Raise a suspected scam with a friend or relative without pushing them away.
If you think a relative is caught in a romance or pig-butchering scam, ask questions and check claims with them instead of announcing a verdict. Saying "this is a scam" outright is the natural thing to do, and it is the approach most likely to go wrong.
Take your aunt. Over recent weeks she has started talking about a man called Richard. She says he is a widower and an engineer working overseas. The two of them speak every night. Last week she asked you how to send money to an overseas bank account. This week she looked worn out and said she was helping him with "a customs problem". You have just finished module 5's first two lessons, so you know what this looks like, and you are worried. How you handle the next conversation affects whether she keeps confiding in you.
By the time a scam reaches the point of asking for money, the victim has usually spent weeks, often months, in something that feels like a genuine relationship. The scammer is typically the first message she reads when she wakes and the last one before she sleeps. Your aunt is protecting someone she loves, and she is not in the frame of mind of someone weighing up a suspicious offer from a stranger.
If you call Richard a scammer, she hears an attack on him and on her own judgement at the same time. People who feel attacked like this often hold their position harder. They stick up for the scammer, stop bringing him up, and shift the conversation to places their family can't see.
The scammer has also planned for you. Many tell victims early in the relationship that their family "won't understand" or "will be jealous". When you raise a concern, she has already been given a reason to dismiss it. Lesson 1.1, "Every scam is built from the same four levers", calls this the secrecy lever, and it works well against relatives.
Shame makes things harder still. If she has already transferred money, accepting that it was a scam also means accepting that the money is lost. Carrying on believing, and carrying on paying, can feel less painful than that. Lesson 1.2, "Why clever, careful people still get scammed", showed how shame stops victims from speaking up. In a case like this it can also keep the scam going.
A question lets her look at the facts on her own terms, so it gets further than a conclusion handed to her. You are asking rather than accusing, and the answer stays hers. Open questions come from genuine curiosity, need more than a yes or no to answer, and don't have a verdict tucked inside them. With your aunt you might try:
How did the two of you first start talking? What does he do for work, and where is he based right now? What's stopped him from coming to visit so far? What happened with the customs problem, and how did it get sorted?
Let her finish each answer, and hold back any corrections for now. You aren't trying to trip her up. You want to hear the story the way she tells it. Saying it aloud is often when the victim starts to notice the holes herself, such as visits that keep getting postponed, video calls that never take place, or money that was supposed to come back.
If Richard is nudging her towards an investment, keep the same open style. You could ask which app he uses and how he came across it, whether she has withdrawn any money yet, and what happened when she tried.
Once the conversation is flowing, suggest looking at things together, and present it as your own interest. "Can you show me the app? I'm curious how it works" keeps her on side. "Show me the evidence" puts her in the position of defending him.
There are two checks you can do. If there is a platform, search for it with her in the MAS Financial Institutions Directory and the Investor Alert List, using the method from Lesson 4.2. For Richard himself, run a reverse image search on one of his profile pictures. You upload the photo to a search engine and it shows you where else the same image appears online. Scammers tend to take pictures from real people's social media accounts, so his face may turn up under another name, or on a page warning people about fake profiles.
Give her the phone and let her be the one who sees the result. A mismatch she spots for herself counts for much more with her than one you point out.
If the checks leave her uncertain, the next step is to speak to people who handle this as their job, and you don't have to make the decision for her. Offer to stay beside her while she rings her bank's official hotline or the ScamShield Helpline, whose number is on the ScamShield website. Something like "Would you like to call them together, just to check?" is enough.
Her bank can review the transfers she has already made and tell her how to stop more going out. Helpline staff deal with cases like hers every day, and they can describe what they see without the emotional load that comes with a family member saying it.
Let her choose whether to make the call. People who feel pressured usually resist, while people who feel supported usually take the help offered. If money has already left her account, turn to Lesson 8.1, "The first fifteen minutes: call the bank and freeze", for the steps and how quickly to take them.
Plenty of first conversations go badly. She might get angry or defensive, or tell you "I'll think about it" and then stop replying, and none of that means the chance has passed.
The most important thing is that she knows she can come back to you without being met with "I told you so". Tell her directly: "Whatever happens, you can tell me, and I won't be angry." If the scam carries on, there will be another crisis or another blocked withdrawal, and when that happens you want to be the person she rings.
Keep up your usual contact. Ask how her week went, and let plenty of calls pass without Richard coming up. Shame pushes people to hide any further losses, and if the family goes quiet, the scammer becomes the only voice she hears.
The first few minutes of the conversation are the hardest, and how they go depends mostly on the questions you ask. For the activity, draft three open questions of your own for someone you suspect is caught in an online relationship scam.
Write three open questions you could ask someone you think is in an online relationship scam.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).