Romance Fraud criminals use fairly specific professions and scenarios in these frauds. You can learn more about them here on Catch The Catfish

Also, anything to do with crypto currency.

Scammers often pitch themselves as being widowed, divorced and/or a single parent. This gives way to a sad back story to gain empathy from the start.

Reused profiles on both social media and dating platforms can show inconsistencies in the user names (handle) and the name used. Sometimes male to female, sometimes two different male or female names. They also often use two first names on the profile, such as James John, Steven Albert.

Also look for the original name on facebook profile links. Hacked profiles, or those changed to scam with from sold accounts, often still have the name it was set up with as the profile link.

You may see lack of continuity with photos and where the character says they are from.

On Instagram, you may see photos in the tagged section which are not consistent with the ‘new’ owner.

On Instagram, check the ‘About Section’ under the 3 dots. It may show where the account is based (does not match the profile character) and also the amount of name changes.

On social media, scammer profiles will most often be following all of one gender. This is because they aim to make as many connections to defraud as possible with the scenario they have chosen to use. Real profiles will mostly have a mix of men and women and recognisable friends and family, also commenting on family pictures.

You may see signs of African following where it would not seem consistent with the ‘new’ character profile. When profiles are changed to use from their own profile or a bought or hacked one, followers are often left on the profile. Also, newly set up profiles are often pushed to promote in the same area as the user. This can mean the first followers are from the same country.

This can also be seen in likes on the pictures, as friends and followers (or the scammers real profile who may follow his fakes) will like to boost the image.

Look at the about section on Facebook, look to see which pages the account is following. You may see dating pages, widows groups, working women, truckers groups etc. These are some of the groups scammers will follow to search for victims. Also look for pages in West African countries. Re-used profiles may still be following these.

There is often an emphasis of using words like honest, loyal, God fearing, trustworthy. Kind, calm, good, caring, integrity. Some larger groups will use phrases like ‘Let Love Lead’ or add psalms to their bios.

Often English is not the criminals primary language so you may see bad grammar choices and use of ‘am’ rather than ‘I am or I’m’.

Photos are stolen to use in these frauds. You can try a reverse search to see if the images are being used elsewhere.

Another thing to look for is that lots of photos are often posted on the same day to boost the profile appearance when new or they have removed old photos to use it for scamming. Sometimes, if the hacked or bought account has some anonymous photos (like landscapes or pets or food), the scammer will leave those to try and give the impression that the profile is older and established. Check dates to see patterns.

On Facebook, time stamps can be altered when adding new photos but with an older date (this will show with a clock at the top of the post). Another way to check if images have been added in a fraudulent way, is that scammers will edit an older post, add the new photos and then remove the old ones. This will leave the original post date to intimate an established profile (without the clock). However, these can be spotted by checking the photo album, as these photos will show as being added on the same day (with the real date) in there.