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Misunderstanding Victims of Romance Fraud

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“Once you engage with a fraudster, even if you haven’t sent them any money, the fact that you’ve engaged, your name goes on what’s called a ‘sucker list.’” - Becky Holmes Share on X

The media loves sensationalized romance scams, but we need to understand that anyone can be emotionally seduced and it's not just the lonely. No one is off limits to being targeted, no matter the age, status, or career. And the impact is far greater than just financial.

Today’s guest is Becky Holmes. Becky is the creator and voice behind the popular Twitter account Death to Spinach. Becky’s book Keanu Reeves is Not in Love With You looks at all aspects of romance fraud, from the heartbreaking to the hilarious, the academic to the anecdotal, and discusses where we’ve gone wrong in dealing with those affected.

“Victims of romance fraud are generally assumed to be lonely, middle-aged women, desperate for a man, with no self-respect. These are horrible stereotypes.” - Becky Holmes Share on X

Show Notes:

“Financial loss is secondary in terms of what has damaged them the most. People feel such horrible shame and guilt and it's something that affects how they view themselves.” - Becky Holmes Share on X

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Transcript:

Becky, thank you so much for coming on the Easy Prey Podcast today.

Thank you for having me. It's great.

I'm looking forward to this. Can you give myself and the audience a little bit of background about who you are and what you do?

OK. My name is Becky Holmes. I run a Twitter account called Death to Spinach, where I spend a lot of time wasting the time of romance fraudsters.

That's really short. How long have you been doing that for?

You know how bored everybody was during lockdown and how just absolutely horrendous it was? I started doing all of this wasting their time during lockdown purely for something to do. I hadn't even got a Twitter account up until that point, but it was the last thing I had left to do. I'd done so many jigsaws, so many paint-by-numbers, and I'd watched everything on Netflix that there possibly was to watch.

I set up a Twitter account. I immediately had so many young, handsome soldiers, oil rig workers, etc., message me and tell me how great I was. Because so many of them messaged me all in one go, it was very easy to see that something was afoot. If it had maybe just been one person that had messaged me, things might be very different, and I might not be sitting here now telling you about this.

The fact that there were so many made it obvious that it was not right. I started coming up with the most insane things I could to see if I could get them to break character, and they never did. It became so fascinating to me, I was having such fun, and putting all these conversations up on Twitter. But as an unintended consequence, actually people started messaging me and saying, “I have been a victim of romance fraud, and I've lost X, Y, Z amount of money. I'd like to tell somebody about it.”

So, I became a sounding board to a few people who hadn't told anybody else about their experiences. It meant that I could see straight away, I guess, how misunderstood the subject is. From then on, I've become completely obsessed with this subject.

Interesting. I definitely want to get to the misunderstood portion of this. Aside from the I've got nothing else to do, why did you choose to try to engage with romance scams as a form of entertainment or curiosity?

It was really because like I said, I joined Twitter thinking that it would be something to do, something where I wasn't watching the news all the time, and I could connect with people on Twitter. It became a hobby. Silly as that is, it became a hobby.

I didn't really think too much about what I was doing, I just knew that I was entertaining myself. It just so happened that it was always romance fraudsters who got in touch with me. It wasn't that I decided specifically to speak to them. I had no choice. It was always them that got in touch.

So interesting. We'll come back to some stuff, but I want to go down this line. Once you started posting your interactions with romance scammers on your Twitter feed, did you still continue to get people reaching out to you, like scammers?

Absolutely, and it still hasn't stopped today. I still get them today.

That's so interesting.

What I found is that once you engage with a romance fraudster, even if you haven't sent them any money, which I haven't, the fact that you've engaged, your name goes on what they call a sucker's list. A little bit like with cold calling, your details get sold on. The more you engage with them, the more lists you get sold onto. Of course, there's me spending all day every day chatting away to these horrible people in God-knows-where, and it just means that I get more and more of them.

That just baffles me that they haven't bothered to even look at your page to see that you're outing romance scammers.

