Skip to main content

Online-Dating Romance Scam in Malaysia: An Analysis of Online Conversations between Scammers and Victims

Shaari, AH. ; Kamaluddin, MR. ; Paizi@Fauzi, WF. ; Mohd, M. (2019) — GEMA Online® Journal of Language Studies

View Original Source (opens in a new tab)

DOI: 10.17576/gema-2019-1901-06 (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   Malaysia
Tags:   Content Analysis, Deceptive Language, Financial Requests, Malaysia, Online Conversations, Online Dating Romance Scam, Persuasion, Politeness Strategies
Citation tools
Download RIS Download BibTeX 


              
              

            

          

        


      

      

    

        
Transparency

        
Evidence and review status

        
This page contains AI-generated content. No human content review or subject-matter-expert review is recorded.

    


    

                    

                
Source basis

                

                    Downloaded PDF
                

            

                    

                
AI-generated page content

                

                    Yes
                

            

                    

                
Automated checks

                

                    Passed
                

            

                    

                
Administrative approval

                

                    Yes
                

            

                    

                
Human content review

                

                    Not recorded
                

            

                    

                
Subject-matter-expert review

                

                    Not recorded
                

            

            


    

        
            How this was prepared
        
        

                            

                    
Source basis

                    

                    
RSRC downloaded and privately stored a copy of the paper for internal analysis. The PDF is not offered to viewers from this page.


                                            
    
                                                            
  • 
                                    PDF added to RSRC:
                                    
                                
    • 
                                                    

                    
                                        

                

                            

                    
AI-generated page content

                    

                    
AI-generated research notes displayed on this page: Synopsis, Identified gaps, Methods, Limitations, Future work. The paper itself is not described as AI-generated.


                                            
    
                                                            
  • 
                                    Document analysis recorded:
                                    
                                
    • 
                                                            
  • 
                                    Page record updated:
                                    
                                
    • 
                                                    

                    
                                        

                

                            

                    
Automated checks

                    

                    
The current, source-bound synopsis passed the recorded versioned publication checks.


                                            
    
                                                            
  • 
                                    Checks completed:
                                    
                                
    • 
                                                    

                    
                                            

                            
                                View passed checks (3)
                            
                            
    
                                                                    
  • Length, completeness, repetition, refusal, boilerplate, and active-markup screening
    • 
                                                                    
  • Numerical claims checked against the available source text
    • 
                                                                    
  • English-source lexical grounding check
    • 
                                                            

                        

                                        

                

                            

                    
Administrative approval

                    

                    
The record is approved for public display, but a complete historical administrator action is not recorded.


                    
                                        

                

                            

                    
Human content review

                    

                    
No human review is recorded for the AI-generated content displayed on this page.


                    
                                        

                

                            

                    
Subject-matter-expert review

                    

                    
RSRC has not recorded review of this content by a subject-matter or methods expert.


                    
                                        

                

                    

    


    

        Review-state definitions

        Found a possible error?
        Request a correction.
    



    



              

        
                  

            
Synopsis

            
This qualitative content analysis used 60 authentic scam-chat sets supplied by Malaysian victims, 50 recruited through a Facebook research page and 10 through police collaboration; every participant had made at least one payment. All chats were used to map the scam process, and 30 complete-stage conversations received detailed linguistic analysis using politeness and scam-persuasion frameworks. The authors identify initial-contact, pre-attraction, and hooked stages. Offenders used religious and trust language, attraction, and attention before requesting gift-delivery fees or money for travel, immigration, accidents, illness, or other crises. At the payment stage, language shifted toward urgency, repeated demands, threats, and warnings. Purposive selection of paying victims and complete conversations excludes targets who disengaged earlier.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies Malaysian online-dating romance-scam research as still nascent despite increasing cases. It notes that prior fraud research has focused more on phishing/Nigerian letters than mass-marketing fraud, including romance scams. The study also leaves local-accomplice phone interactions insufficiently examined because recordings were unavailable, limiting understanding of the third-party stage.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
Qualitative content analysis followed Zhang and Wildemuth’s seven-step process. Researchers purposively gathered 60 authentic scam chat sets from Malaysian victims: 50 volunteers recruited through a Facebook research page and 10 through collaboration with the Royal Malaysia Police CCID. All participants had experienced romance scams and made at least one payment. First-stage analysis of 60 chats mapped general scam stages and coding schemes; 30 chats from victims who completed all scam stages underwent detailed linguistic analysis using Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Model, alongside scam-persuasion frameworks.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The detailed linguistic analysis included only 30 purposively selected conversations from victims who had completed all scam stages and made a payment, so it does not represent earlier-disengagement or non-paying targets. Analysis of local accomplices was incomplete because their interactions occurred by phone, often in local languages, and no victim retained recordings. The authors state that this third-party stage was beyond the study’s scope.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Develop a web application that detects scam language and alerts users. Conduct correlational research on relationships among individuals’ language patterns, psychological attributes, and criminal behaviour in Malaysian romance-scam cases. The authors also anticipate that the findings can support authorities’ efforts to combat the crime and reduce victimisation.

          

              

    
    

        
Related Research Insights

        

            See how this publication connects to RSRC's living evidence syntheses through current citations and research-topic mapping.