Addressing Early Concerns – Implicit

Vulnerability is established early on as part of the initial set-up for the fraud to come (Reference CarterCarter 2021). This is legitimised through genre mapping (Reference CarterCarter 2015), an interactional tactic in which the fraudster will leverage the facade of the developing romance to perform displays of vulnerability as part of rapport building through the exchange of personal information. By revealing their vulnerabilities, fraudsters give victims a sense of control, which implicitly supports the fraudster’s credibility by mitigating general (mis)perceptions of the power differential in relation to the potential threat of the person they are communicating with. Part of appearing to be a credible romantic prospect is the demonstration of possessing the quality of being safe or non-threatening. This is performed in fraudulent relationships by the fraudster manipulating the power balance by appearing vulnerable or by distancing themselves from the archetypal dating site danger of being a fraudster; the following extracts demonstrate these techniques in action. By discussing personal circumstances, particularly when this involves revealing information that may make them a less attractive dating prospect, the fraudster presents a facade of honesty and openness that is the antithesis of a fraudster desperate to con a mark.

One type of vulnerability is inexperience – being a novice on the dating site enables the fraudster to present themselves as non-powerful, non-expert, and with little or no experience: a non-threatening position that implicitly evokes an innocent persona which is the antithesis of bad actors who spend a lot of time on the site and are well experienced in attempting online dating. By showing a willingness to be vulnerable and show his inexperience, James’ narrative in Extract 1 is couched in the wider narrative of mitigation and caution; ‘to be honest’ (lines 1–2) serves to indicate his newness to the site as information he is revealing to the victim, and ‘it’s better’ (line 3) refers to it being better for him, given his newness to the site, that they do not meet until they get to know each other.

By sharing his feelings around meeting up front, the fraudster is performing a type of ‘set-up’ (Reference CarterCarter 2021), whereby he introduces information that he will later rely on in the conversation as facts, evidence, or mitigations. That these are introduced early on in the relationship as part of contextually appropriate talk means that these interaction points remain innocuous, appear genuine, and don’t attract the scrutiny or concern they would otherwise do if accompanied, for example, with a request for money, or produced as an excuse in response to a victim asking to meet.

Another type of vulnerability that is produced as part of the fraudster’s manipulation toolkit is the pretence of having been hurt in a previous relationship. This situates the fraudster in a position that is couched in caution and concern about the safety of the current interaction, which places the victim in a position of responsibility over the fraudster’s feelings. Managing this contextual vulnerability serves to draw the victim into focusing on ensuring they do not inadvertently cause the fraudster harm through their own communications with them, and away from querying the authenticity of the person they are interacting with. Amplifying this, much like in the pretence of vulnerability through inexperience, this vulnerability through prior hurt has encoded within it the assumption of credibility, as someone revealing they have experienced harm at the hands of an online relationship is antithetical to the experience of a perpetrator of online harms.

In Extract 2, following the victim’s (Julie’s) suggestion to take the relationship slowly, the fraudster (Peter) responds by hoping she doesn’t hurt his feelings. This is a type of what I’ve termed ‘trauma bombing’, where the fraudster increases the emotional stakes or references to traumatic situations and/or the impacts of these, in order to distract from the reality of the situation (an ask for money or letting the victim down). In this extract, we can see the fraudster beginning to use trauma bombing to take control of the conversation; it is no longer about her wishes; from line 2 it becomes about his concerns, in particular around her future behaviour.

This is a type of power play where Peter ostensibly agrees with Julie’s preference for taking the relationship slowly, but directs this agreement towards his wishes, through which the onus falls on the victim to ‘live up to’ these expectations of the ideal partner and avoid harming the fraudster.

In the following quote, Dan draws on a fabricated past situation in which he had committed to marrying a woman only to find out that she was being unfaithful (‘Three weeks to my wedding I caught my fiancé cheating with my close friend’). This narrative is useful for the fraudster as it sets up the idea that he may have trust issues and behave in ways that would otherwise be interpreted as concerning, such as requiring information on his partner’s location and activities, and in asking for shows of trust from her, such as sending him money. The fact that he couches the discovery of his fiancé’s vulnerability as ‘catching her in the act’ and that this was with his friend both serve to deepen the emotional toll on the fraudster that he can then harness in future interactions, whereby the victim will be compelled to seek ways to reassure him that this relationship is different.

Vulnerability is also established through other situations out of the fraudster’s control that are outside of the dating sphere: ‘ever since i lost my late wife it has [not] been too easy for me’ (Peter). Claiming to be a widower enables the fraudster to weave the narrative that he has a dependent child (useful as a way to bond with a victim who also has dependents and to leverage when asking for money), without the negative connotations and additional complications of having an ex-spouse.

Another type of vulnerability is based around reliance, demonstrated by the following claim that ‘a man is reduced to nothing except he has someone to call his own. am so glad i have you … thanks for being there’ (Dan). This moves closer to discourses more commonly associated with coercive control and domestic violence and abuse; the fraudster manufactures a situation where the victim is in a position of power and control relative to the fraudster, but the burden of responsibility they feel for keeping the fraudster safe and well, and to avoid hurting them, makes it difficult for them to leave the relationship or (as we see later) refuse requests for money.

Both of these examples draw on themes of loneliness and nothingness, a void that is gladly and gratefully filled by the communications of the victim but will return if she leaves. Extract 3 makes mention of the frequency of the victim’s (Mary’s) contact and how her ‘keeping in touch daily’ (line 3) is important in keeping James’ loneliness at bay.

James enhances the relevance of her actions and adds a sense of urgency to them by aligning them with his current situation and feelings at that time of year, making her continued efforts in communicating daily with him important right now and into the immediate future. Vulnerability is also used by fraudsters to directly address concerns of their authenticity and credibility, and to present a facade of a casual attitude towards the relationship as a foil to revealing the opposite reality, and this is what is explored in the following section.

Addressing Early Concerns – Explicit

The following extracts show fraudsters distancing themselves from the identity of being a fraudster by situating themselves as vulnerable to the advances of fraudsters (they are posed as the ‘other’), offering advice to guard against fraudsters and making their negative opinion of fraudsters clear. The techniques such as demonstrating knowledge and authority (but not aggression) seen here are also used to build rapport in other, genuine interactions such as debt collection phone calls (Reference HarringtonHarrington 2018). Additionally, in fraudulent contexts the act itself of directly or indirectly mentioning fraudsters creates a facade of credibility; by themselves drawing attention to the presence and possibility of fraudsters, liars, and cheats on the dating site and elsewhere, they implicitly demonstrate themselves as not this, and distance themselves from anyone who is, together with reinforcing their own openness and honesty, as shown by the following quote:

James also explicitly disavows himself from controlling behaviour, the type of behaviour that is typical of abusive relationships:

In Extract 6, the fraudster Peter is explicit in distancing himself from ‘others’ (line 1) that may not be sincere. This is reinforced by the second half of his turn where he makes his promise to come to the UK more tangible by mentioning plans to have dinner with Julie (‘home’ in this context is meant to mean Julie’s home).

The transition from abstract to concrete continues in his use of ‘will’, which shows certainty; and the use of ‘return’ and ‘home’ frames Peter’s visit to Julie as respectively an inevitable homecoming and to a place where he belongs, rather than a temporary visit. The use of ‘back’ is perplexing as he has not previously visited Julie’s house; however, this is understood as a reinforcement of the facade of permanency and staking a claim to her home as his home. This narrative in its entirety is at odds with the reason he gives for his visit – to have their first dinner date.

