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My Scammer Girlfriend: Baiting a Romance Fraudster
- brohee 2y agoA bit of a missed opportunity with the war in Ukraine. He could have expressed pro-Ukraine sentiment and the (most likely Russian) scammer could have echoed them back and possibly be caught in a FSB dragnet.
- InDubioProRubio 2y agoIts also important to get the maximum engagement from the scammer. Text produced is work and time. This is the only thing you can cost them, so its time to engage chatgpt and have them stuck in a telenovella.
- lnsru 2y agoModern lawyers use preproduced text blocks for their letters. I would like to believe, that scammers do the same. Probably they even have figured out what phrases are the most effective for good engagement.
- voidUpdate 2y agoTheir early emails are often boilerplate, but once you get them out of their opening book, they have to write their own emails. I've often seen in advance fee scams, after the first few emails, there's a sudden decrease in the quality of the text, that's how you know they're writing their own emails
- notpushkin 2y agoThe article might have been updated, but it addresses your point now. This particular scam used emails consisting of one persinalized paragraph + a few slightly randomized paragraphs straight from the playbook.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoIt was probably a Chinese slave in a Myanmar boiler room. Romance scammers and “pig butchering” scams are usually run by Asian gangs. Nasty folks. The “good” news, however, is that AI is likely to make a big impact, here, and reduce the need to kidnap poor folks.
- netsharc 2y agoHa, with AI scammer traps (e.g [1]), it'll be AI lying to other AI, trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing nothing other than speeding up the destruction of the planet. I suppose one can then declare the mission accomplished: zero scammers left on the planet. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV_SdCfZ-0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV_SdCfZ-0s
- Nextgrid 2y ago> trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing nothing other than speeding up the destruction of the planet. Also known as "advertising".
- pavel_lishin 2y ago> Ha, with AI scammer traps (e.g [1]), it'll be AI lying to other AI, trillions of CPU cycles wasted accomplishing nothing other than speeding up the destruction of the planet. Reminds me of a small part of Neal Stephenson's "Anathem". Or maybe a bit of Peter Watts' Rifters trilogy.
- martin_a 2y agoMan, not even slaves are needed for scams anymore. Sad to see job losses even there... /s
- znpy 2y ago[flagged]
- inexcf 2y agoI find it strange that you seem to think he called them nasty because they are Asian an not because of the slavery and scams.
- decremental 2y ago[dead]
- z3j4e 2y agoThanks for this great example of how much metadata can work against the person generating it. And I also want to thank the author for the wiki regarding the identification of the MUA by the Message-ID, that was a nice new detail I didn't know :)
- potato3732842 2y agoYeah, a pass with some exif scrubbing software would've gone a long way here. They probably just don't care though because not doing so doesn't really risk anything.
- compiler-guy 2y agoAnyone sophisticated enough to even look at the exif data is not a good mark.
- codedokode 2y agoI thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I was wrong? This is not good for privacy. Also, for fingerprinting you can obtain a GPU model via WebGL (helps in detecting a VM), and probably can scan for known browser extensions by trying to fetch extension-specific URLs. Some sites also scan ports on the localhost by trying to connect to them to find out which software is run.
- mmsc 2y ago>I thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I was wrong? This is not good for privacy. The IP address is the smtp server of course, not the individual user.
- leni536 2y agoI learned that most email services do attach the IP address of the MUA (that is, the user's computer) if you send through SMTP. I set up an SMTP relay for myself to hide that. The user's IP address is not attached if you use webmail.
- neuroticnews25 2y agoNow i think it doesn't but it did as recent as in 2014, in a Received header like the one in the article.
- badmintonbaseba 2y agoIt still does, just tested it.
- LeonM 2y ago> I thought gmail doesn't disclose sender's IP address? Or I was wrong? This is not good for privacy. This is not necessarily a Gmail thing, but just how SMTP works. It's not as bad as you'd think though. SMTP services log the IP address and/or hostname of the remote host, and the address used by the host to identity itself (known as the HELO address). This is the address of the remote SMTP service (known as the MTA), which isn't typically the IP address of the users computer where the email client runs on (known as the MUA). Under normal circumstances your email client (MUA) connects to your email service provider (MTA), which then sends the email to the MTA of the recipient. So the IP of your MTA (email hosting service), not your MUA (your computer) is exposed. For example: if you send an email to a Gmail inbox using MS365, the receiver (the Gmail user) would see only the IP-address from Microsoft's outbound SMTP services. So unless you run your own SMTP service at home, or attempt to directly connect with the receiving MTA using SMTP, your IP address won't be exposed.
