Dating Scammers, what are they, how to spot them and what to do

Canadians reported $704 million lost to fraud in 2025, the highest figure on record, and more than $63 million of it was relationship and romance fraud. The number that matters more is the one underneath: Statistics Canada reckons only five to ten per cent of victims ever report at all. So the real total is several times larger, and most of the people it happened to have told nobody.

That last part is the whole business model. Not the fake photograph, not the story about the contract overseas. The shame afterwards, which keeps people quiet and keeps the same scripts working. So let us take that off the table first: if this happens to you it is not because you were foolish. These are organised operations, run full time by people who are good at it, and they target considerate, trusting people precisely because those are the people who help when somebody says they are in trouble.

What Is A Dating Scammer?

Somebody using the site to get at your money rather than to meet you. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre files it under relationship and romance fraud, and the shape almost never varies: build the attachment first, introduce the problem second, ask third. Everything before the ask is groundwork.

How to spot a dating scammer

The details do not survive contact
Forget imperfect English as a signal. This is a country where a great many people write in their second or third language and it tells you nothing. What does tell you something is detail that falls apart when you push on it. Somebody says thirty years in Mississauga but cannot name a road, a mall or a hockey team. Ask an ordinary follow-up question and the answer arrives late, or vague, or slightly off. Real lives survive follow-up questions. Scripts do not.

There are also stock phrases that recur because they come from the same crib sheets: "Hello Dear" as an opener, and oddly shaped lines like "I am George by name, I am 50 by age" or "I hope to be reading from you soon".

The speed is wrong
Declarations of love inside a fortnight. Talk of a future together before you have heard each other's voices. Wanting to speak every day almost immediately. It feels flattering, which is the point, and it is deliberate: the attachment has to be built before the ask, so it gets built fast.

The ask, in one of its forms
Never send money to another member, no matter how long you have been talking or how convincing the emergency. The usual versions are the plane ticket to finally come and visit, a medical bill, a customs charge on a package, a business deal that has stalled, or being stranded somewhere. A different version runs the other way and is worse: they want to deposit an inheritance or a large sum into your account for safekeeping, which turns your bank account into somebody else's laundry.

The newest version does not ask for anything at first. It mentions how well an investment has been going, usually crypto, and offers to walk you through it. The Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre flags this as pig butchering, and the CAFC's own warning list includes exactly that: someone offering to coach you on cryptocurrency. The platform looks convincing, the balance goes up, and you cannot get it out. If money and romance appear in the same conversation, that is the end of the conversation.

Profiles built to explain the absence
Working offshore, on a rig, on a contract in another country, serving abroad with the forces, doing aid work somewhere remote. It is a tidy answer to why they can never meet you and why the connection is always bad. Sparse profiles are worth a look too, not because quiet people are suspicious but because somebody running forty accounts does not fill them in. And run the photo through a reverse image search on Google Images. It takes a minute and it settles a lot of questions.

Trust your instincts

If something feels wrong it very probably is. You have spent decades reading people and that does not stop working because the conversation is on a screen. You need no proof and you owe nobody an explanation. Slow down or walk away.

Protect your privacy

Watch for the push to move off the site early, onto email, text, WhatsApp or Facebook. The CAFC lists that as a warning sign in its own right, and the reason is simple: off here there is no moderation, no report button and no record. Genuine members have no problem staying put for a while.

How do I report a suspected scammer?

Scroll to the bottom of the profile and click "Report profile":

Reports are confidential and the person is never told. Use "Ignore" afterwards and they can no longer see your profile at all. Do not wait until you are certain. We would far rather look into ten hunches that come to nothing than miss the one that mattered.

If money has already gone, move quickly. Call your bank first, because speed is what decides whether anything can be recalled. Then report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre on 1-888-495-8501, Monday to Friday, 10am to 4:45pm Eastern. Note those hours, because it is not a 24 hour line. You can also file any time at reportcyberandfraud.canada.ca, anonymously if you prefer, and witnesses can report as well as victims. Tell your local police too.

And tell somebody you trust. The isolation is part of how this works, and it is the part you can break the same day.

Read more about relationship and romance fraud on the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre website: antifraudcentre-centreantifraude.ca

Look who else just joined

Loading members...