Fraud Prevention Expert take on romance scams
I work as a Fraud Prevention Analyst with many years of experience in banking. Our institution has a very advanced fraud monitoring system, and analysts regularly block suspicious card and wire transactions. In roughly 90% of cases, we successfully stop the transfer before the money is lost.
The frustrating part is what happens next.
Even after customers are clearly informed that they are victims of a scam, many still insist on sending the money. They sign liability forms acknowledging the risk and proceed with the transfer anyway, or they withdraw the funds and send them through other methods.
Romance scams are by far the worst for this. Our department prevents the vast majority of these fraud attempts, yet many victims still continue sending money despite repeated warnings and evidence that they are being manipulated.
At some point it stops being a technical fraud-prevention problem and becomes a psychological/social engineering problem. No matter how many systems, alerts, blocks, or interventions are in place, some victims are so emotionally invested that they will find a way to continue.