- _tk_ 2y agoI've never quite understood this sort of anti-scammer content and what its appeal is to readers. There are a million YouTube videos and other articles out there that explain, analyze, as well as mock[1] and denigrate scammers - who are essentially modern day slaves [2]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWzz3NeDz3E [2]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-02/human-trafficking-vietnam-fuelling-cyber-slave-romance-scams/104542548 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-02/human-trafficking-vie...
- jdiez17 2y agoIt’s a form of “justice porn”. You’re right that these scammers are victims themselves. But seeing how they treat vulnerable groups (particularly less tech savvy, trusting, older people - which may well be your mom one day) is absolutely fucking vile. Also, some anti-scammer YouTubers are legitimately very skilled and entertaining to watch. Kitboga is the first that comes to mind. He has all these voices, characters, sound effects - and takes scammers on quite some adventures. Pretty funny.
- know-how 2y ago[dead]
- VPenkov 2y agoI can think of three things: serving as a guide, serving to raise awareness, and entertainment. On the "serving as a guide" part, some people are activists and subscribe to the idea that if they are wasting a scammer's time, this means the scammer has one victim fewer. On the raising awareness side, there are absolutely plenty of YouTube videos, but it's always good to educate people before they become targets. The psychological and financial impact of getting scammed can be devastating. Raised awareness could also prompt the authorities to crack down on scam centers. On the entertainment side - some people just get a kick out of it. Additionally, this particular article breaks down the various tactics used and teaches the reader to identify them.
- jjani 2y agoThis deserves some nuance. Much of the scam-baiting content - in fact, all of the ones I'd seen until this post - revolves around tech support scams, advance fee scams and the likes, which unlike these romance scams are generally not done by slaves.
- danielvf 2y agoOne warning, this scam, with it's fast timeline and request for funds to be sent to the girlfriend is a classic, but modern scams can be quite different than this. "pig butchering" scams can run for months of contact with no requests for money, and then instead of asking for money, the user "invests" into what appear initialy to be profitable investments alongside the scammer.
- guappa 2y agoI think at this point pig butchering is so famous that if you fall for it you'd fall for any scam.
- bell-cot 2y agoIf only that was true. In reality, outside of the more online-fraud-savvy demographics...
- Lanolderen 2y agoGetting scammed on Runescape should be part of the school curriculum.
- ConfusedDog 2y agoI was scammed out of about $4 when I was kid playing Ragnarök Online. Taught me zero trust. In hindsight, it's a cheap but effective learning experience... well, until I met my now ex-wife.
- rambambram 2y agoAt least know that I have trust in your humor and sense of smiling in the face of adversity.
- mesofile 2y agoMany years ago when advance-fee email scams [0] became common I was likewise amazed that anyone would fall for them. Then it was pointed out that the seemingly obvious warning signs were a feature and not a bug, they are there to filter out everyone with a minimum of common sense and ensure that the scammers, who are casting their nets wide, only get responses from a few people but those people who do respond are quite gullible. The pig butchering thing is just a different filter meant to trap a different kind of vulnerable person. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_scam
- namaria 2y agoThe opening email is hilarious "I am true woman! Scammers are bad!"
- chatmasta 2y agoFor me the most off-putting email was the one describing her favorite breakfast of an omelette, Caesar salad and coffee. Gross!
- throwme0827349 2y agoI don't know about that region, or whether they were trying to create a breakfast that would sound classy but credible to a Westerner. However, I can say from first hand experience that home cooked Russian breakfasts in Vladivostok were mind bending. As an American, when I eat breakfast but it's a small and simple affair. A cup of oatmeal and some coffee, maybe eggs if I feel ambitious. The Russians I stayed with made hela breakfast every morning. Like a huge potluck dinner made from recognizable ingredients in very unexpected combinations. While I'm sure they were spoiling me a little because I was a guest, it was always the biggest meal of the day. One memorable example was buttered noodles and meatballs, bread, butter, cheese, cucumber slices, coffee and tea with condensed sweetened milk, and even a little dark chocolate for desert. I'm probably forgetting more stuff. Also the kids (10 and 8) drank coffee! I think they were mostly in it for the sweetened condensed milk though. That was an awesome breakfast for sure.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y agoIt's probably more that most Americans typically have very little for breakfast. Around here, cornbread and sausage gravy, coffee (milk or tea for my teenager) is a not-uncommon Saturday breakfast. I think I made a variety of muffins last weekend. Or home-made corned beef hash with scrambled eggs, etc. You get the idea. OTOH, during the week it's probably something simple like a sausage patty on a toasted English muffin, maybe with a scrambled egg (my version of a McMuffin). Or cereal if I'm not feeling it. I have had Caesar and other salads for breakfast. Salads are really delicious when you don't want a heavy meal and they're quick and easy to make.
