How to stop someone you know falling for an online romance scam

It is not easy to convince a close friend or relative that they have fallen for the charms of an online love cheat, counsellors say. Victims often cannot see the danger signs or simply do not want to, and may remain in denial even after they have been duped out of cash.

This insight is worth bearing in mind in lovelorn Hong Kong, which witnessed a sharp increase in the number of online romance scams last year.

Cyber scammers cheated Hongkongers out of HK$451 million (US$57.5 million) in the first 10 months of 2018, according to Hong Kong police statistics – a 414 per cent jump from the HK$109 million snatched during the same period a year earlier.

The large majority of victims were looking for love, but were courting disaster. Some HK$417.1 million, representing about 92 per cent of the money lost, was netted by romance scammers. There were 520 such cases, up from 170 in 2017.

Jan Marshall is an ambassador for the Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network and author of the book Romance Scam Survivor: The Whole Sordid Story, based on her personal experience with a scammer. She says that getting people to realise they are dealing with a scammer is a challenging process.

“My experience working with scam victims and friends of scam victims, over a period of four years, highlights that it is very difficult to talk to someone about reality when they are caught in a scam,” she says. “There is no silver bullet.”

Victims become “hypnotised” as they are coached by their sham lover to disregard any cautionary advice given by well-meaning friends or relatives, she adds. “Scammers are extremely skilled at psychological manipulation. They lie without compunction and deliberately set out to part people from their money.”