In Extract 7 we see the joint and mutual recognition of the dangers of online dating in terms of attempts to defraud. The fraudster Dan positions himself as ‘other’ than fraudsters and, as someone who has been defrauded when online dating previously, familiar with the potential dangers in online dating and keen to make her aware of the dangers and protect her from them. This increases his facade of credibility and trustworthiness, positioning him as ‘not one of the dangers’, similar to the tactics used in postal frauds (Reference CarterCarter 2015). He explicitly brings up having been in a potentially fraudulent relationship he escaped from recently without giving the person money.

The eagerness Dan has to educate Peggy about the dangers of fraudsters in the online dating space is reflected in his use of the imperative ‘you have to’ (line 1). The close repeat of line 1 and addition of ‘really’ on line 10 reinforces and emphasises Dan’s message and its importance, his apparent sincerity, and his position of knowledge and protection. Interestingly, Dan details that he had already parted with money (‘I refused to give her more’, line 3) and contrasts this on line 6 with ‘Hope you didn’t give any’, demonstrating a learning experience on the part of Dan and positioning him as speaking from authority on the matter.

In Extract 8, under the guise of offering protective advice, the fraudster (Dan) shows the victim (Peggy) how he is also vulnerable to being targeted by ‘weirdos’ (line 4), showing he is experienced but also vulnerable. He distances himself from unsavoury characters on the dating site, of which there are ‘lots’ (line 4), positioning himself together with Peggy as both new to the dating site and on guard against unsavoury characters.

The word choice ‘there’ in relation to where the ‘weirdos’ are distances both him and Peggy from the dating site; using ‘there’ rather than ‘here’ fuels an implicit move for the two of them to go to a safer place. It is a typical M.O. of romance fraudsters to move their intended victim from the dating site and into personal messaging in order to escape protections on the site and inhabit a space where they can access the victim 24 hours a day.

Distancing themselves from being a fraudster can also be performed more subtly through displaying a lack of urgency and a more casual attitude towards the relationship and its fate. As shown in Extract 9, introducing the possibility that the relationship won’t work and wanting to ‘take things slowly’ shows an openness and a lack of threat, desperation, or hidden mission associated with trying to defraud someone, much like the fraudster’s explicit openness to doubt about their written communications (Reference CarterCarter 2015). This also works to draw the victim into trying to make the relationship work as there is a possibility that the other person will not continue with it, which makes the relationship seem more precarious and sought after.

The phrase ‘it could be you’ on line 4 positions the fraudster in a powerful, decision-making role and the victim in the role akin to auditionee for his love, looking to win the coveted part of girlfriend, if she fits his requirements. Famously used as an advertising tagline in the UK for the National Lottery (1997), ‘it could be you’ evokes an all-powerful ‘other’ seeking out the lucky one-in-many-millions who will win the jackpot. The use of ‘hope’ alongside this evokes a sense of fate, chance, opportunity, and luck in being the ‘chosen one’. Stuart continues by praising Viv’s communications but tempering this with the use of ‘but’, which introduces caution and potential conflict to the current situation; he mentions future non-specified additional requirements (potentially intimate messaging) that will also need to be satisfied for the relationship to continue. Embodied in Stuart’s ‘so far so good’ (lines 7–8) is the precarity of the current situation, and the victim will prove herself the right match for him based on her actions.

This is continued in Extract 10 with ‘even if things don’t work out’ (lines 2–3), which reinforces the credibility of the interaction – not all meetings online develop into a relationship. It again reinforces the credibility of the fraudster as a legitimate love interest as it is assumed that someone intent on defrauding another for their money wouldn’t willingly invite and risk prematurely ending the relationship that is the conduit for that goal.

Stuart’s orientation to the longevity of the relationship, whether it continues as a romance or as a friendship, ensures that the exploitation can continue regardless of relationship status; this serves as a type of ‘future-proofing’ of the relationship beyond its current status, a type of fatalism that ties the victim to him in a connection framed as mutual. This has echoes of the duty and responsibility often felt by victims of domestic abuse, cultivated by the perpetrator to offer little escape from its clutches (Reference HillHill 2020). During this, Stuart also takes care to script that future relationship, in whatever form it becomes, as one where they have a duty to ‘be there’ for each other (line 4), which is reminiscent of the ‘set-up’ (Reference CarterCarter 2021), in a narrative of assistance through which future requests for money can be couched.

Building Rapport

Rapport building is essential in romance fraud, as it is in any genuine developing relationship. This is in part why romance fraud is so pervasive and hard to spot; its protagonists use communicative frameworks that are expected and normal for the beginning of legitimate, genuine relationships and so do not raise ‘red flags’ or sound ‘alarm bells’ that would give victims cause to question or cease the interaction. Indeed, the converse is true – the normalcy of seeking personal information that would be concerning in other, non-relationship-based communications makes these interactions ‘safe’. Beyond this, anyone who refuses to engage in these most basic rapport and relationship-building communications will be unlikely to progress past the early stages of an online relationship. Indeed, such refusal to reciprocate is considered unusual, and individuals who are very protective of their personal information and history could be considered worthy of concern as a result of their guarded behaviour. Public-facing fraud protection literature does tell us that fraudsters will seek information from their target victims but will not reveal information about themselves (Sussex Police 2023).

The information that is ideal for extorting a person’s money is the same type of information exchanged between individuals in a genuine love match; occupation, location, age, marital status, family status, pets, loves, fears and so on can all be used by fraudsters to create a false reality that resonates personally with the victim, which in turn will make them feel safe and listened to, develop feelings for the fraudster and be more likely to perform what is asked of them later in the relationship. A solid foundation of rapport and trust will enable victims themselves to ignore or explain away ‘alarm bells’ or ‘red flags’ through the distortion of reality-driven confirmation bias, making assumptions of trustworthiness based on themselves as trustworthy and the fraudster being like them. By building rapport, fraudsters develop and establish a facade of credibility that enables them to earn the trust of their target. They are able to deliver messages to them that distort their reality, grooming them into accepting and normalising otherwise concerning behaviours later in the relationship.

Scripting Expectations

Setting out expectations is where the fraudster starts to develop the manipulation by being more explicit and prescriptive in detailing the victim’s role in the relationship, although this remains couched within the norms of the ‘getting to know you’ building of a relationship so that it doesn’t cause alarm. Seemingly ordinary expectations of the relationship, laid out as part of the building of rapport, bonding, and finding out about each other, are subtly manoeuvred beyond expectations of their ideal partner into qualities ideal for enabling an exploitative relationship. This is also directed towards servicing ideals around taking risks and supporting partners, useful to support or normalise later requests for money. The fraudsters in Extracts 11, 12, and 13 also leverage reciprocal acts within the context of romance.

In Extract 11, Peter uses the analogy of walking through fire (line 1) to describe the lengths that he would want his partner to go to for him (and he for them), and implicitly suggests future risks and difficult times they will need to talk through together. This is reinforced by the mention of sharing and problem-solving (line 3).

Extract 12 shows James making his case even more explicitly, stating to Mary that ‘my Ideal woman should try think the same way I do’ (line 1), and ‘She must love me only’ (line 4). The fraudster continues by listing his desired behaviours in a partner and framing these in relation to his own behaviours (line 3). He also frames these behaviours in relation to mutual reciprocation, giving, sharing, and supporting him (‘love me … as I would love her’, lines 10–11, ‘be there for me … as I will … be there for her’, lines 7–8).

