A romance scam is almost never one obvious red flag — it’s a sequence that escalates: a fast, intense bond, an excuse never to meet, distance from your friends, and eventually money or “investing.” Answer honestly and this checker reads the pattern, names the manipulation behind each sign, and tells you exactly what to do. It sees nothing about you — it runs in your browser alone.
The three signs that matter most: they won’t appear on a sustained live video call, you’ve never met in person, and there’s a request for money, gift cards, crypto, or “investing” on a platform they recommend. Any one of those is a serious warning; together they’re a romance or pig-butchering scam until proven otherwise. The single best test is a live video call — it’s what most scammers cannot pass.
The reason romance scams catch careful, intelligent people is that they don’t feel like a scam — they feel like a relationship. Organised crews work from a script that unfolds in stages, and each stage is designed to move you past your own caution. It opens with contact, increasingly through a social-media message or a stray “wrong number” text rather than a dating app. Then comes love-bombing — affection delivered fast and hard, because intensity creates obligation. Next, an excuse never to meet: a job on a rig, a deployment, a broken camera, a visit forever cancelled at the last minute.
Then isolation — gentle pressure to keep the relationship private, which conveniently removes the friends and family most likely to notice the con. And finally the ask: an emergency, a customs fee, a release fee, or — most lucrative of all — an invitation to “invest” in a crypto or forex platform they recommend. That last variant, the pig-butchering scam, is now the costliest form of online fraud by total losses, because the “profits” you see on screen are fabricated to make you deposit more.
Knowing the sequence is the defence. You don’t need to spot the con at the money stage — by then it’s late. You can stop it at the video stage: insist on a clear, sustained live call, and reverse-image-search the photos. If the relationship can’t survive that, it was never a relationship. And if money has already gone, see what you can do to get it back — and watch for the recovery scam that targets victims next.
Falling for a romance scam is not a failure of intelligence — it’s a failure of the people who built an industrial script to exploit the most human thing there is, the wish to be loved. The shame you may feel is the second wound, and it’s the thing scammers count on to keep you silent. You don’t have to carry it quietly. Asking a question here, or telling one person you trust, is not weakness — it’s how this ends.
Look for the pattern, not a single clue. Romance scams escalate in a recognisable sequence: contact (often a dating app, a social-media DM, or a “wrong number” text), then fast, intense affection (“love-bombing”), then a permanent excuse never to meet or video-call, then isolation from friends, and finally money — sent directly, or “invested” on a platform they recommend. The clearest tells are refusing live video, never being able to meet in person, and any request for money, gift cards, crypto, or to “invest.” This checker walks you through those signals and weighs them.
“Pig butchering” (sha zhu pan) is a romance scam whose real goal is a fake investment. The scammer builds a relationship — often after a “wrong number” text or a dating-app match — then introduces a crypto or forex trading app they say is making them money. The app shows growing profits to encourage bigger deposits, but the money is gone the moment it’s sent; when you try to withdraw, you’re told to pay a “tax” or “fee” first. The relationship is the bait; the fake platform is the trap. If someone you’ve never met in person is teaching you to invest, treat it as a scam.
If a romantic interest you met online is steering you toward a specific crypto or forex platform, it is almost certainly a pig-butchering scam — especially if you can see “profits” but can’t withdraw, or are asked to pay a fee to withdraw. No genuine partner makes a relationship contingent on an investment, and no real platform requires a personal payment to release your own funds. Stop depositing immediately and don’t pay any “withdrawal fee.”
It’s one of the strongest warning signs. A scammer using stolen photos can’t appear on a sustained, clear live video call, so they invent permanent reasons — a broken camera, bad signal, shyness, “military rules,” a job on a rig or ship. The same logic drives the visit that’s always cancelled at the last minute, often with a cost you’re asked to cover. Insisting on a live video call is the single check most scammers cannot pass.
It depends on how you paid and how fast you act. Bank transfers, gift cards and crypto are the hardest to recover, which is exactly why scammers prefer them; a card payment gives you the best chance through a chargeback. Contact your bank or card issuer immediately, report to your national fraud body (ReportFraud.ftc.gov and IC3.gov in the US), and use our refund tools below. Crucially, ignore anyone who later offers to “recover” your money for an upfront fee — that is always a second scam aimed at the same victims.
No. The checker runs entirely in your browser, sends nothing anywhere, and asks for no personal details — not your name, not the other person’s. It only reads back the patterns you select. It isn’t a verdict on a real individual or legal advice; it’s a way to see the warning signs clearly and decide what to do next.