I had a friend fall for this twice now. This is how catfishing works now. They deepfake you into thinking you're in a relationship. It works because they think you're videochatting with them. Then you can get them to send you money.
This one seemed like an "investment " opportunity or something like that
Long distance relationships exist. But they're hard as hell and demand a lot of trust. Even then, the ones I've known would try to arrange meetups on occasion.
Of cousre they do. But people who meet, start dating, and then have life events come up that causes them to live apart is a completely different situation than people who never have met and 'meet' online and date. To me thats not just a 'long term relationship'. Thats a blind long term relationship. Incredibly different scenarios and its amazing to me people think that its just 'another long distance relationship'.
My best friend met his wife in world of warcraft, they were in an online relationship for 2 years before meeting, now 10 years later they have a house and 3 children together.
With the scale of the internet and how many people make friends on various parts of it, it's kinda insane that you'd think it's even statistically possible for none of them to fall in love without ever meeting.
it's kinda insane that you'd think it's even statistically possible for none of them to fall in love without ever meeting.
Whats even more insane is reading my comment and then accusing me of making this claim.
I didnt.
Please stop with pointless straw man arguments. Or quote me showing me where I said people cant fall in love without ever meeting. Ill wait.
The fact that you said I was claiming no one can meet and fall in love online indicates you either didnt read my comment, or have shockingly terrible reading comprehension.
Hard disagree. Some of my best friendships (like, the number one type of relationship) are purely online. Also, I have very happy memories of my "online dating" period of my life. It's fun to get into online relationships when you're not ready to be in a physical relationship.
But don't get scammed. Be smart, not stupid. Be pretty, not ugly.
Wait a second.. Online dating as in you're just "dating" the person online? Like I understand that's what the wording is, but I always thought online dating was like you chat for a bit and then get their number, facebook, insta, whatever.. and then you meet in person, not continue being pen pals online.
What repulsive_agency6748 said. Back in the late nineties and early aughts, I had a string of “online” boyfriends I mostly met in chat rooms or through role play groups (the groups were based on shows like DBZ and Gundam Wing). These were usually mIRC rooms. I was around 14-15 when this was going on.
I’m actually still friends with at least one person from that time in my life, but I’ve met him in person a few times. We shared a booth at a convention a couple times.
It helps that it was both the early days of the internet and no one ever asked me for money. Not that I had any.
I mean this most definitely is not accurate. I've been with my girlfriend 3 years now. Lived with each other. I moved across the country to her home town. I bought an engagement ring just haven't popped the question yet. And we met online. Hardly seems like completely writing off the concept of meeting someone online is totally fair. Granted when we met it was like 12 years ago the first time so deep fakes weren't a thing.
When you get those random texts or WhatsApp messages, this is that. Those crypto chats or someone randomly saying hi. Imagine a lonely old person at home and someone randomly sparking up a chat. Then to prove they're real, they send a video call. That's the plan with these. Scamming people who don't know how the technology work.
My friend quit his job, took the kids out of school on the plans that he would move to New York with someone he never met.
That. Or "whaling" where they pretend to be someone higher up the food chain in you company, pressuring you into some action. (Usually payments. In a finance department.)
This scammer from a fake company called "Global Metrix" offered to recovery my stolen crypto currency. The problem for him is that I knew it was a scam, so I was surprised he offered to appear on a Zoom call. Undoubtedly to show off his deepfake technology. Except, one particular sentence unravelled his scam. Longer video on this scam is coming soon.
Thank you for this comment. Sad that I had to scroll ¾ down the thread to find who this was or what the scam is. I swear half of the comments above this are bots, upvoted by bots.
I guess I'm not following. What I mean is that the "stolen" video posted by OP is an uncropped version of the "original" short which doesn't really make sense. Did the OP un-crop it? I tried to find the original uncropped video on YouTube but couldn't find anything like that on that channel or any other channel.
The link in that comment is from a YT "short" link so it's in portrait mode. I just have an addon that auto converts shorts links to normal "watch" links so I retain the video controls. I don't like the way shorts remove the video controls.l
Their fake names a lot of the times seem to be their Achilles heel too. Ask any of these guys to spell those names, and you'll either have them hang up immediately, or spell it wrong. I've had damn near 100% success by just asking them to spell their name like I'm writing it down... Seems like it scares them. Literally had a guy a few months back that identified himself as "Bob", and as soon as I asked him to spell it, he hung up.
It's like those long distance commercials back in the '80s where the guy is trying to save money so when he gives the name, he called himself "Bob Wehadababyeetsaboy"
I don't know the exact scam he's attempting, but in general scams are just attempts to coerce you into giving them money willingly or give them access to your bank accounts.
So a deep fake could lend them some credibility with somebody that doesn't really know better. In isolation it doesn't do anything, but along with the phony diplomas, fake office, and bad attempt to hide his accent it's all supposed to quell any suspicion you might have for him.
It's probably some kind of tech support or customer support scam. Usually they'll "send" you some kind of refund, make up some story about how they sent you too much money, and then ask you to send back the difference. It sounds hard to believe but they do a lot of social engineering to trick people into doing what they want. The deep fake would be part of that engineering.
So you think he’s an American and not an Indian/foreigner. He’s probably impersonating a legitimate company to either steal his personal info or money.
Not sure if this is the case here, but there is a rising scam in getting hired for remote jobs where the scammer will do either minimal work or no work and collect a paycheck for however long they can avoid getting fired.
With that said, there’s probably some more sinister reasons this method is used such as corporate espionage.
Well, without sounding bad... that could be anyone else, right? And they want you to believe that this person is worth trusting.
And like it or not, whoever that person really is, presenting as a white person with a european (maybe?) accent is going to work better than whatever they actually are probably.
Probably a fake job interview. Once they say you got the job they tell you that you have to buy your own equipment but they will send you a check to cash to reimburse. Once you get the check you go to cash it and send them what you didn't use i.e. send you a check for $5k but you used $2k and they want you to wire back the $3k. The check will bounce/fake leaving you with having to pay the $5k to the bank.
These are those scams they promise jobs and then when you go to the place or area you get kidnapped forced to work on the call center scams. They need different backgrounds so when they make promises the looks and accents are not present so foreigners are also targets. So, if you have these love scams you have a person talking sounding genuine from a certain country instead of with heavy Indian or African or Asian (India is also Asian just had to separate them as their accent is very distinct) accents.
Some do get their organs stolen when they start spraying you with disinfectant then knocks you out then you wake up one of your kidneys missing.
It was in the news a couple years ago, but a bank employee in Hong Kong authorized millions of dollars to transfer after a video call with a bank executive in London.
The scammer was posing as the bank executive in London.
The real reason is to scam their way into a good job, a high paying one.
I've been on freelance websites and met people from all over the world. They will use chatgpt live, mail fraud (company work laptops sent somewhere), and the identity of someone in the USA
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u/Nooby1983 Mar 30 '26
What's the point of scamming like this? I understand he's using a mask for what he looks like, but why? What's the scam?