In Extract 13, Stuart also draws on the quid pro quo aspect of balancing a relationship while harnessing the angle that compromise and communication is down to ability and capability, and therefore in the gift of anyone who tries hard enough.

The final line of this extract lays bare the reframings and reciprocal notions on which later requests for money could be based – the victim as ‘being there’ for him in bad times (line 4), and mention of a ‘good turn’ and ‘favours’. However, thankfully, in this case, he doesn’t get to use this set-up later on to defraud Viv of her money, as the relationship stops after he sends two almost identical emails and doesn’t respond to Viv’s refusal to proclaim love or engage in love talk until they meet.

Scripting: Storytelling, Self-disclosure, and Disguising

Fraudsters harness false narratives of honesty and vulnerability styled as genuine self-disclosure to deliver messages of their credibility and harmlessness within the normative framework of information sharing and rapport building associated with a developing romantic relationship. This is used to house and disguise the true nature of the interaction, enabling the fraudster to explicitly present a facade of honesty and safety without it looking out of place or causing concern to the recipient, encouraging reciprocal trust (Reference CarterCarter 2015). Indeed, as such narratives are expected within the early days of a relationship, their presence therefore implicitly reinforces the genuine nature of the interaction, while in reality serving as the vehicle through which to extort and defraud.

Extract 14 shows the fraudster (Stuart) delivering a narrative about being honest and as someone who does not lie. This is seated within the wider discourse of being open to being questioned, which performs the task of the performance appearing open and the fraudster having nothing to hide. As well as the explicit statement of honesty, this turn also delivers this message implicitly through inviting the recipient to question him.

This performance of honesty is also apparent in storytelling narratives, through which the fraudster delivers an account of who they are and their expectations of who they want the recipient to be. This interactional scripting enables fraudsters to detail how they want the victim to behave, while normalising these otherwise concerning behavioural demands often seen in coercive control and domestic abuse. Housed within the guise of honesty and self-disclosure, this scripting of the recipient’s expected current and future behaviours is mitigated and non-threatening. It is performed as within a normal and mutual exchange of practical likes and dislikes that occurs in an open way as an unproblematic way to quickly assess mutual suitability and compatibility at the outset of a potential relationship.

The below quotes (Extracts 15–19) highlight honesty as a key requirement in the fraudsters’ early interactions with their target victims. James and Dan start out by framing honesty and trustworthiness as essential qualities in terms of attractiveness and preference in a partner and in building a relationship.

They both continue with descriptions of the qualities they rate most highly and what they are looking for in a partner:

In genuine relationships, this then precipitates mutual and reciprocal self-disclosure from both parties, known to be an important building block for trust (Reference Mesch and BekerMesch and Beker 2010). However, although the victim does reciprocate with their own self-disclosures (which in itself is useful for the fraudster to gather personal information about the victim), fraudsters also harness this interactional framework in order to produce their own version of self-disclosure for and on behalf of the victim; this involves telling them their qualities and what type of person they expect them to be. These descriptions are flattering, and as such both increase the victim’s feelings of solidarity with the fraudster (Reference FreiermuthFreiermuth 2011) and disguise the fraudster’s scripting behaviour (Reference CarterCarter 2015). This scripting of the victim’s assets is a type of ‘set-up’ (Reference CarterCarter 2021) of information that is used later to compel the victim to ‘live up’ to these originally flattering (and as such, uncontested) descriptions and romantic ideals, and then twisted into promises and agreements that, if not fulfilled, are recast as the victim undermining the relationship. Extract 20 shows the fraudster making a positive assessment of the victim’s personality and qualities and weaving this into his future expectations of her.

This is framed as a statement of discovery, reflecting the fraudster’s transition from narratives of supposing and hoping to knowing as he gets to know her; this reinforces the perception that their relationship is developing, yet the flattering ‘observations’ exert pressure on the victim to ‘live up to’ a particular standard now and into the future.

Scripting of behaviours also enables the fraudster to direct the victim towards behaviours that will be beneficial when they later attempt to defraud them. This is another type of ‘set-up’ (Reference CarterCarter 2021) that occurs very early on in the relationship under the guise of rapport building. In Extract 21, Stuart outlines his desire to avoid drama in a relationship and for his partner to be faithful to him and value his love.

This has implicit undertones of requiring loyalty. It is something that can be used as a tool to compel the victim into carrying out behaviours they would usually disagree with, with ‘valuing’ the fraudster’s heart morphing into not disagreeing with him and doing what he says. The theme of the fraudster making explicit that he does not want the victim to ‘play’ with his emotions or engage in emotional ‘games’ is present in both in Extract 21 and in Extract 22. In the following quote we can see the fraudster using self-scripting to transmit his relationship expectations to the victim.

These expectations are to remain faithful to the relationship as a serious entity and contribute to it consistently (not a player), and to be open and straightforward to requests and needs (no head games). This is the antithesis of a fraudster, who in order to deceive the victim must engage in ‘head games’. As this is not a genuine relationship and there are many such victims, being a ‘player’ is part of the requirement of defrauding individuals through pretending to be in a romantic relationship with them. The illusion of self-expectations is that it presents an honest and trustworthy facade while also encouraging reciprocal self-scripting and behaviour in the relationship to which the fraudster can then hold the victim to account later if they are not generous, selfless, and private.

Scripting: Harnessing Religion

The use of God or religion in narratives within romance fraud enables fraudsters to engage in a type of ‘othering’ where the relationship itself is credited as part of fate, part of a wider design planned by someone other than them. This enables the fraudster to play the part of the narrator and joint participant, appearing removed from the driving force of the relationship and occupying a position alongside the victim as one of two people destined to meet. The fated nature of the relationship enables the othering of responsibility for them meeting and also additional responsibility for the two protagonists (with the victim bearing this responsibility) in terms of ensuring the will of the higher power is met and the relationship is a success.

In Extract 23, the fraudster credits God for orchestrating their love match and positions the victim as destined and designed to be there for the fraudster. This skews the power relationship and sets out the roles and expectations of the victim. This increases the difficulty, or completely obscures the ability, of the victim to challenge the authenticity of the relationship, as this challenge would then be directed at God and His will.

The objectification of the victim is again seen in Stuart’s message in Extract 24, where Viv is described as a ‘gift’ that has been delivered to him, from the universe, for his benefit.

Such references also align the fraudster with the positive moral and ethical stance associated with someone who is religious, which is used as a way that fraudsters alleviate concerns around their credibility as the person on the other end of the conversation in online dating (Reference Koon and YoongKoon and Yoong 2013). It is in this way that religion is also harnessed as an indicator of trustworthiness: ‘I consider myself loyal God Fearing and honest to a fault’ (James).

This agenda also minimises perceptions of risk, as it embodies protection through the idea that if the relationship is destined to work then it cannot go wrong, and also the victim is encouraged to not stand in the way of destiny by avoiding risks. Success in a fraudulent relationship will ultimately be bound with displays of such ‘commitment’, joint efforts to ensure its success, and sacrifices in order to do so; all involve the victim and the transfer of money or goods, or personal information. This mirrors the interactions of call centre debt collection professionals, who frame that (legitimate) interaction as a joint effort in order to build and maintain rapport in the face of often unwanted requests of the recipient (Reference HarringtonHarrington 2018). The romanticisation of risk-taking to set up, situate, and normalise otherwise unpalatable requests as part of the context of romance fraud is addressed in the following section.

