Recognise the stages of a romance scam before any money is asked for.
Open the messaging apps on your phone and look for anyone you talk to often but have never met in person: someone who came from a dating app, a social media follow or a message sent to the wrong number. Keep those names in mind as you read. Most romance scams start quietly, and nobody asks for money in the first week, or the second. The warning signs show up in how the contact behaves, long before any money is mentioned.
A romance scam is one where the scammer spends weeks building something that feels like a real relationship, and asks for money only once you trust them more than the people warning you about them. It develops in four stages: first contact, weeks of attention, the hidden face, and the first crisis.
Picture a text from an unknown number: "Hi Mei Ling, is the dinner still on for Saturday?" You reply that they have the wrong person. The sender apologises, warmly and a little funnily, and explains they have just moved to Singapore for work and know nobody. You chat for ten minutes. The next morning, a "good morning" message is waiting (an invented example; Mei Ling is only the name in the text, not a real person).
First contact comes from one of three places. On a dating app, the profile is attractive but not too perfect. On social media, a stranger likes your posts and then sends a friendly message. A "wrong number" text, like the one above, gives an innocent reason to start talking.
Within days, sometimes hours, the contact suggests moving to WhatsApp, Telegram or another private chat app. The reasons they give sound harmless: they are hardly ever on this app, or it is easier to send photos there. The real reason is control. Dating apps and social networks can flag and remove scam accounts. Private chat apps do this too: WhatsApp, for example, detects and bans accounts linked to scam centres as part of its own work to protect users.
The profile usually comes with a story explaining why they cannot meet soon. They work on an oil rig, are a doctor with an overseas aid group, are an engineer on a project abroad, or have just arrived and are busy settling in. Make a note of this story, because the scammer relies on it heavily later.
Stage two is what makes romance scams different from the phone scams in module 2: there is no urgency at all. The scammer messages every day, often several times. Good morning, good night, questions about your work, your family, your bad day. They remember details from last week and follow up on them. For someone who is lonely, recently divorced, widowed, or simply busy and tired, this kind of attention is very hard to resist.
The attention follows a script. Scam groups run conversations in shifts and keep notes on each target, so the person you are talking to never forgets a detail and always has time to talk.
Talk of the future comes next: visiting Singapore, meeting your parents, buying a flat together, retiring somewhere quiet. Shared plans create a feeling of commitment, and the scammer draws on that commitment later when asking for money. By this point many victims would call the person their partner, even though they have never been in the same room.
Real people in long-distance relationships video call. Romance scammers avoid it, because the profile photos belong to someone else, often taken from a real person's social media. The excuses vary: the camera is broken, the connection on the rig is bad, video is not allowed at work. When a call does happen, it is short, dark or blurry, or the video freezes after a few seconds. Some scammers now use face-swapping or voice-cloning tools to get through a brief call; the course "AI risks: privacy, bias, deepfakes and scams" covers these tools in depth.
Meeting in person is always about to happen and never does. A flight is booked, then cancelled at the last minute. A visa is delayed. A project runs over. Each delay comes with an apology and a new date, which keeps your hope going.
The first request almost never sounds like a request. It sounds like an emergency that has happened to them, and you are the only one they can turn to.
Priya, 34, has been talking to Daniel for seven weeks (an invented example). Daniel says he is a civil engineer on a project in Turkey and is meant to fly to Singapore next month. One evening he messages her in a panic. His bank account has been frozen during an audit, and the hospital will not treat his daughter without a deposit of S$2,800. He promises to pay her back the moment the account is released, and says he is embarrassed to ask. Priya sends the S$2,800.
The crisis might be a medical bill, a customs fee on a parcel of gifts sent to you, a frozen account, a fine at an airport, or a ticket to finally come and see you. The shape stays the same each time: a sudden problem, a sum that feels manageable, a promise to repay, and a reason it has to be you.
After the first payment, more crises follow. The customs fee turns out to need a tax. The released account needs a clearance charge. Each one looks like the last obstacle before you finally meet. Some versions turn into an investment pitch at this point instead of a crisis; lesson 5.2, "Pig-butchering: romance plus a fake investment", covers those.
None of these signs proves a scam on its own, so each one is easy to explain away as it comes. Taken together, they form a pattern you can check someone's behaviour against:
First contact: a stranger, wrong number or dating match who wants to move to private chat quickly. Weeks of attention: constant messages, fast declarations of feeling, talk of a shared future before you have met. Hidden face: video calls avoided or cut short, and meetings that keep falling through. Crisis: a sudden emergency, a request for money, and a reason they cannot ask anyone else.
When the first request for money comes, apply the stop-and-check rule from lesson 1.3. After weeks of attention and shared plans, this is also the moment you are least willing to use it, so recognising the earlier stages gives you the chance to step back before the request arrives.
Some of these signs are loud and some are easy to miss. In the activity, you'll go back through each stage and decide which sign you think would slip past you, or past someone you care about.
For each stage of a romance scam, write down the warning signs, then mark the one you think would be easiest to miss.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).