I think what it is, they target hundreds of women at any one time. They never take any notice. Until you actually engage with them, they don't even look at your profile. It's a bit like on a dating app. A fraudster will join a dating app, and he will just press like on every single woman. It doesn't matter what her requirements are, whether he is going to be in any way what she's looking for, but he just presses like on everyone because he wants that one person to bite.

Interesting. Let's define romance scams from your perspective. I think a bunch of the listeners have an idea, but let's make sure we're all on the same page here.

Romance fraud, I would say, is when a perpetrator starts a relationship with somebody for fraudulent purposes. That's very, very often money because they want some financial gain. But at the same time, it might not be. -Becky Holmes Share on X

Yeah. Romance fraud, I would say, is when a perpetrator starts a relationship with somebody for fraudulent purposes. That's very, very often money because they want some financial gain. But at the same time, it might not be.

There's somebody I know who was the victim of romance fraud, but actually never handed any money over. It was absolutely down to power. This man was leading a double life. Actually, no, not just a double life, a life of many different women. It's still a fraudulent relationship because it's not true. But more often than not, there is a financial element involved.

Yeah. The end game is how I separate this person from their money.

Yeah.

That's awful. When you've had people approach you wanting to tell you their story and you say this space is very misunderstood, can we talk about that? What are people misunderstanding about this space?

I could talk about that specifically for hours. There are a number of things. I think firstly, I don't know what it's like over in the States. I suspect it's the same. But over here, victims of romance fraud are generally assumed to be lonely, middle-aged women desperate for a man, no self-respect, they're happy to give their money away, all these horrible stereotypes.

That's not the case. I'm sure there are a lot of middle-aged women out there who have become victims of romance fraud—of course there are—but there are also people in their 20s and people in their 70s, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, of every different socioeconomic group as well. It's very misunderstood in that it can be anybody. It's also very misunderstood that it only happens to people of, I guess, low intelligence.

I interviewed a CEO, a lawyer. One of the people that I interview in the book is a UK detective who deals with fraud. It's hard because I think the media always want to sensationalize what happens. To do that, they need to find somebody who's prepared to be in the press to look very disappointed in their photographs and to come out with a particular story. But there's so much more to it than that, and I would love to be able to get people to understand that.

I know we were talking earlier about what we're getting wrong with people who are affected. Aside from assuming that there's a stereotype, what are we getting wrong about helping people who've been through this experience?

Again, I can only really speak from the UK, but there's no victim support here, specifically for romance fraud. We have a lot of not-for-profit organizations. We have one called Victim Support, we have Citizens Advice Bureau. We have a lot of places where people can go to if they need help, but the problem is, romance fraud is such a specific kind of crime.

It's very odd in that it's a financial crime, but it's also a very, very emotional crime, so it needs a very particular type of handling and there's nothing like that here. There are a couple of organizations, but neither of them are funded. We're doing people a big disservice because we don't deal with it. The police don't deal with it very well here either.

Is part of that some, “Well, the other person's overseas; there's just nothing we can do”? The assumption is that the person is overseas, I should probably say.

Yeah. Actually, you're not wrong. When I first started writing, I thought, “Right, that's it. I'm going to dispel this myth that so many of this is coming from abroad, and I'm going to be really right on.” Actually, I discovered that there is a huge chunk of romance fraud that still comes from West Africa, specifically Nigeria and Ghana, and more recently Southeast Asia with the so-called pig butchering scams.

You're right when you talk about jurisdictions, because for UK police, once they find out that a perpetrator is overseas, they're so under-resourced as it is. Going after somebody in Ghana for the sake of £5000, they're just not going to be able to do it.

I don't want to say that they view it as a victimless crime, but in their mind, it's only a financial loss. The person voluntarily sent their money away, so therefore they're minimizing it because of that.