Forecasting and Normalising Future Behaviours

Scripting victim behaviour not only occurs throughout the development of the early stages of the fraudulent relationship through building rapport and laying out expectations, but at this stage it is also directed towards other ends. It is also used to romanticise the victim engaging in risky behaviour in the future, as well as normalising and contextualising concerning requests from the fraudster by situating these expectations and requests within the normalised framework of a developing relationship. This type of scripting is successful when romance and relationships are portrayed as the main cause of and justification for these behaviours. When so much of one’s personality and self-esteem is wrapped up in whether a relationship is successful or not (‘am I good enough?’), the intrinsic motivation is to comply with romantic expectations and relationship ideals and the ideals of the other party when they are too seated within that framework. This has echoes of coercion insofar as the victim often feels they are responsible for the success of the relationship, and not complying then becomes twisted by the fraudster into blaming the victim for not being committed enough or failing in some way.

Normalising Risk-taking

Personal fraud protection advice and warnings are often given alongside the idiom ‘if it looks too good to be true, it probably is’ (Gov.uk 2021; Metropolitan Police 2023), exposing the close link between fraud victimisation and risk-taking. As with all interpersonal or authorised push payment fraud, the fraudster requires and relies on the target individual’s compliance in order for them to move their money. Intellectualising, mitigating, and justifying risk-taking is a powerful part of the fraudulent actor’s toolkit in order to convince a target victim to act in ways that may be out of their comfort zone in order to defraud them (such as in romance fraud, investment fraud, and courier fraud) or incentivise them to act to secure a ‘good deal’ (such as in holiday fraud and online shopping fraud).

In the context of romance fraud, risk-taking is introduced early on in the relationship by the fraudster who harnesses tropes around ‘risking it all for love’ and ‘love conquering all’ to not only normalise taking risks, but also portray risk-taking as a desirable act that embodies heightened passion and romance.

In Extract 25, James explicitly addresses the topic of risk-taking with Mary, where it is presented as moving their relationship from a friendship into a romantic relationship.

James opens the topic by talking about their continuing relationship. He categorises it as a ‘friendship/relationship’ (line 1), acknowledging that it is in the early stages and hasn’t yet developed into a romantic interaction, but is building and is based on respect. James presents this moment as a crossroads in their relationship, one where if Mary chooses to pursue love, she will not regret it. He acknowledges Mary’s reticence around developing the relationship romantically, topicalises this as a fear of being hurt, and on line 4 addresses this by promising her she won’t be hurt. Once a practical element preventing risk-taking is addressed, James then moves on to more abstract concepts around risk and love, anchoring these on existing experiences of love that Mary may have felt and can therefore identify with – ‘It always feels good to be in love am sure you also know that’ (lines 5–6). As part of this risk-taking framework, fraudsters also draw on narratives of their willingness to risk or trade money for love, foregrounding self-sacrifice as a show of love and commitment.

As part of the narrative Dan in Extract 26 attempts to draw information from the victim about her financial status, using the tag question on line 1 to draw confirmation from her that she is indeed wealthy from a lifetime of work. This talk targets older adults, increased life experience and wealth being associated with retired older adults, and in implicitly leveraging the prospect of loneliness, which is a common concern among this age group (Reference CrossCross 2016). Peggy’s response shows that she is not in agreement; the use of ‘well’ (line 2) signals her dispreferred response to come (Reference HeritageHeritage 1984), which is a partial rejection of Dan’s turn by disagreeing with the notion she is wealthy. After that attempt fails, Dan launches another attempt to compel agreement from Peggy. He moves his focus from ‘wealth’ to ‘excess’: an important change in focus as excess is meant here as any money beyond the essential (eating, shelter, daily fun; lines 11–12). He frames having anything beyond the essentials as a negative and that people need to free themselves of, as it ‘leads us to vanity’ (line 12).

He draws on her responses which indicate she isn’t wealthy (line 2) but also lives within her means (line 14) to manoeuvre his narrative from talk of millions of pounds to aligning himself with her mindset and situation (‘us’, line 17), and in claiming ownership of a similar mindset that ‘value[s] the simplicity of life’ (line 17). He then harnesses these points to ‘sell’ happiness (at a price) as the missing element in her life. His attempts to align his talk with hers and gain agreement on this point are also shown through his adoption of her turn ‘I need to go to bed now’ (line 16), which, although a clear signal that she does not want to continue the conversation, is used by Dan on lines 19 and 20 (‘money can buy a good bed, but never will money buy sleep’) as a way to continue holding the floor and make his next turns relevant (if only on a lexical level).

Dan then issues the statement ‘i would give up all that can be bought for that which cant be bought’ (lines 20–21). Although he isn’t asking Peggy to use her money in this way, Dan is setting up the idea early on in the relationship that this type of financial sacrifice should be considered acceptable in order to avoid loneliness and to attain love and happiness, and that this is a decision born from independence and not from thoughts of interference from others (‘as my own man’, lines 20–21).

Both of these points – love is worth sacrificing your money for, and these decisions are independently made – are important when it comes to later requests for money and accompanying demands for secrecy. The theme of sacrificing money for love is drawn on in Extract 27 when, only twenty-seven days later, he asks Peggy for money and she refuses, and he turns to threats in response:

The following section explores the transition between the early stages of the relationship and the fraudsters’ introduction of behaviours that move and prime the interaction into one where requests for money will later be introduced. In doing so it examines secrecy further, alongside urgency, which is another commonly concerning request, and how these and other behaviours are mitigated within the context of a supposedly romantic relationship.

Rejecting Requests from the Victim: To Meet in Person, Talk on the Phone or to Video Call

A key source of friction in the fraudster’s journey of persuasion and manipulation is managing requests they cannot service, such as requests by the victim to meet them in person. These include victim requests for contact beyond the messaging already engaged in: video and phone calls, visits. These expectations arise in genuine online relationships but due to the nature of the fraud (the fraudster would become exposed or their story would start to unravel) need to be attended to in terms of denials and refusals from the fraudster, which are likely to cause the victim concerns about the legitimacy of the relationship.

The fraudster’s performance here is based on receiving victim requests to meet and navigating the production of refusals while avoiding causing the victim alarm in doing so. This is done by continuing the context of the romance, using language of concern and frustration and the narrative of joint enterprise.

Rejecting Victim Requests to Meet

In Extract 36, James situates his excuse for not talking on the phone (urgent errands, line 5) at the end of a pre-account that reinforces the status of the relationship (lines 1–4); he uses the interactional space to reaffirm his feelings for her and to highlight the fact that they have mutual feelings.

We can see that he refers to them having spoken together on the phone (line 5), which mitigates concern that may arise from refusing to meet in person and also refuse other types of audio or visual contact. This also demonstrates his openness to explain multiple times, through multiple channels and apparent cooperation with the victim’s wishes. The refusal itself, in a form of othering, is framed as an unfortunate impossibility despite his own willingness and eagerness to meet, due to a situation out of his control. That this is described as ‘the project that was just approved’ (line 6, emphasis my own) draws attention to the fact that the project and its road to approval was something the victim had already been made aware of (‘the project’ rather than ‘a project’), and the use of ‘just’ infers the immediacy of the information and the speed at which the fraudster is now having to act in order to service errands associated with this new-but-expected draw on his time.

Anticipating and matching victim frustration is also seen in the following series of extracts (Extracts 37–45), where the desire to meet is again articulated by the fraudster, but is escalated in this case by the fraudster (Camilla) having planned to take a chartered army plane to meet the victim (Roger) that day. The journey was never going to take place but the pretence did; the extracts that follow detail the conversations Camilla and Roger have while she is in the aeroplane hanger, ready to depart, and pretends to navigate impediments to that journey. In doing so she expresses repeated and increasing frustration at the plane being unable to take off, preventing her from flying to meet the victim (Roger) for the first time as she had planned and anticipated.

