Her mum had been single for more than 20 years when she started swapping messages with a man going by the name of “Donald” online in August or September of 2022.
Donald told her he was a widower and a businessman based in Darling Harbour, but that he was currently in Turkey finalising a deal.
Kylee only found out about the developing relationship in January 2023, and something seemed off.
“The last couple photos she showed me – they didn’t look like a man in his 60s,” she said.
Kylee did some digging and found out the photos had been stolen from a married real estate agent in California.
The scammer even stole a photo of the man’s daughter that he passed off as his own child.
Kylee’s mum was left “heartbroken”.
“She never admitted to sending him money – I believe she gave him money, but she won’t admit to that, and that’s OK,” Kylee said.
As Kylee has learned since that day, it’s typical for victims of romance scammers to feel too much shame and embarrassment to be entirely forthright about their experience.
And she’s encountered plenty of those victims, having founded Two Face Investigations to look into romance scams on dating apps shortly after her mother’s experience.
“Nobody comes in at the beginning of the process,” she said.
“Usually it’s after they’ve handed over money. They’re getting that feeling that something is wrong.”
And so far, none of them have been wrong about being misled online.
As well as fraudulent profiles like the one Kylee’s mum fell for, victims have also been catfished, while one scammer was who she purported to be, but nonetheless only saw her victim as a source of money.
And the “trillion-dollar” criminal industry is booming.
“The issue now is the increase of deepfakes, and AI being used to create documents – passports, IDs, court documents,” Kylee said.
“All that documentation is used to make their story seem authentic.”
But the most surprising thing Kylee said she’d learned since starting her one-woman crusade against these criminals, is how they network.
“The trading of tools, information, tactics, between scammers is amazing,” she said.
There are websites that teach people how to carry out a romance scam, and manuals traded between operators.
“It is so sophisticated – it is transnational organised crime,” Kylee said.
University of South Australia Associate Professor and Optus chair of cybersecurity and data science Dr Mamello Thinyane agreed that new techniques and approaches were being employed.
AI in particular, he said, was a “double-edged sword”, aiding both scammers and scam defence.
“On the scammer’s side, traditionally we would look out for bad grammar, bad language and spelling,” he said.
“Those would be a tell-tale sign of a scam but these days we have scammers that have been able to use tools like ChatGPT where you are able to get perfectly crafted sentences and messages which you can’t tell with those traditional signs.”
But AI was also helping protect people, he said.
“So in terms of improved analytics, we can identify and classify these scam messages a lot quicker. We now have operators or service providers that are able to intervene even before some of these attackers get to users.”
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Victim-blaming keeps reports down
People who are caught in a romance scam are often too ashamed or embarrassed to come forward, Kylee said – an attitude reinforced by social mores.
“People will say, how could I have been so stupid? And then people around them will go, how can you have been so stupid?” Kylee said.
“Victims, like my mum, are not stupid people.”
She urged everybody who had been a victim of these crimes to report, saying that it would help protect others.
“You won’t get your money back, but your story is really important,” she said.
Kylee said while banks and telcos had gatekeepers that helped protect customers from fraud and scams, dating apps – while you can report profiles on there for misconduct – had no such benefit.
Reporting scam calls and messages can help institutions follow up on servers and lines used for fraudulent purposes.
Telco Optus claims to have blocked 25.5 million scam calls and 11.4 million scan SMS in the past quarter – about 1.96 million calls and 880,000 SMS a week.
Dr Thinyane said scammers, online and offline, would always try to “compromise” their victims’ decision-making.
“Traditionally, greed, love and fear are factors that scammers exploit in human beings,” he said.
“The trick is to understand that all of us are vulnerable, be aware of those vulnerabilities that can be exploited and put in place measures to protect us as well.”
There are tactics scammers use to keep people vulnerable and prep them for exploitation, especially on dating apps, Kylee said.
A refusal to meet is “red flag number one”.
Another major indication is the scammer’s insistence on moving the communication from the dating app – where they can be reported – to another channel such as Telegram or WhatsApp.
“They will make you do this in secret,” Kylee said.
Early “love-bombing” – intense expressions of affection and even love – is also a warning sign.
Kylee urged people who suspected they might be being lured into an online romance scam to remind themselves of why they went on dating apps in the first place.
“You want a real relationship, you want somebody to hand you a box of tissues if you’re sad, you want somebody to cuddle with,” she said.