I would never be able to say in any way that I believe it's a victimless crime, because even if somebody was to get their money back, which is so rare, the damage has been done in terms of their own peace of mind. -Becky Holmes Share on X

I think this is part of how misunderstood it is, question from earlier. I would never be able to say in any way that I believe it's a victimless crime, because even if somebody was to get their money back, which is so rare, the damage has been done in terms of their own peace of mind.

One thing that I'm always told by victims of romance fraud is that the financial loss is secondary in terms of what's damaged them the most, because people feel this shame, this horrible, horrible shame and this guilt. It's something that affects the way that they view themselves as well. They find it very hard to start trusting their own judgment again.

I think so many of the people that I've interviewed have said that they would give that money away again if they could get back their feelings about themselves that they had before the crime took place. As I was saying before, it's a very, very emotional crime. Yes, you are losing financially. In some cases, people are left broke. However, somebody takes away the future that you thought you were going to have as well.

One thing that I'm always told by victims of romance fraud is that the financial loss is secondary in terms of what's damaged them the most, because people feel this shame, this horrible, horrible shame and this guilt. -Becky… Share on X

You believe that you’ve—and this is my least favorite expression of all time—fallen for, you know, a scam. Therefore, you have this shame and this guilt. You don't want to tell anybody. So many people become isolated because they withdraw from friends and family, because they don't want to talk about what's happened.

Yeah. I think that's definitely the case. There's so much shame and embarrassment, not just under romance scams, but even cyber security things that people feel like, “Oh, God. How could this have happened to me? What did I do wrong?” That mentality. Or, “I should have known better,” that philosophy.

Something that I talk about a lot over here is the need to change language. We talk about people falling for scams, and I absolutely hate it, because what other crime do we talk about that? We never say, “Oh, God, I fell for a burglary last night,” or, “I was on my way home and I fell for a mugging.” It doesn't happen because the way that language works is that we're then saying that the victim is, in some way, complicit in this; they just walked into it, whereas it's a crime that happened to them.

I think it's something that's always driven me mad, that expression. It perpetuates this myth of the romance fraud victim being some kind of bumbling fool who just trips into a scam. It doesn't happen like that. It can take weeks, months, over a year, before somebody ever gives any money.

I want to interrupt and ask a question, or interrupt the thought process here and ask a question. As I was talking about, if professionals can be affected by cyber security things and scams even beyond romance scams, how much more does the general population feel bad about themselves for the shame? I want to ask you, and I've talked about it before, I've been affected by scams here and there and things afterwards that I've said, “I should have known better.” It was a fake vendor, and I lost some money there. That phrase is so naturally rolling off the tongue.

I know. I think this is something we have to address because I still do it as well. There are several times where I've been presenting or I've been speaking to people, and I've nearly said it. None of us mean it that way, but I've nearly said it, and I've had to stop myself. It's so difficult to get out of the habit of.

Yes. Let me rephrase the question with more proper wording. Have you ever personally been affected by any type of scam?

In terms of something that's happened to me online, which is what I write about, no. However, there's something that I wrote about in the book. I think the reason why I felt so comfortable speaking to people who I interviewed is that I was with a man. We were very serious. When we met through a dating app, everything was fine.

He never asked me for money, never. However, over a course of a year, he drained my bank through very, very subtle…a debt would come in, he'd be very, very upset, and I would pay it off. It's something needed doing with the car, and he would talk about how upset he was. He might cry, and I would pay for it.

I ended up spending all of my savings on this person, and he drove me mad, quite literally. When I look back on the lies that he told me and this coercive control that he had over me, I realize now how similar to romance fraud that was. Although he never asked me for money, that's damn sure what he wanted, and I handed it over because he was very, very good.

When people say, “Oh, don't ever give money to people you don't know” and this, that, and the other, I can say, “Well, even if you do know them, it doesn't make any difference.” It's always been very interesting to me how coercive control is at the very center of any kind of romance fraud because it's exactly what I experienced as well.