The visceral responses of the fraudster, shown through her displays of mental and physical distress at the ongoing delays to the flight that was supposed to get her to Roger that day, serve to implicitly reinforce these delays as unwanted, unexpected, and the result of a situation outside of her control. This also deflects attention away from her and the credibility of the situation. It is also a jointly experienced frustration (with Camilla bearing the brunt of this), and as such, she is positioned beyond reproach for the unfortunate situation.

Amidst this, she also focuses on Roger, showing herself to be selfless and concerned about him when she is the one that is in discomfort.

Camilla then escalates the outward manifestation of her distress. Increasing her visceral response to the situation to a point of extreme (‘I might grab someone’s gun and just shoot’, line 72) shows how she maintains tension throughout a protracted period, increasing the tension as time passes. This manifestation of trauma bombing manifests as a type of reverse love bombing, where instead of increasing proclamations of love in implicit and explicit ways following concerning behaviour by the fraudster, the fraudster increases their distress. This serves manifold purposes: the distress of the fraudster distracts the victim from examining the reasons behind a new concerning situation; it draws a protective response from the victim where they will attempt to relieve the distress of the fraudster; and the victim will dampen their own emotional response to the situation in order to avoid increasing the already heightened distress of the fraudster.

As Extracts 42–45 show, this encourages reciprocal care, and also serves to dampen Roger’s visceral responses to the situation (Extract 44), tempering his own frustration, encouraging him to draw his energies towards protecting and assisting Camilla (Extracts 42 and 43), and demonstrates the success of Camilla’s deflection of blame onto other parties (Extract 45).

Rejecting Victim Requests to Video or Phone Chat: Deflecting by Accusing Victim

Other types of requests from the victim that the fraudster may not be able to service are meeting in an online video chat or talking on the phone. Both of these, in the absence of being able to meet in person, are legitimate alternative communication options available to individuals in online or long-distance relationships, in order for both parties to see and/or speak to each other. Much like discussed earlier in relation to meeting in person, this is something that fraudsters often avoid as it could expose their real identity as visually or orally incompatible with the identity of the person they claim to be. Excuses to not meet via video or over the phone are given as a ‘red flag’ in public protect literature (for example, CrimeStoppers 2023), so this element of the interaction is a particular touchpoint where their illegitimacy could potentially be exposed. Refusals to engage online and/or over the phone could reasonably cause the victim concern, more so than refusals to meet in person, as many fraudsters use the physical distance between them and the difficulties meeting as part of the fraud itself (for example, asking for money so they can afford to fly to the victim and set up a life with them, Extract 55). Online and telephone interactions are so commonplace and easily accessible, all the more so since the Covid-19 pandemic, on a multitude of video-conferencing apps, rather than difficult or unusual types of communication requiring special technology. The ease in online communications beyond the textual is particularly the case when we consider that many romance frauds are conducted through Wi-Fi-based communication apps such as WhatsApp, which have an inbuilt function specifically for easy and accessible video and audio call capabilities.

The refusal of a partner’s ostensibly benign, uncomplicated and, given the context of an online relationship, entirely expected request such as an invitation to talk via video or phone call is a difficult prospect for fraudsters. In denying this type of contact they risk damage to the facade of reassurance that is so essential in building and maintaining rapport and creating common interactional ground based on love and romance. This leaves what is termed here as a ‘reassurance void’ through which the victim may begin to question the legitimacy of the relationship and expose its reality. To counteract this, the fraudster will need to provide a convincing reason why they are unable to agree to this request and, optimally, quash future requests in the process. More than this, they will need to align this reason within the wider context of the relationship that has been developed thus far so as to not compromise it by behaving in a way that could cause the victim concern.

Extracts 46–48 show how the inversion of trust as a reality and expectation is performed by the fraudster through their response of being affronted and disappointed by the victim’s requests to meet online or in person. The fraudster in Extract 46 responds to the victim’s request that they communicate via video by implying it’s not him that is preventing this, or a lack of willing on his part; there is a practical barrier to this happening (his captain needs to authorise this and there is a process involved in order for that to happen). The fraudster also attends to the act of her asking this by reframing it as an indication that she doesn’t trust him and is acting in a way that is going against the relationship, and him.

He repeats ‘am your man’ and ‘you don’t trust me’ twice on lines 2 and 3, posing them as opposing statements through the use of ‘except’ (line 2) and ‘but’ (line 3) in a comparative construction that places a negative as the counterpart to the first element. Here the fraudster is using trust as a way to steer the victim’s behaviour, using it as a tool through which to combat the very act of her questioning him and also the relationship. This serves to redirect the conversation towards broader questions around the relationship, distracting the victim into defending their trustworthiness and why they are requesting a video chat, and away from the issue of the chat and why the fraudster is refusing.

Reframings and Mitigations

In Extract 52, the fraudster (Adam) is asking the victim (Carly) for money. He opens this sequence by stating there is ‘nothing to write about’ (line 1), downplaying and contradicting the soon-to-be-revealed emotional and financial predicament that this statement precedes. He continues by referring to himself in the third person (line 1), which, together with his profession (‘engineer’) and temporary nature of his predicament (line 2), distances himself from his talk of him looking or feeling incompetent (line 3). He follows this with more distancing, with the use of the idiom ‘in the mud’ (lines 1–2) instead of directly saying he is in trouble, and the use of laughing emojis, at odds with the lexical content, to indicate him laughing it off or laughing at his own predicament, perhaps as a display of vulnerability or embarrassment. This is supported by Adam’s use of a crying emoji on line 3, which is a semiotic representation of sadness he feels from being made to look in some way incompetent (line 3). Fraudsters showing vulnerability and producing visceral responses that show their physical or emotional anguish is a way in which they can draw a protective response from the victim (Reference CarterCarter 2021). This is made more acute and powerful when the display of vulnerability appears to be uneasy or unwilling.

Adam then follows this with pre-financial-request mitigations in the form of first detailing his efforts to help himself, which frames his request-to-come as not the sole burden of the victim, and as a final resort after his attempts to help himself; he has attempted to get more funds through a loan (lines 4–5), has raised some of the money himself (line 5) and is continuing to raise more (implied in his use of ‘so far’). Asking for money to add to money that they have already contributed is a tactic in romance fraud as it lessens the sense of risk for the victim, as they are not being asked to pay the entire amount, and also the risk seems shared, which lessens the risk in practical terms but also implies that the other person has deemed providing money themselves as safe (Reference CarterCarter 2021). Adam makes clear that Carly’s money is a temporary loan that will be returned to her with interest; how much extra this will be ‘doesn’t matter’ (line 6), suggesting that money is not usually an issue for Adam and won’t be shortly.

The request for money from the victim is also minimised as ‘assistance’ (line 5) and as a ‘loan’ (line 6); the mirroring of the attempt to get a business loan (lines 4–5) and then asking the victim for a loan (line 6) reinforces the legitimacy of the request as she is not the first place he went to for money. The use of the laughing emoji on line 5 again serves to downplay the need for assistance and, in the absence of genuinely amusing talk, together with an emoji of a monkey covering its eyes, appears to convey his embarrassment and vulnerability in relation to his predicament.