- bsenftner 2y agoThis website tries to deliver a trojan payload.
- donpott 2y agoWhich one? HN? TFA? Any of the scammy subdomains mentioned therein?
- bsenftner 2y agoThe site linked by the article.
- tky 2y agoIt does not. If you believe otherwise, elaborate on your claim.
- bsenftner 2y agoMy antivirus blocked loading the site, identifying a trojan payload, using Russian text. That's as far as I went.
- wheybags 2y agoThere's a message encouraging Russian visitors to not support the war in Ukraine. If your antivirus is flagging any Cyrillic text, that's a bit overzealous IMO.
- billy99k 2y agoThey are so greedy, it didn't take me much effort to run a successful phishing campaign against multiple scammers a few years ago, when I got bored.
- t_k_427 2y ago[dead]
- scottndecker 2y ago"Although I was invested in this project, I definitely wasn't "flirty sex chat with some random scammer" levels of invested. The thought also dawned on me that part of their playbook could even involve "Aidana" calling for phone sex. Either would be crossing lines that I didn't want to cross, meaning that I'd stumbled upon an unexpected 4th rule of engagement: don't talk dirty with scammers." Rules of life to live by.
- scyclow 2y agoRomance scams are pretty wild. A few years ago someone attempted to catfish me on hinge by impersonating WWE wrestler Mandy Rose. I think the irony or impersonating a professional wrestler (whose job is to act within an artificially constructed kayfabe universe) was lost on them. I ended up turning the exchange into an interactive website: https://0ms.co/sexydating https://0ms.co/sexydating
- kgeist 2y agoYoshkar-Ola, Russia is mentioned there. I'm from Yoshkar-Ola. This kind of scam business exists here at least since the early 2000s. We were once called the capital of such scam business in Russia. I didn't know it's still a thing. One of my acquaintances worked there in around 2005-2007. It was mostly students renting an appartment, rows of PCs. He left right before they were raided by police. Some British individual reported to our authorities and law enforcement acted on it. Never heard about them ever since, before this article. It's kinda sad that we're associated mostly with Prigozhin in the West (the first thing the OP remembered), although we have other interesting stuff, for example we have probably the last remaining, still practiced pagan religion in Europe: https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/news/europes-last-pagans-worship-marii-el-grove https://hwpi.harvard.edu/pluralismarchive/news/europes-last-...
- thaumasiotes 2y agoI recently encountered a YouTube video talking about a related industry: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYup8chgkwM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYup8chgkwM It seems to be a similar idea, but with the scamming hidden in less-obviously-illegal places.
- H8crilA 2y ago[flagged]
- kgeist 2y agoPrigozhin visited one of our prisons once; that’s the only violence there is. The paganism is not Slavic, it's Uralic. Local indigenous people are related to the Finns.
- bufferoverflow 2y ago"Prigozhin visited one of our prisons once; that’s the only violence there is". No, it's not.
- sat0ri 2y agoHate to be pedantic, but it's definitely not slavic paganism. Finno-Ugric, maybe.
- Aspos 2y agoKazakh names are typically unique planet-wide. There is a very, very low chance of there being another person with the same name. Chances of finding another person with the same name and the same year of birth are practically zero. Edit: Seems like this particular combination is not unique after all. Found quite a few people of the same name. Perhaps they chose a victim which can't be found trivially.
- bloak 2y agoThough the name Aidana is Kazakh, the pictures would be more plausible for a member of the Russian minority in Kazakhstan (15% of the population according to Wikipedia). The article doesn't reveal where those pictures were stolen from, does it? And the voice? Typical spam call centre voice ... Philippines?
- Aspos 2y agoSounds clearly Russian to me. Russian spoken in Yoshkar-Ola I guess.