This tying you up in knots, isolating you from friends and family, gaslighting you, telling you all these insane lies, and you start to lose track of what's true and what's not—it’s absolutely fascinating. I know now that, absolutely, I got taken for all of that money. It took me years to realize that it was, in some ways, a scam. Very sophisticated.

This tying you up in knots, isolating you from friends and family, gaslighting you, telling you all these insane lies, and you start to lose track of what's true and what's not—it’s absolutely fascinating. -Becky Holmes Share on X

Was it that he was playing the victim of life, that scenario, everything, all these things that were happening to him, he's just the poor victim, he's a good guy, and the world has just been rough to him?

Very much so. I'm not going to give it away because I did write about it. In fact, there was one point when I was writing something that he had told me, this ridiculous lie. I was typing it, and I just burst out laughing because I thought, “What was I thinking listening to that? What nonsense?” It was so, so bizarre what he told me.

I didn't believe this particular lie that he told me. However, I chose to brush it away, to move it away out of my mind, because I didn't want to believe that this man that I was in love with was a liar. I didn't want to have to possibly entertain that idea, so I just pushed it away.

It's interesting. I looked quite closely into the idea of confirmation bias, which is huge in romance fraud and, in fact, probably every scam, I would think. You see what you want to see, and you discount the bits that you don't want to know about. It's exactly what happened. It's exactly what I did.

You see what you want to see, and you discount the bits that you don't want to know about. -Becky Holmes Share on X

It's only now that I'm so far out of the other side, and I've come to terms with everything that's happened. It's only now where I do occasionally just find myself laughing at how preposterous the whole thing was.

Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it, because I really want to destigmatize those that are impacted by these types of scams. It's people with criminals with a lot of experience in coercion, control, manipulation. We don't train people how not to be manipulated in life. It's not like there's a college prep course for manipulation prevention 101.

It's a shame there isn't. There should be.

Yeah, just like we need courses on how to detect fake news and discerning what's real on social media and what's not. We really need to train people that have the skills to identify when someone's trying to manipulate them in a negative way, because sometimes we're manipulated to do good things as well.

Of course. I think one of the problems that makes it much harder with romance fraud is that you're dealing with the heart. You know what we're all like. We all want to be loved, we all want to love someone. Unlike any other type of crime, it's really hard to make somebody see what they're part of if they're involved in a romance fraud because you just don't want to see it. If you believe that you're in a relationship with somebody, you will try and stand up for that person. It's a really tough one.

Yeah. How quickly have you seen in your dealings with people that have been initiating with you because you're on all these lists, how quickly do they try to establish and solidify a relationship?

It's very quickly. Generally, what happens is—and I'm only going by the people who I've dealt with personally, although there are a lot of those—what tends to happen is somebody will message. In my case, it tends to be through Twitter or Instagram, but I know a lot of people get messaged on Facebook, some even on LinkedIn, which I was amazed about. They will say, “Hello, how are you?”

As soon as you reply, they will start asking you a lot of questions about yourself. It tends to be the first one is, “Are you married with kids?” As soon as you say, “No, I'm not married,” that's bingo. They will start to, I guess, woo you straight away by asking you a lot of questions. “What do you do? What do you feel about this?” Even things like, “What's your favorite color?” All these things to make you think that they're interested, and you start to get this little, maybe it's a little romantic glow.

As soon as they think that they've got you, they try to get you off that messaging platform and onto something encrypted. Their accounts can be shut down on Twitter or Instagram. If they can get you onto WhatsApp or something like that, they've got you forever. They're very, very quick. They need to get it all done before they get kicked off their account.

As soon as they think that they've got you, they try to get you off that messaging platform and onto something encrypted. Their accounts can be shut down on Twitter or Instagram. If they can get you onto WhatsApp or something like… Share on X

Yeah. Is there a preferred communication platform, WhatsApp, or what other platforms are they trying to get you over to?