Adam conveys urgency in a direct way by telling Carly that he has run out of time (line 8), and unless he gets the rest of the money, there will be further problems. This statement of urgency relies on the (fictional) pressure from an external source to drive the fraudster’s request; it is framed as his hand being forced by this external factor rather than the request coming directly from him and motivated by a personal need, for example to buy luxury items.

Requests for money are also more explicitly reframed in order to disguise the risks, concerns, and reality of what the fraudster is asking of the victim, shown in Extract 53 by the fraudster foregrounding the singular (return and increase on their ‘investment’, gifts, and his physical presence) and joint (contribution to the relationship, part of a shared enterprise, for a shared outcome) incentives of sending money.

The use of ‘even’ (line 1) signifies the representation of the giving of money not as a loan (which would be expected to be paid back with interest) but as something that will be treated as such in terms of a beneficial monetary outcome for the victim. This acts as an incentive for the victim to agree to lend the fraudster the money. It provides a familiar context through which that money lending occurs; it legitimises the act, while the unneeded offering of additional money to the victim provides a facade of credibility to the fraudster in terms of generosity, fairness, and access to sums of money.

James’ turn in Extract 54, with its use of ‘then’, situates his half of the payment as contingent on the victim paying hers, and the use of ‘remember’ draws on a previously agreed state, which keeps the victim accountable and underpins the request. Other ways this is performed is through the ‘set-up’ (Reference CarterCarter 2021), where more abstract agreements around behaviours are established and then later used by the fraudster to compel actions based on these. Here, the use of ‘remember’ is more explicit, and is used to ensure the victim complies with actions they have previously agreed to.

This also presents the victim’s money as part of an equal burden for both partners in the relationship, equal risk, and therefore reducing concerns that may be born from the victim feeling as though they are the sole bearer of providing the ‘full amount’ needed.

In Extract 55, Graham draws on three elements to incentivise and compel the victim to give him her money: a visceral response (current concern and worry over his future life direction); framing the money as something that they both need rather than it being a unidirectional giving of money to him; and to make them meeting in person a reality quicker.

These elements reduce the perception of risk, framing it as a joint project for a mutually beneficial outcome. Drawing on this, requests for money are also situated within the normalised expectations between a husband and wife. The messages in Extract 56 from the fraudster (Avery) draw on a risk-reduction, incentive-based approach, where Mandy’s (the victim’s) money will leave her account for a short time before being repaid, and repaid with interest (lines 3 and 4), before leveraging his (false) position as her husband and the increased responsibility spouses have for each other’s wellbeing, financial or otherwise.

Topicalising their (fictitious) marital status in this part of the interaction is suggestive of another type of incentivisation: the fraudster is implying their relationship is at the level of trust and commitment of a married couple, and suggests marriage could be on the horizon (something that the victim does want to happen). He then returns to explicit incentivisation on line 6 with ‘I will add more to it few weeks’, moving reimbursement beyond interest, with its fixed rates, to a more casual ‘adding’ of money, again within a relatively short timeframe.

Visceral Responses and Pressure

In Extract 57, the fraudster (Ben) frames the request for money as a final request of Amy (the victim). He uses the phrase ‘this last time’ on line 3, which evokes a finality of this payment, a last hurdle to overcome before the relationship can continue without difficulty, and she will shortly see the return of her money. This tactic encourages victims to continue, providing motivation and incentive even if they have doubts about the person they are in a relationship with. This is because the act of giving money then becomes finite and, as seen in sunk cost fallacy, to stop prior to this would mean the financial and emotional investment of the victim’s past efforts, in terms of money sent to the fraudster and past and continued beliefs in their credibility, would be wasted, and the victim would have to face a devastating truth.

Prior to this, Ben projects a sense of panic on line 1, which can draw a protective response from victims (Reference CarterCarter 2021); he also uses ‘at the moment’ and ‘yet’, which offer a sense of temporality, bringing the issue to the immediate present and encouraging a rapid response (Reference CarterCarter 2023). He then follows this with a statement that acknowledges there have been other payments by Amy to him ‘all the money’ (line 2), which he will return. Crucially, this is tempered with the use of ‘but’ (line 2), which acts as a condition of return; Amy must first perform another act. This act is not made explicit; it is euphemistically referred to as ‘something for us’ (line 3) which achieves two ends: it enables Ben to avoid specifically mentioning money again and drawing attention to what is another financial request, as well as reframing the act as not another one-way transfer of money from Amy to him but as something that benefits the both of them. Ben’s turn is bookended by terms of endearment ‘My Angel’ (line 1) and ‘sweetheart’ (line 3), which perform a type of love bombing, particularly prevalent in interactions where the perpetrator’s requests or behaviours may cause concern or alarm to the recipient. In this case, as in many, this takes the form of another request for money.

In Extract 58, the fraudster (D) uses visceral responses to present his request for money as a desperate need, brought about by medical necessity and hastened by the physical pain he claims to be experiencing, which is causing severe psychological harm. The use of the word ‘this’ in the fraudster’s turn ‘If I had this 3 k’ (line 2) orients the victim to a specific 3 k that needs to be obtained, from her, personalising it as her problem and isolating her as the source of the money. This increases the pressure on the victim to comply quickly, and to avoid the possible harm to his life described in his following turns.

The fraudster is claiming that he would have ‘solved this issue’ (line 2) himself if he had the means, but as he hasn’t, the desperation and life-threatening nature of the situation demands that he ask others for help. This is a type of othering that relies on the situation to apply the pressure rather than the individual’s whim; othering is also seen in the use of ‘issue’ (line 2) and ‘obstacles’ (line 5) which serves to distance the fraudster from the specifics of the situation that this money is required to resolve. The vagueness also allows the ‘situation’ to remain wider and ongoing, and potentially the source of further, repeat requests for money, and closes off opportunities for the victim to interrogate the situation for discrepancies or concerns.

In the first line of Extract 59, the fraudster describes himself as ‘good. Just lil upset’ (line 1). Although most of the victim responses have been redacted from this exchange (at the victim’s request), it is clear that the fraudster is using an extreme visceral response, a threat to life, in response to his (fictitious) difficult situation, a jarring counterpart to his prior turn. This is used to compel a protective response from the victim, which he compounds by explicitly directing the victim to ‘assist’ him (line 5) after telling her he is suicidal at that very moment.

Following the victim’s offer to come and see him, in his next turn he then mitigates the criticality of his request by recategorising it as ‘support’ (line 7 and, later still, something to ‘help me with’ on line 9). This is further tempered through his use of ‘just’, which directs the victim away from immediate physical assistance and acts as a way to highlight that the route to help him is through money, and serves to minimise the subsequent financial disruption to the victim (Reference CarterCarter 2023). He then continues by further reducing the burden on the victim by describing his financial need as ‘any amount’ (line 9), depending on what she can offer him (line 11) and something to add to/support what he has raised already (lines 5 and 7), suggesting that he is not entirely reliant on the victim, and that she has some agency in this.

Navigating Victim Refusals and Direct Challenges

But what happens when requests or demands for money are refused or rejected by the victim? Earlier we explored how fraudsters reject requests that they cannot service while maintaining the romantic facade; in this section we see victims rejecting the fraudsters’ requests for money, and responses by fraudsters to victims who have challenged their authenticity and credibility. Refusals from the victim can occur for a variety of reasons: Extracts 60–65 are cases where the victim has refused to continue sending the fraudster money. It is in these interactions we see the fraudster increasing in aggression and escalating the relationship status in their attempts to convince the victim otherwise.

