How to spot a scammer: a forensic linguist, a fraud detective and a former victim - all from BBC Three’s Hunting the Catfish Crime Gang - share their advice.
When Cecilie Fjellhøy gave £200,000 to her scammer, she says, she trusted him completely.
Cecilie says he’d spent months building up her trust - and he’d led her to believe they were in a relationship, so she took out several loans to help him.
Six years later, she’s still battling the effects of that traumatic event. “My future is kind of ruined in the financial sense,” she says. “Also, I’m still going to therapy.”
It also fuelled her to support other fraud victims through LoveSaid - a fraud centre and think tank she co-created with Anna Rowe, a former romance fraud victim and activist.
Anna and Cecilie are two of the frontline experts fighting against romance scams, and are featured in BBC Three’s documentary Hunting the Catfish Crime Gang.
The documentary follows 30-year-old entrepreneur James Blake, whose Instagram images are stolen and used in romance scams to con people out of tens of thousands.
Through the documentary, James embarks on an investigation to try and gain control of his image, but instead he uncovers a modern-day crime wave.
Some people might hear Cecilie's story and wonder how she could fall for such a scam. Others may ask, how can I stop it from ever happening to me?
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