Swipe right for scammers: the unexpected "friendship" that came from Tinder
What I learned from talking to a young scammer
I recently downloaded Tinder again after a long break since the last time I decided to quit using it. Why did I go back to the swiping world? During my last trip to Portugal, I wanted to see how it works beyond my local borders. The idea came to me just before my departure: somewhere in my mind, I thought that maybe, far away from my usual places, it could be better.
However, once I came back home, I kept using it. It turned out that nobody is matching with me as often as they used to. There could be different reasons why it works differently in my hometown, especially the low population density, but that’s not the point I want to focus on. As I was considering quitting again, I noticed I was very popular among a certain group: Asian girls.
So, as you can imagine, I started wondering why this segment of the population was suddenly so interested in me. I dug into it: spoiler alert, they were all fake profiles, and I discovered I’m surprisingly good at wasting scammers’ time with minimal effort.
However, let me drop the story there for a moment.
Something was stopping me from uninstalling the app for good—something was triggering my curiosity: are these scammers actually successful? I mean, is there really someone out there who buys cryptocurrency on an unknown platform just because a beautiful picture on a smartphone told them to? The answer is yes.
Some people do start using a professional broker just because “Mr. Scott,” also known as the “professor from the New York Stock Exchange,” says it’s the right time to buy stocks.
Even though I didn’t fully explore this rabbit hole (for the same reason I don’t want to become like Captain Ahab), I decided to keep chatting with a couple of profiles and gather as much insight as I could, treating it like some sort of psychological challenge.
It turned out that I am portrayed as a very busy man and even a “cold partner” who sometimes doesn’t pay enough attention to the relationship, but apparently, I’m lucky enough to realize that I could make a lot of money with trading and cryptocurrencies. Moreover, with just a few messages exchanged on Telegram or WhatsApp, I ended up with a “nice lady” who had lovely words for me.
The backstage of the farce: I now know that, on the other side of the world, there are young, angry, and resentful people who tell themselves that scamming arrogant Europeans (or Americans) on Tinder is justified. At least, that’s what my young friend from China told me after he realized his time was up with his scam.
After making sure I wasn’t hostile toward him, despite the fact that he had just tried to scam me, we somehow managed to put aside our differences and developed a sort of friendship. In his opinion, what he does is easy: you just collect some pictures of a nice lady online, get a foreign phone number, and step by step get familiar with “these stupid guys” on dating apps. He would justify his actions by highlighting all the bad qualities of the victims, listing traits like stupidity or arrogance.
Despite his contemptuous words, I sensed a sort of frustration and resentment during all our conversations. He was a 17-year-old from China, and this seemed to be his full-time job. Imagining this young guy somewhere in Beijing or Shenzhen working late into the night to match the right time zone and catch the right segment of the Western world paints a rather sad picture.
He confessed that one trick scammers use is creating AI-generated videos tailored to their targets’ expectations and needs (I had already come across a few of these). They approach you by trying to simulate a relationship, diving into details to exploit your vulnerabilities and psychology, sometimes even simulating jealousy or pretending to be a scorned girlfriend who isn’t receiving enough attention and care.
I remember one time I had a short video call where I believe I really spoke with a girl. It was a brief conversation with general greetings, where she waved at me at the end. “All the video calls are simulated,” says my Chinese friend. But I’m quite sure I spoke with a real person that time. She had Filipino traits and seemed to have genuine reactions on her face. She was embarrassed but steady in her performance, probably under pressure: I even caught a voice in the background at the beginning of the call, as if someone was instructing her before the camera switched on. I noticed her glancing off-frame as if looking for guidance.
Over the span of a few days, the conversation with my scammer “friend” continued, sharing these kinds of anecdotes and exchanging information about what’s going on with their competitors. Apparently, Nigerian scammers are still thriving online, along with their Indian counterparts. But the more our conversation continued, the more awkward it became.
At this point, I decided to pull back and climb out of the rabbit hole. I had gone too far, and as I mentioned earlier, it takes too much energy and focus to keep up this farce. Funny enough, the last interaction was about “real” investments with real returns he would provide me with just a minimum amount; he would have done it as a sign of our “friendship.”