The following exchange occurs when the victim does not want to give the fraudster any more money. The premise of needing money is predicated on a ‘deal’ the fraudster needs to do. In Extract 60, the fraudster leverages the narrative that the victim has not only joint responsibility for their success (encapsulated in her use of ‘our’, ‘we’, and ‘us’ throughout), but also singles the victim out as solely responsible if ‘the deal’ fails. Money is at first referred to as supporting her (line 2) and ‘all we need to succeed’ (line 4). At the request of the victim, their responses have been removed from the extract; however, it is clear that the victim does not agree to send the money, as the fraudster’s responses throughout Extract 60 become shorter and more direct, and repetitive (with the final three turns close repeats of ‘borrow the money’, lines 6, 7, and 8).

The fraudster uses both emotional incentives and threats in her attempt to coerce the victim into giving her money. She repeatedly frames the victim giving money as allowing her or them to ‘succeed’, and she has the confidence and belief in him to do so (lines 2, 4, and 5) while also threatening him with being responsible for the failure, and for disappointing her if he doesn’t. She offers practical advice on how to raise the funds needed, suggesting that the victim doesn’t have the money that is being asked of him. By referring to his properties in the plural, the fraudster leverages knowledge about the victim that she has gleaned through their relationship so far, demonstrating how information can be weaponised and also laying bare that fraudsters don’t stop when victims have run out of money.

If we now look at what happens when a victim withdraws from the relationship after the fraudster asks him for money, in Extract 61 David first summarises his concerns, including the fraudster’s refusals to video chat and mention of investments (as seen in Extracts 50 and 51) which have led him to refuse to give Penny the £750 she had requested. Penny’s response is one of anger, describing David’s conclusions about her as being spoken down to (line 5), an insult (lines 9, 12, and 14), and disappointment (line 15). The fraudster’s ‘if I had known’ (lines 6 and 14) imply the victim has let the fraudster down and not lived up to their expectations of a romantic partner; therefore, it has been a waste of time getting to know the victim.

Penny reframes her actions that have caused David the most concern (listed on lines 1 and 2) as immediate and temporary difficulties due to her location (video call refusals), examples of her openness and honesty (talk of her dad’s estate), and as efforts to communicate and develop the relationship (intimate photos). His concerns about Penny’s legitimacy had been building over time; all of the elements here could be accepted. However, it is the ask for money that caused David to question the legitimacy of the relationship; indeed, after her request he tells her ‘I was expecting a request for money.’ Shortly after this exchange, David ended the relationship by ceasing communication and blocking Penny’s number.

Extract 62 shows the victim questioning the fraudster’s repeated requests for money. By elevating the victim’s role from girlfriend to wife, the fraudster defends and explains his requests for money by harnessing the normative expectations of married partners to share finances and assist each other. He also leverages her role as wife to portray her as his only available source of assistance and narrowing his options of help to her exclusively, based on the flattering, but in reality isolating, claim that she is the only person he trusts.

He emphasises this by referring to his life and the lives of his children, invoking a sense of duty and responsibility as wife and mother that is very specific to that one person. Similarities lie here with coercive control, where perpetrators narrow the victim’s world to create a feeling of responsibility for the abuser and their wellbeing; this is a duty that cannot be shared with others and is therefore a tool of isolation.

The use of role escalation from online dating partner to wife and mother is a common tactic, despite the improbability of either or both of these states occurring in a relationship between two parties that are yet to meet in person. However, in Extract 63, the fraudster (Bill) uses this escalation to directly attack the victim after she challenges his motives for asking her for money and questions what he really needs it for.

He issues a series of questions which give the impression of an aggressive and accusatory response, directed towards twisting the victim’s querying of his veracity as an act of harm against him. This shows the fraudster escalating not only the roles within the relationship as a tool through which he can increase the power of his response (drawing on the normative values of husband and wife and the increased expectations of truthfulness from pre to post-wedding vows), but also Bill substantially increasing his emotional real estate. He takes the victim’s question in relation to his truthfulness and overpowers it with an emotionally charged visceral response that then switches the accusation from him and onto the victim for causing him pain.

The interaction in Extract 64 shows the fraudster’s distortion of the abuser–victim paradigm, in which James B, when outed as a fraudster by Lily, produces responses that claim emotional trauma as a result of her actions. This type of emotional manipulation relies on visceral responses and redirects Lily’s legitimate claim to victimhood, claiming it for his own.

Through this interaction we can see the layers of responsibility placed on Lily by James B, and the control he attempts to exert through this; she is required to not contact him unless he wants to be contacted (lines 2 and 3), she is expected to be careful in her communications to not exacerbate (implicit, line 4) and also help heal his depression (line 6). When she does not attend to his claim to mental health difficulties, and instead nullifies them with her own counter-claim for the same difficulties (line 5), he explicitly accuses her of ‘not helping’ (line 6) and escalates his claim to threatening to leave the relationship (‘I’m gone’) and more extreme psychological trauma in claiming he is suicidal. He frames her as responsible for his decision to end his own life (lines 9 and 11), which he will do despite his feelings for her which are delivered here in contrast to his narrative of her failing him (lines 10 and 12) and of him feeling that he is a burden to her (‘so you won’t have to hear from me anymore’, line 11).

Turning a victim’s demand for their money back against the victim and using emotional escalation in response to make them feel they are doing something wrong, hurtful, or damaging, and the threat to life ‘I’m going to kill myself now’ (line 9) are also tactics commonly seen in other types of abusive relationship such as in those involving coercive control and domestic violence and abuse (Reference Fitzpatrick, Brew, Handley and PerkinsFitzpatrick et al. 2022).

This same passive aggressive response type is also present in Extract 65, delivered through the discord arising from Stuart’s dissatisfaction at the victim’s refusal to send him money. His well-prefaced turn on line 1 signals dissatisfaction with the victim’s prior turn (Reference Pomerantz, Heritage, Sidnell and StiversPomerantz and Heritage 2013) in which she refuses his request. This is topicalised through his characterisation of her refusal as ‘running away’ from him, which is contrasted with his apparent gratitude (‘thank you’, line 1) and sign-off (‘have a wonderful day’, line 3) to deliver a passively hostile turn.

The fraudster explicitly orients back to his earlier interaction with the victim in Extract 10 where Stuart delivers his belief that they will ‘always be there for each other’; he uses this to passively accuse the victim of failing to meet her promises to him. This demonstrates how the early interaction during the opening, rapport building, and scripting stages of the relationship are used for purposes beyond these tasks; they are used to elicit ‘promises’ and behavioural ideals from the victim that will then later be used to coerce the victim into acting.

Post-romance

Ending the fraudulent relationship does not necessarily signal freedom for the victim from the fraudster’s communications or the end of the financial abuse. These final extracts show interactions from romance frauds where the fraudster pivots their criminality into sextortion and threat, weaponising context they have drawn from the victim during the ‘relationship’.

In the following interaction the fraudster has moved into issuing direct threats, which centre around trying to get the victim to respond; prior to this, the victim had refused to give the fraudster any more money and had stopped replying to his messages. The move into threat mirrors the escalation often seen in domestic violence and abuse when the perpetrator senses they have lost control of the victim or they are going to leave the relationship (Reference Campbell, Webster and Koziol-McLainCampbell et al. 2003).

