This study analyzes love fraud, or romance scamming, as a form of scripted interaction conducted within a commercial transaction frame. The core participants are the seller, identified as the fraudster, and the buyer, who becomes the victim, with the goods framed as a long-term romantic relationship and the money representing the payment demanded from the victim. The analysis relies on fifty-three conversations between the fraudsters and the author, offering direct material to observe how the exchange is framed and enacted. In this view, romance is treated as a purchasable asset, traded within the dynamics of a market-like interaction where emotional engagement is leveraged to achieve financial ends. The romantic scam frame is activated through deliberate language use and lexical choices designed to win the victim’s trust. The process proceeds in a progression of stages or subframes, each guiding the victim toward the transfer of a large sum of money. These subframes correspond to distinct subformats of an authentic script or format employed by romance scammers in West Africa, suggesting that the deception draws on culturally