- alecmg 2y agonothing like Russian, South Asian maybe
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> The article doesn't reveal where those pictures were stolen from, does it? It says they're taken from the Instagram account of "a Russian personal trainer". I doubt the author is making an ethnic distinction between European Russians and Turkic Kazakhs, so the woman is probably identifiably located inside Russia.
- thaumasiotes 2y ago> Kazakh names are typically unique planet-wide. Really? What kind of structure do their names have? I think even cultures that used full-sentence names tended to have some conventional ones. And certain name ideas are very common cross-culturally, as witness Bogdan / Nathaniel / Theodore (and older Diodorus / Apollodorus / Herodotus / etc) / Dieudonné / Atallah... Going to something I know better, Chinese names can be unique, and I know someone who tells me her father specifically attempted to ensure that nobody shared her name, but I wouldn't go as far as saying that being unique is the typical case. Some names (小丽, 国强) have an attractive meaning and are used with identical spelling by large numbers of people; other names (Xīnyuè, Sījiā) show a lot of spelling variation while always being pronounced identically.
- spoonjim 2y ago[flagged]
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- rexpop 2y ago[flagged]
- temptemptemp111 2y ago[dead]
- AStonesThrow 2y agoGrowing up in the cold war, we always heard of "Mail order brides from Russia". In 2008 I had a disastrous international romance that began on an MMORPG. It was then that I learned that mail order bride companies often mediated between prospective girlfriends and the men overseas, and they actually protected both sides from scams or utter heartbreak. They made secure matches if they were reputable and they were able to arrange romances, or visas, immigration or whatever was being looked for. Their clients alone would never have the resources to research and verify and vet one another. It may have been a backpage, craigslist, back alley sort of operation, but perhaps sometimes it actually worked? Hail Melania
- DamonHD 2y agoSomeone I know is AFAIK still with his (second) Russian mail-order bride and has been for many many years. (The first one was sent back...)
- ashoeafoot 2y agoEvery message International 1 cent.. and doing nothing against the scaming is promoting deglobalization.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- __jonas 2y agoInteresting read, I wonder why they didn't get more into details about this fake dental practice website used by the scammer, like what server it's hosted on, who the domain is registered to, I guess they just had pretty good opsec and there was nothing interesting to find there?
- citizenpaul 2y agoThese scams are sad and horrible. I find it hard not to put some blame on the victim though. At the end of the day you are are responsible for watching out for yourself. When I look at the pictures of these people scammed. They are most often unattractive and unaccomplished people that believe suddenly a good looking international fashion model or a Harvard Doctor is inexplicably interested in them. I know its kinda sad but you have to have SOME idea of where you fall in the game of life and if something that much of an outlier comes along. You have got to be a little suspicious that they would really be interested in a romantic relationship with you. You cannot protect someone that has allowed this level of delusion to be their real world view is my point. "Protecting" these people from themselves essentially requires complete submission and removal of free will from at least some part of the population by force. I've watched the documentaries and most of the people after the fact admit that they basically did it to themselves. Nothing anyone could have done would have changed the outcome because they wanted it that way until it was too late.
- nullc 2y agoThe scammer just has to catch the victim at their worst moment. Tired? Drunk? Undergoing a personal crisis? Maybe the scam just hit exactly the right formula to trick you-- you'd just been on the phone with comcast and then a scammer pretending to be comcast just happens to call back at the right time. Sure, some of their victims would always for it, though I suspect they're a small minority. But everyone can be scammed.
- citizenpaul 2y agoSure maybe a one off for a moderate sum say <$500. However these bigger ones like over $10K are almost always over a long period of time with many transactions. At some point you have to make a choice to go with the delusion of the scam rather than face reality. I've been a bit interested in this and have seem many interviews with the scammed people. Almost all of them admit after the fact looking back they made the choice to go along with it and at least were partially to blame from their own perspective. I find the entire social dynamic interesting. Give me money I will maybe give you something. Ok here is the money. <repeat forever> How have we gotten to a point where this very obvious psychological dynamic is such a huge problem? What can be done to mitigate it?
- throway3142025 2y ago[dead]
- 1024core 2y agoReminds me of those 419 scams ("Nigerian Prince" scams) from the 90s and early 2000s.
- bevenhall 2y ago[flagged]
- BobAliceInATree 2y agoThe author should redact the face of the woman whose photos were stolen
- duxup 2y agoMy own skepticism that young attractive women are not likely to contact me keeps me safe.
- potterbarbatod 2y ago[flagged]