Google chat, usually. It used to be called Google Hangouts. It's based on your email address. You just set up a Google chat email account, and it works a little bit like WhatsApp does. There's also one called Viber who I've spoken to people about. I've not used it myself, but it's anything where it's encrypted, which means that it can't be traced back to them, they can't be told to leave, and they can't be found. Whenever anybody says to me what's a red flag for a romance fraudster, the first thing I always say is if they try to get you off a platform straight away.

Whenever anybody says to me what's a red flag for a romance fraudster, the first thing I always say is if they try to get you off a platform straight away. -Becky Holmes Share on X

Yeah. That's a good indicator because they know at some point, that account's going to get shut down. They want you away from it before that ever happens.

Yeah, precisely. Precisely, yeah.

When you were talking about saying, “Oh, I'm surprised it even happens on LinkedIn,” both myself and my wife for probably a period of about six months, both saw a significant uptick in young men or women, depending on which of us they were contacting. It was just these polite but odd introductions. “Hey, I'm so and so from whatever. You look like an interesting person.”

Usually, it's a sales pitch. “Hey, I could get more traffic to your website, I can promote your podcast, or I've got this coaching service.” When someone approaches and says, “You look like an interesting person,” I've never interacted with somebody like that on LinkedIn.

Yeah. It's odd and it's a bit creepy.

Yes. I start to look at their history, look at their profile. It's just weird. They've got education, they've got a job pathway that doesn't look normal. I was in this industry doing this, and now I'm in this entirely different industry doing something totally different. But if you just glance at the profile, it looks reasonable.

They would ask odd questions. “Oh, I'd love to get to know you better and understand more about what you do. I've got my own business, and I'd like to bounce some stuff off of you.” It's like, “You don't know who I am, you don't know what I do or don't know about business.” Then the accounts would always get deleted pretty quick. Luckily, it's gone away.

I'll tell you where else romance frauds do hang out, and that is playing online games. They probably do like games where you have to go on and join other people in the world. I don't know anything about those, but if you play online Scrabble, for example, there's loads of them, absolutely tons of them. They'll send a message.

You could be playing Scrabble with somebody. You don't really talk, you just play the letters and it's fine. But then you'll start a new game, and it'll say, “Hi, how are you?” And you think, “Oh, God, here we go.” “You're really good at this game; I'd like to get to know you better.” You think, “Oh, what, because you've got a fetish about women who like playing Scrabble?”

They are everywhere. Fraudsters are everywhere. I'm at the point now in life where whenever I hear of a new one, I don't even get cross anymore. I literally do this.

Oh, that platform. OK. What are some of the more hilarious interactions that you've had with these scammers?

The ones I like are when they're pretending to be celebrities, because I think you can just have so much fun. Let's say it's Liam Neeson, for example, because recently I had someone pretending to be Liam Neeson. They'll say, “How long have you been my fan?” At this point, I always say, “Oh, about five years ever since I saw”—normally, you would put in the name of a film that they've done, but I will always put in something completely bizarre, which I won't give an example of on here because they're very, very inappropriate. People will have to go on to my Twitter and have a look.

I'll put in something, “Oh, since I saw you in XYZ in 2011,” and I'll think you must pick that up, but it will be, “Oh, great, lovely. So nice to meet you, my fan.” The ones who pretend to be the celebrities, whenever I get a new one message me, I think I have the opposite reaction to everyone else in the world. I go, “Yes, thank you.”

I've seen these. I don't want it to mean people, but who's the guy who plays Aquaman?

Jason Momoa.

Yeah. “This is my secret Instagram account, and I really want to get to know you better, so I'm reaching out to you.” I guess, maybe, we all want to be noticed, and we all want to be seen, that it plays on that aspect of our own characters of wanting that.

Yeah. The celebrity ones are interesting because when I first started playing around with these fraudsters, I would think, “Why on earth would you send money to somebody who's clearly a multimillionaire?” That was what went through my head for ages.

Until I started doing a lot of research and realized that the people pretending to be celebrities hit you up in a very different way to the people pretending to be a soldier, an oil rig worker, or something because someone pretending to be Keanu Reeves isn't going to say, “Hi, I'm Keanu Reeves. Could you send me a hundred pounds because I'm a bit short at the moment?” Everyone's going to say no.

