Skip to main content

Online romance scams and victimhood

Sorell, T. ; Whitty, M. (2019) — Security Journal

View Original Source (opens in a new tab)

DOI: 10.1057/s41284-019-00166-w (opens in a new tab)

Type:   Journal Article
Country:   United Kingdom
Tags:   Epistemic Ethics, Grooming, Hyperpersonal Relationships, Moral Responsibility, Online Dating, Psychology, Repeat Victimisation, Romance Scams, Shared Responsibility, Victim Experience, Victimhood
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

            
Online romance scams target users of dating platforms by siphoning substantial sums of money and inflicting meaningful psychological distress. Those affected frequently blame themselves for the losses and also face blame from others. The focus of the article is to evaluate whether victims bear some responsibility for the outcomes alongside the scammers. Three particularly salient scenarios are identified: (i) scams that involve numerous preliminary meetings and an even greater number of unsuccessful money transfers within a single scheme; (ii) individuals who endure multiple episodes of scam victimization; and (iii) situations in which authorities warn that a person is presently a scam target, yet the person proceeds to pay. The inquiry asks how responsibility should be allocated in these contexts and what explains the persistence of losses despite warnings and repeated exposure to risk. The argument advanced is that responsibility can sometimes be shared, though the financial harm inflicted can be disproportionate to the level of imprudence displayed. In this setting, victims may violate epistemic norms, but the violations occur in ways that are distinctive to the emotional dynamics of romantic attachment. The analysis thus links moral responsibility with epistemic vulnerability, highlighting how trust, affection, and the structure of online courtship shape both belief and accountability in scam scenarios. The discussion seeks to clarify when pity or blame is warranted and how the irrationalities tied to love can influence judgments about prudence and fault. Methodologically, the work integrates qualitative psychological research focusing on scam victims with analytic philosophy to examine the boundaries between rational assessment, vulnerability, and responsibility in online dating fraud. By bringing together these two modes of inquiry, the study aims to illuminate how victims navigate complicated questions of ownership over losses, the role of credibility and deception in intimate contexts, and the way normative expectations surrounding truth-telling and trust interact with experiences of being targeted by scams. The research was supported by Grant EP/N028112/1 from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

          

        
                  

            
Identified Gaps

            
The paper identifies limits of advice-only prevention where romantic attachment overwhelms prudence and repeat victimisation suggests limited learning from experience. It calls for better detection profiles based on grooming, communications, payments, and offender patterns; evidence on whether repeat victims heed triggered warnings; criteria for competent decision-making after grooming; and ethical thresholds for paternalistic intervention. Dating sites also appeared not to provide routine, prominent fraud warnings in the authors’ informal UK review.

          

        
                  

            
Methods

            
An interdisciplinary conceptual analysis combines analytic philosophy of moral responsibility and epistemic ethics with existing psychological literature, an informal 2017 UK web review of 12 dating sites, and qualitative victim material. The qualitative component draws on unpublished semi-structured interviews with 20 romance-scam victims, recruited via law enforcement and a survey; interviews lasted 3–5 hours, sometimes with follow-up. The paper also analyses three illustrative cases from interviews and a scam-victim podcast.

          

        
                  

            
Limitations

            
The qualitative material is unpublished and small (20 participants), with heterogeneous scam timing and experiences; it is used illustratively rather than to estimate prevalence or causal effects. The dating-site assessment was a quick, informal review of 12 UK search results in early 2017, which the authors say may only be a guide to dating sites generally. Several broader claims rely on prior literature and philosophical interpretation rather than systematic testing in this study.

          

        
                  

            
Future Work

            
Develop interdisciplinary computer science, psychology, and moral philosophy research to identify recognisable scammer strategies, jurisdictions, grooming stages, and communication/payment patterns. Refine detection of likely scammer communications; measure repeat victims’ responses to warnings; develop and assess competence criteria for repeat victims; and evaluate ethically justified, threshold-based paternalistic blocking of suspect communications or payments.

          

              

    
    

        
Related Research Insights

        

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