, where I was getting all of the evidence from them about how their abuser had legitimized their particular fraud. And I was putting all that out there to raise awareness. But what had struck me most was that every victim, when they had come to realise what was going on, you would have thought that that would have been the worst of it. And believe me, it's awful. But for them, the experience after the fraud was becoming even more traumatic than the fraud itself. Not only because of the stigma and the way that they were treated by other people in society who really didn't understand all of how all of that manipulation works, people that were there to protect them, like the police. Also, didn't understand. When they were going to banks to try and get help, why did you allow me to send all of that money when you're supposed to be protecting us from this kind of thing? They were met with, well, it's your fault. You consented to send it. You authorise those payments. And this was ongoing re-traumatisation of the victim through something that was already going to affect the rest of their lives. Because believe me, it takes a long while to come through that kind of trauma. And I'd got to the point where I knew that I had to try and put something in place to stop victims being traumatized as much as they were. That was one of the main things I wanted to do when I joined up with Cecilia with Love Said was to make sure training went in place. And I was then really privileged to work with some amazing dedicated police officers. But I was then starting to learn that in their training, fraud was barely looked at. Romance fraud had never been talked about. And so they didn't understand it themselves. And so they had a very tunnel-vision view of what romance fraud was about. They didn't understand about the manipulation. So when they went to engage with victims, it was like, what do you expect? You sent your money, and what do you expect us to do about it? And that was the kind of response they were giving. So we have here officers called protect officers who are supposed to help raise awareness and safeguard victims of fraud. And I was constantly getting asked, what can we do better? And at that point, I was like, yes, we've got people that want to listen. This is how we're going to get a foot in to make things better. So I created the toolkit, which helps officers to engage in the right way, to use the correct language that doesn't further blame the victim. So we've talked about just very briefly here, we've talked about the money is stolen. They don't give it away. It is stolen through deception. And it's really important that we acknowledge that because it puts the blame on the criminals and not the victims. They didn't fall for anything. They were targeted and exploited. So we don't use the language fall for. We say that they were groomed and they were targeted and exploited. And by making these little shifts in the language, we can take the blame away from the victim and put it where it belongs, with the criminals, or in my case, with the abuser. So that was my first thing to try and explain to them. Because if they go in there with that kind of attitude, the victim is much more likely to relax and start to open up about what's happened to them. The next thing that officer needs to do is let the victim talk without judgment. Let them open up about what happened. And from that, they can pull evidence to understand if this is an in-person romance fraud or is it just online? If it is online, has that victim been sending payments to accounts in the UK, or have they gone abroad, where they can then safeguard victims further or bring money mules in for questioning if they are in the UK.

Safeguarding After The Scam

SPEAKER_00 47:39

They can manage expectations of victims in a better way. Unfortunately, with the criminals that are online, they are in a different legal jurisdiction to us. The likelihood of them ever being brought to justice is virtually zero. It is, unfortunately, because however big the loss, the cost of investigating it in a different legal jurisdiction. Also, we just don't have those trusted connections and relationships with the authorities in the other countries. They're starting to be built now, which is great. I've seen these moves happen over the last five years. Interpol have got involved, Europol have got involved. We are starting to see collaborations happen, but it's slow. It's not fast enough. And it's great to see now more understanding. And if we engage in the right way, we then can explain things to victims where they start to accept rather than putting walls up and ignoring what's been said. And ultimately, that means that we can safeguard them for the future because future threat in romance fraud is really high. Once that victim has given their contact details to a criminal online, they will either reuse it themselves or they will sell that on to other criminals to use in different frauds. So it's really important that victims are safeguarded. Please make sure that your compromised contact details are changed so that you can have a fresh start. They download spyware onto victims' phones. They can do it remotely. They are looking at all your passwords. They are collecting all of this information for different forms of fraud as they go through it. There are so many frauds. And it's really important that a police officer knows all of this. Because if they don't understand the romance fraud process, how are they supposed to further protect victims when they go to engage with them? It's also about understanding that safeguarding needs to be put in place in the same fashion that it would be for domestic abuse, because it's the same outcome for these victims. They've been through the same abuse.

SPEAKER_01 49:56

Very similar patterns, very similar outcomes.

Resources And Closing

SPEAKER_01 50:00

Anna, what are your websites again for people who want to learn more?

SPEAKER_00 50:05

The victim facing one with all the different romance rules scenarios on there in detail, how they ask for money, all of that kind of thing, is www.catchthecatfish.com. And then the umbrella organization, so the fraud centre is loveseid.org. And on there is a whole other lot of education, but not just for victims, also for all stakeholders of romance fraud. So there's a section for victims, there is a section for law enforcement, there is a section for financial institutions, and there is a section for all other communities, social media, dating apps, charity. I have so many amazing charities that come to me for training because their volunteers are finding so many more victims of romance fraud coming in and they want to do better. And that's all I can ask for is that other people want to do better because ultimately that makes it better for victims.

SPEAKER_01 51:04

Absolutely. Anna, thank you so much for talking with me today.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

You're very, very welcome, and thanks for having me and helping to raise awareness further.

SPEAKER_01 51:13

Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, stay safe. The 21st Annual Conference on Crimes Against Women will be held May 18th through the 21st, 2026, in Dallas, Texas. Learn more at conferencecaw.org and be the first to know about all conference details, as well as the latest on the Institute for Coordinated Community Response, Annual Conference Summit, Beyond the Bounds, and the National Training Center on Crimes Against Women. When you follow us on social media at NationalC C AW.