What they do instead is have a series of different ways to get money out of you. The most common one is saying that their management wants to instigate a meet-and-greet. What this is, so the celebrity will talk to you for ages, in a sense, wooing you, saying that they think you've got a great rapport and all the rest of it. They'd really like to meet you, but their management is insisting on doing some meet-and-greet sessions in wherever it is that you've told them that you live, so let's just say London.

There are three levels of meet-and-greet available. For the top price of 1500 quid, you can actually meet them in person. You can have dinner together. The celebrity really hopes that you go for that one because they feel that you've got something special. There's that one.

Another one, which is really successful, is when they say that they're supporting a charity. This is a great one because they will make you believe that they couldn't possibly want anything to do with somebody who wouldn't help support their charity. The fraudsters who are really good will start looking at things that have happened in the world.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, for example, there were suddenly tons and tons of these accounts asking for money to help the war effort. The same with what's happening in Gaza at the moment; there's been more requests from so-called celebrities asking for money to help with humanitarian aid. There are ways that they lure people in.

Yeah. They're not saying, “I'm short of money, and you need to give me money,” but, “Oh, I'm really passionate about this humanitarian effort. It would so inspire me if you were to participate with me in supporting this charity.”

Exactly, yeah. Don't get me wrong, I've been messaged by a lot of people pretending to be Keanu Reeves saying that they need a hundred-pound Amazon voucher because they've got no credit on their phone or something. I have had a lot of those. The more successful ones will try a different approach.

Is that where you drew the name for your book?

Yeah. Keanu Reeves is an interesting one because he's not on any social media—absolutely none. Yet, he is the most impersonated celebrity. I think he's got this real nice-guy image. The men want to be him, the women want to be with him. He's one of those kind of characters.

He's famously used all the time, even so much so that his publicist came out in the last couple of years and said, “Look, we are aware that this is happening. If anybody messages you pretending to be Keanu Reeves, it is not him.” But it didn't stop. Also, with Elon Musk now taking away the blue tick from celebrities, it means that anybody who wants to pretend to be Keanu Reeves can buy a blue tick, and they look more legit.

Also, with Elon Musk now taking away the blue tick from celebrities, it means that anybody who wants to pretend to be Keanu Reeves can buy a blue tick, and they look more legit. -Becky Holmes Share on X

I think one of the things with Keanu Reeves, and maybe why he's such a popular figure to use, is there are so many news stories about him riding the subway, walking down the street in New York and giving money to a homeless guy. There's this impression that, “Oh, he's a guy just like me.”

He's a man of the people.

He's a man of the people. He's not this stuck-up celebrity, so of course he'd be willing to chat with anybody.

Exactly. This is what I mean. Men love him, women want to be with him. Everybody likes him because he's just seen as a decent human being. There's not many of them in Hollywood by all accounts. Let's face it, he's not too bad looking either.

As we work towards wrapping up here, I guess a couple of questions: How should we be treating people when we hear they've been affected by a romance scam? What's going to be the most impactful way to provide support or connect with them and help them in their journey?

Helping people who've been the victim of romance fraud is a very tricky thing because it's so specific to what they need. However, the one thing that everybody needs is understanding and kindness. Nobody needs to be told they're stupid. No one needs to be told that they're naive or gullible. And no one needs to be told that there's nothing they can do because this bloke lives out of the country.

What needs to happen is they need to be listened to when they report the crime. They need to be given a crime reference number. That's what happens over here. They need to be signposted to some emotional support if they need it. I think, more than anything, we should be looking out for our friends and family, and not become the kind of society where we turn our backs on people simply because we don't understand the nature of a crime.

