{"id":471,"date":"2026-07-02T12:42:48","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T11:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.findhappy.com\/blog\/?p=471"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:43:07","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T12:43:07","slug":"how-to-spot-a-romance-scam-before-it-costs-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.findhappy.com\/blog\/how-to-spot-a-romance-scam-before-it-costs-you\/","title":{"rendered":"How to spot a romance scam before it costs you"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The one risk in online dating worth taking seriously. The good news is the warning signs are easy to learn, and once you know them, they’re hard to miss.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most people you’ll meet online are exactly who they say they are, and after the same thing you are. A small number aren’t, and they’ve turned lying to strangers into a full-time job. Romance scams are the one real hazard of dating online, and they’re common enough to take seriously. In one large survey, about half of online daters said they’d come across someone they thought was trying to scam them<\/a>. So this is worth five minutes of your time. The reassuring bit: scammers nearly all run the same playbook, and once you’ve seen it laid out, it’s hard to unsee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Forget the idea that only gullible people fall for it<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

This is the myth that does the damage, because it stops people watching for the signs. Romance scams are run by organised, practised operations, some of them large criminal outfits, and they are very good at their jobs. They look for kind, trusting, often lonely people, which is most of us at one time or another, and they play a long game, spending weeks or months building something that feels like a real relationship before money is ever mentioned. The sums involved are enormous. Australians<\/a> reported losing around $140 million to romance scams in 2025, according to the ACCC. In the United States<\/a> the FTC put the figure at more than $800 million in a single year, and in the UK<\/a> the City of London Police recorded over \u00a3100 million. If this ever happens to you, it doesn’t mean you were foolish. It means you were up against a professional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The warning signs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here’s the playbook. Any one of these can be perfectly innocent. Several of them together is a flashing red light.<\/p>\n\n\n\n