Romance Scam Investigations
Many people are looking for love on the internet. Unfortunately, more and more sophisticated scammers are on online platforms as well to find victims for relationship scams. Losing money you worked so hard for is an incredibly stressful and damaging experience, but our romance scam investigations can help to get you justice.
Rexxfield has a special relationship with the the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in Nigeria and law enforcement in Ghana that enables your case to be looked at by the right people who can do something about it.
Recovering Stolen Assets of a Romance Fraud
Is it possible to have your stolen assets recovered from a romance fraud through romance scam investigations? Though very challenging, it is not impossible. The chances of a full recovery are slim, and success depends on various elements of the case such as the amount you lost, the type of romance scam, the location of the scammers, and action taken by law enforcement.
We won’t pretend that recovering stolen assets of a romance scam is easy, because it is not. And sometimes it is not possible. But thanks to our close relationships with local and foreign law enforcement, we have been able to run successful recovery operations.
For example: one of our clients lost USD $500,000.00 of his life savings to a romance scam. Thanks to the evidence we collected through our cyber – and crypto investigations, the FBI was able to find the location of the scammers in Ghana and accessory money mules in the United States. As a result, the scammers were extradited to the United States.
“The detective gave me an update from the FBI as they are working with the Ghana/Accra police. I was informed they have identified my scammers, know where they live everything, based on the information and evidence you provided. I am told they are getting ready to arrest and extradite the scammers back to the U.S.”
Rexxfield’s scam investigations cases utilize six highly specialized investigative units, each with vastly different competencies:
- Cryptocurrency Blockchain Analysis Unit
- Open Source Intelligence Unit (OSINT)
- Application Code Forensic Analysis Unit
- Counter-Scam Social Engineering Unit
- Police & Prosecutorial Support Unit
- Cross border police task force liaison
Traditional law enforcement or most other private recovery agencies only specialize in blockchain analysis which is why our 6-pronged approach brings such successful results.
Types of Romance Scams
Victims are being contacted on online dating apps, as well as by a text message pretending to have contacted the wrong person. With a romance scam, scammers gain their victim’s trust under a fake identity, only to eventually scam them out of their hard earned money. However, not only single people are targeted. We have noticed an uptake in married victims, being lured in by not a romantic pretext, but deep and meaningful intellectual discussions. It seems that wealthy men and women in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe are targeted, especially Chinese immigrants.
The Nigerian (African) Romance Scam
Nigerian, and other African romance scammersm are skilled manipulators, exploiting victims’ emotions. They create fake profiles with stolen images, and craft fake narratives to set up the scam for unsuspecting victims. A common indicator of these scams is that they impersonate military personnel, doctors, engineers, or wealthy businessmen. Recognizing their tactics is key to protecting yourself from their scam.
These African scammers commonly employ “catfishing,” where they use a false identity to create emotional connections. They shower their victims with compliments, love poems, and promises of a shared future. Often they plan in-person meetings, only to cancel last-minute due to an emergency. It is at this point that they start requesting money to get out of the emergency situation and pretend to need money for medical bills, travel expenses, or other made up reasons.
The Asian Pig Butchering Scam
Pig Butchering scams are often run by networks of scammers from mainland China, but operated by human trafficking victims held captive in Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand and other South East Asian countries. Many of these scams are initiated using a pretext, where the scammer sends a WhatApp message to a prospective victim, something like this:
“Hi John, is this still your number? It’s been a while! How have you been?”
Whereas, there is no “John”. The new victim responds “Sorry wrong number”, and the charming scammer apologizes and then keeps the conversation with the victim going to groom the victim by developing a deep and trusting relationship, either romantic or a platonic friendship. Eventually an investment scheme is brought up and the victim is lured in.
How Can Romance Scam Investigations Help Me?
With Rexxfield investigators specialized in cryptocurrency tracing, social engineering, OSINT, and social media investigations, in combination with our proprietary software and unique skill set, we have successfully handled romance scam investigations since 2008. We have successfully identified and located scammers worldwide, traced stolen cryptocurrency and had wallets frozen. Using our close connections with law enforcement worldwide, we collect valuable intelligence for the police to act on.
A romance fraud investigation requires a thorough investigation conducted and reported in a manner that allows law enforcement to use the evidence to quickly act: execute subpoenas, freeze wallets with stolen assets, obtain KYC information, etc. A romance scam investigation takes time and a high quality investigation covering all areas: locating scammers, tracing stolen assets, connecting with local law enforcement, subpoenas and legal discovery, and more.
We have all the expertise in house to investigate your romance scam.