What Every Family Should Know About Romance Scams

A person spends months building a relationship with someone they’ve never met in person. The relationship feels real. Then, quietly, the coaching begins: what to tell the bank if it asks questions. What to say if a family member gets suspicious. Don’t mention the relationship. Don’t mention the money.

That single moment — being told what to say to your own bank — is one of the clearest warning signs in financial fraud today. A legitimate partner, lender, relative, or adviser never needs you to mislead the people protecting your money.

A Problem Bigger Than Most People Realize

Romance and confidence fraud losses reported in the U.S. climbed sharply in the past year, and Americans over 60 report more online fraud losses than any other age group — often in amounts that represent a lifetime of savings. Investigators believe these figures capture only a small fraction of what actually happens, since most victims never report the crime at all, frequently out of embarrassment rather than confusion about what occurred.

These are not improvised cons. Many are run like businesses, with scripts for building trust, escalating requests, and responding when a family member starts asking questions.

Why This Matters More for the Families We Serve

At Pride Trust Services, we work with a lot of people who don’t have a conventional safety net standing behind them — older LGBTQ+ adults without adult children nearby, individuals estranged from biological family, people whose closest relationships are chosen rather than given. That’s precisely the profile these schemes are built to find: people who are lonely, recently widowed or divorced, newly retired, or otherwise isolated from someone who would ask hard questions.

Cultural competency here isn’t a slogan. It means recognizing that “call your family” isn’t always a safeguard everyone has, and building protections that work for chosen family, single-person households, and clients whose support system looks different from the traditional model.

How the Pattern Usually Unfolds

• An unsolicited contact — often not on a dating app at all, but social media, a wrong-number text, or a networking message.
• The conversation moves quickly to a private messaging app, and affection escalates faster than the relationship justifies.
• Every plan to meet in person falls apart, for reasons that always sound plausible in the moment.
• A small financial request arrives — often repaid — followed by a larger one, then an investment “opportunity,” then instructions on what to tell the bank.

Five Signals to Stop and Verify — No Exceptions

• You’re asked to pay a fee or tax to withdraw your own money.
• You’re coached on what to tell your bank, custodian, or fiduciary.
• You’re asked to send funds to someone other than the person you’ve been dealing with.
• You’re asked to receive money and forward it along.
• You’re asked to keep a transaction secret from family or your fiduciary.

Any one of these, on its own, is reason enough to pause and call someone independent before another dollar moves.

What Actually Helps — And Costs Nothing

• Name a trusted contact on every financial account, and keep it current.
• Set a personal rule: no transfer above a threshold you choose, to a new payee, without a 48-hour pause and one honest conversation.
• Verify anyone you haven’t met in person independently — a reverse image search, a video call on your terms, a name search alongside the word “scam.”
• Never access an investment platform through a link someone sent you. Check any firm or adviser directly through a regulator.
• Tell the people managing your money, in writing, that you want unusual requests questioned — and that you won’t take the question as an insult.

Where a Fiduciary Fits Into This Picture

This is, in a very direct way, what a professional fiduciary is for. Part of our role — whether we’re serving as trustee, agent under a power of attorney, or daily money manager — is being the person who asks the uncomfortable question before a transfer goes out, and who isn’t afraid to slow things down. We watch for exactly the patterns described above: a client suddenly secretive about a new relationship, a request to wire funds to someone we’ve never heard of, a story that changes when we ask a second question.

If you’re building a plan for yourself or a loved one and want a second set of eyes that has seen these patterns before, that’s a conversation worth having — before there’s a problem, not after.

If You Suspect It’s Already Happening

Speed matters. Stop sending money immediately, and don’t send a final payment to “unlock” anything. Call your bank and custodian using a number you look up yourself — not one given to you. Preserve every message, username, and transaction record. Report it the same day to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (ic3.gov) and, where an older or vulnerable adult is involved, to Adult Protective Services through the Eldercare Locator. And be wary of anyone who contacts you afterward offering to recover the funds for a fee — that offer is frequently the second scam.

The One Sentence Worth Saying Now

The most protective thing in all of this costs nothing and takes one sentence, said before there’s ever a problem: “If anyone ever tells you to keep money — or a relationship — secret from me, that’s the moment to call me.” Say it to the people who manage your finances. Say it to the people who love you. It may be the sentence that stops the whole thing.

Contact Pride Trust Services for more information!

General educational content only; not legal, financial, or individualized advice, and not based on any client matter. Figures cited are drawn from published FBI and FTC fraud-reporting data as of publication and are subject to revision.