I think, more than anything, we should be looking out for our friends and family, and not become the kind of society where we turn our backs on people simply because we don't understand the nature of a crime. -Becky Holmes Share on X

There are so many times that people say to me, “Well, you just don't send money to someone you don't know. It's as simple as that.” Nothing is as simple as that when it comes to romance fraud because as I said before, we're talking about the heart. When you're in a relationship with somebody, whether it's real or not, you think you do know them.

When you say to someone, “Well, don't send money to someone you don't know….” “I thought I did know them.” We need to be changing the language that we use when we speak to victims of romance fraud so that they don't feel like they're being vilified and made fun of. I feel really, really strongly about that.

We need to be changing the language that we use when we speak to victims of romance fraud so that they don't feel like they're being vilified and made fun of. I feel really, really strongly about that. -Becky Holmes Share on X

If someone we know is in the process and we think they're being taken advantage of in an online romance scam, how could we help them? I know so much of that behavior in that situation is the person is being told maybe not in these exact words, but the undercurrent is, “It's us against the world. Don't trust them. They’re trying to break us up.” If we're on the outside looking into that, how can we help get a person out of that or at least have a real conversation with them where they're not going to be defensive and protective, or at least break down that barrier a little bit?

Again, it's a really tough one because we're talking about trying to get in the middle between two people, who one of them feels that they're in love. There's a big similarity between what victims of romance fraud go through and victims of domestic abuse.

This being isolated, being told it's you and them against the world, the gaslighting, and all the rest of it, I'm someone that's been in that situation. I know for a fact that when friends would say to me, “You need to get rid of him because he's going to do this, he's going to do that,” I backed away from that friend because I felt that they were being aggressive. I felt that I just wanted to protect my partner.

One of my friends said to me, “Listen, I don't think this is right. I don't like what's happening here. However, this is up to you to go through this journey, but I'm not going anywhere. Should anything happen, I want you to tell me, because I don't care that anything will have happened. I just want to be there for you.”

I think that's a really good way of being. To say to somebody, “Look, I've got a funny feeling about this. I don't want to fall out about it, so I'm not going to keep bringing it up, but I think there's something off. If that turns out to be the case, please let's talk because we can sort. Whatever needs to be sorted, we can do it.”

Yeah. I'm not going to judge you, if that's the case. I'm still going to be your friend regardless of how this turns out.

Precisely, yeah.

That's probably countering everything that the abuser or the criminal is saying and doing to the person.

Yeah. They'll be saying, like you said, “It's you and me against the world. They don't understand us, they're jealous, they're this, that, and the other.” If you go in there and just say, “I'm not going to say anything bad about your partner because I don't know him. I'm not going to say anything bad. What I am going to say is that I care about you, and should anything happen, I'm here.”

I like that. That's really good. If people want to find your book, where can they find your book and what is the complete title of it?

The complete title is Keanu Reeves is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud. I actually had to read it off the front of the book there. I forgot the subtitle. It's out in the UK now. It comes out in the States beginning of April, but I believe you can buy it on Kindle already, but you can preorder on Amazon, should you wish to.

That's awesome. What is your Twitter/X handle if people want to get the blow-by-blow, up-to-the-minute updates about what's going on with the fraud in your life?

I'm not calling it X. My Twitter handle is @deathtospinach.

That's awesome. Do you invite people to tell you their stories?

I haven't done, but they're welcome to. I get a lot of people who message me directly on Twitter to say, “This has happened to me.” Sometimes they just want to tell somebody to offload. Other times they want to say, “Look, I'm someone that's come through this.” Sometimes people just want to say, “Look, this bloke pretending to be Keanu Reeves messaged me this morning; what do you think about this?” I do get a lot of people message me because as we know, my inbox is open.

We'll invite people who have been affected by romance scam just to reach out to you and say, “Hey, here's how I got through it.” Maybe it'll ring some bells in our head of how we can better help people that are facing this issue.

Absolutely, and if I can signpost anybody off to anywhere that I would help them, then of course I'll do that.

Awesome. Becky, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today.

It's been a pleasure. I've enjoyed every minute.

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