Dating and romance scams try to lower your defences by appealing to your romantic or compassionate side.

You might be approached by someone who claims they are terribly poor or have a very sick family member and are in the depths of despair (often these scammers claim to be from Russia or Eastern Europe). After they have sent you a few messages, and may be even a glamorous photo, you will be asked (directly or more subtly) to send them money to help their situation.

Some scammers even arrange to meet with you, in the hope that you give them presents or money, and then they disappear. In other cases, the scammer might start off by building a rapport with you, perhaps even sending you flowers or other small gifts. After building up a ‘relationship’, the scammer will tell you about a large amount of money they need to transfer out of their country, or that they want to share with you. They will then ask for your banking details or money for an administrative fee or tax that they claim needs to be paid to free up the money. This is a variation on the Nigerian 419 scam. Regardless of how you are scammed, you could end up losing a lot of money.

The scammer says that he or she needs the mark to send money to pay for a passport. The scammer wants the victim to cash the scammer's money orders and then wire money to the scammer. The forged money orders leave the banks to incur debts against the victims.

The scammer says that he or she requires money for flights to the victim's country and somehow never comes, or says that he or she is being held against his or her will by immigration authorities, who demand bribes.

The scammer says that he or she is being held against her will for failure to pay a bill or requires money for hospital bills.

The scammer asks the victim to package goods sent from one address and send the goods to another address. The victim does not realize that the scammer set him or her as a part of a stolen goods distribution scheme. If police investigate the trail, the scammer's use of mules makes tracing of the scammer more difficult.

The scammer makes a proposal of marriage and needs the victim to send them the cash for the ticket.

The scammer, through an email message, claims to be a "nice girl" that is interested in conversing or pursuing a romantic relationship with the victim.

Fraudsters pose as beautiful girls and enroll themselves in various dating and social networking sites. Novice users not aware of this ploy get attracted to them by seeing some fake pictures/videos and contact them. Fraudsters then exploit them to the maximum extent like:
 

	Claiming that they are in deep financial trouble and would like you to support them with some money.
	Claiming that they need money as he/she wants to come to India and marry her/him.
	Get bank accounts from them for transferring stolen money making them money mules.
	Use their address to send bill pay cheque (sent from compromised accounts) and asking them to cash the cheque at their bank account and forward the cash to them.
	Using their address to send purchased goods bought by stolen cards and then asks them to forward to their country as most of the online shops do not send goods overseas.

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