The fraudster first articulates the impact of the victim’s behaviour (refusing to send him money) on his emotional state (lines 1 and 2) before directly insulting her (line 3), and making explicit there will be consequences of her actions (‘because of this your act’, line 5). These consequences are jail for an unspecified reason (line 7), in addition to the more abstract threats (‘going to make you suffer’, line 6; ‘you will see what I will do’, line 11). The fraudster makes clear that his negative emotional state and the actions he will take in relation to this are the result of her actions, a typical response in domestic abuse. The physical delivery of these messages compound the harm, sent as they were in quick succession, causing the victim’s phone to be inundated with multiple messages, which can cause stress to the recipient (Reference Thomee, Eklof, Gustafson, Nilsson and HagbergThomee et al. 2007).

Placing the responsibility on the victim for the threats they experience also occurs in Extract 67, where Alastair frames the victim’s prior acts of blocking his messages as her being ‘heartless’ (line 2) and uses this to justify his subsequent threat to hurt her. He continues in his next turn to deliver an implicit threat by ‘reminding’ the victim that he has her ‘home and work address’ (line 3), which is detail that is often procured during the relationship under the guise of sending small gifts to the victim (gift-giving being a tactic also used to compel reciprocal giving, Reference WhittyWhitty 2013) or to serve an exigent need (as seen in Extract 30).

Alastair engages in narratives of love, despite the romance having ended and he has begun calling her names. The discourse marker ‘but’ in his ‘i love you but i will hurt you more now’ (line 2) reflects the conflict between his stated love and his subsequent threat(s). The link between the victim’s behaviour and his threats is suggested in his ‘now you have to pay … ’ (line 7), with the use of ‘now’ signalling a perspective shift and a change of state (moving from romancing the victim to threatening her, Reference LeeLee 2017) as a result of the actions he highlights as problematic (line 1).

Using a combination of direct threats and indirect threats, Alastair balances indirect personal threat (knowing her home and work address, line 3) with the direct threat of the shame of her ‘sex photos’ (line 4) being seen by the public and her family. He focuses in on particular elements of both of these, two countries where she could be widely recognised (China and Hong Kong) and her mum (line 5, which is recognised as the most harmful through the use of ‘even’ as an intensifier). He then details the mechanisms through which this harm will be visited upon her, and frames this as a type of imprisonment through which she will never escape (as once the photos are published online, they remain in the virtual sphere indefinitely); by virtue of paying him, this would cease his actions, and this is framed by him as ‘buying her freedom’. This phrase in itself is an act of direct extortion and is made more specific, removing any ambiguity about the threat through his promise in which, resembling a formal statement or contract of intent, he refers to himself when doing so (line 9).

Similar to Extract 67, the fraudster in Extract 68 uses his previously acquired knowledge of the victim’s address as a mechanism through which to deliver threats, although in this case the threat of physical harm is more closely oriented to than in the previous extract (‘bad people’ are in her town, line 3). The ‘remember’ on line 1 explicitly orients the victim back to when he was communicating with her under the guise of a romance. Also similar to Extract 67, his use of her specific town (anonymised here) in his threat personalises it to her and therefore makes the threat specific and more tangible.

He continues by delivering threats in relation to the ‘sex video[s]’ (line 4) and ‘niked [naked] pix [pictures]’ (line 5); the threat made personalised to the victim through the fraudster specifying the exact number of both types of intimate missive (fifteen and twenty, respectively; lines 4 and 5). This detail makes the prospect of the fraudster carrying out the threat appear more tangible and realistic, particularly given the practical prospect of the fraudster having invested time in searching through their interactions to count each photo and sex video the victim had sent him throughout their relationship; it is a reminder that he must have kept these and therefore has the tools to deliver the threat. The use of ‘and’ features in the turn-initial position on lines 2 and 4, with ‘then’ on line 8 a coordinating conjunction that links this back to the fraudster’s opening, which make the turns appear as an outcome of, and logical progression of, the initial threat. The fraudster explicitly orients to the future impact of his actions on the victim, forecasting the shame associated with sending her videos and images to family and wider society in order to increase the leverage of his threat. This is also heightened implicitly with the discord between the passive ‘don’t worry’ (line 11) and the threats before and after.

The physical threat associated with the fraudster knowing the victim’s home address is used explicitly in Extract 69, where he threatens the victim with setting fire to her house (line 4). Similar to Extract 68, the fraudster personalises the threat by telling the victim that bad actors are in her (named) home town (line 1) and have been to her house that day (lines 1–2); this increases the immediacy of the threat in terms of reality (this can physically happen, with willing bad actors), temporality (it can happen at any time), and in terms of location (they are in my town). The threat is present, explicit, and geographically near.

Following the fraudster’s set-up of the threat on line 4 with a warning (‘if you take any wrong step’, line 4) and the ensuing consequences (of burning her house down) of non-compliance, he then reveals the way in which the victim can prevent this from happening (find the money). The use of ‘the’ (line 7) in relation to this is important, as it shows the fraudster is demanding a specific amount of money that he has mentioned previously rather than money in general. Interestingly, the fraudster then issues the consequences for non-compliance, and rather than reiterating the previously set-up threat of arson, the fraudster then pivots from the physical threat to the victim’s property (and by proxy, her life) to threatening to release her ‘sex video’ to her friends on Facebook (line 8).

Similar to Extracts 67 and 71, in Extract 70 the fraudster situates his threat of harm as in response to the (potential) harm visited on him by the victim; in this case, the victim ‘tal[king] bad’ (line 1) is presented as the act that would be reciprocated with him using her information to hurt her.

This frames the victim as responsible for her own fate, framing his anger and threats as a result of her responses and his actions as a result of her failing to act correctly; this is much like the discourses found in domestic violence and abuse (DVAB) of emotional abuse and responsibalising the victim for the psychological and physical harm that befalls them (Reference Rakovec-FelserRakovec-Felser 2014).

In Extract 71, Dan blames Peggy for his business difficulties because she has not been able to send him what he considers to be enough money, and again we see the use of faux gratitude (‘thanks a lot’, line 1) which, in the context of the surrounding talk, takes on a passive aggressive form. He then weaponises the intimate photos he had previously coerced her into sending, using the threat of putting them online and showing them to her friends to compel her to send more money.

The ‘let you’ on line 2 suggests that Dan extended a level of trust to her in allowing her to get involved in his business, and it was because of this trust that he has experienced ‘all this’ (line 2) difficulty relating to his business; she is to blame because she squandered his good will. This is supported by the rest of the sentence, in which he explicitly states ‘you fucked up my work for me’ (line 2). In his next turn, Dan then forecasts the threat-to-come before delivering the threat, posed as a question about how she would feel if he showed the photos she had sent him during their relationship to her friends or posted them online (line 5). This is clearly a rhetorical question, as the prospect of this happening would undoubtedly be received with dread and an attempt to persuade the interlocutor to not do so.

The ferocity in which he pursues Peggy and accuses her reluctance to send him money as her harming his business is in direct contrast to his earlier interactions with her. In Extract 7, he advises her on ‘being careful’ about people asking for money online, while in Extract 26 he states that sharing a life with someone is more important than money, with money ‘losinh meaning’ without someone to share it with and that he would give it all up (line 21) for love. He also tells her, as part of a cautionary tale about fraudsters, that he himself ;Was talking with one woman earlier but she stopped talking to me because I refused to give her more money; Extract 7, lines 2–3). And yet later, when Peggy is in this same situation with him, he threatens her with the release of the intimate photos of her that he had persuaded her to send (Extract 35). This demonstrates the twisting of reality as the relationship progresses, and how even deeply contrasting claims and actions by the fraudster can be framed and mitigations delivered.