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Professor David Wilson investigates romance fraud, one of the most common types of online scam and which targets vulnerable people looking for love.

David interviews one victim, ‘Helen’, about how she was seduced into what she thought was an online romance, and how she was gradually persuaded to send money to someone who turned out to be using a fake identity.

David also talks to criminologist and forensic linguist Dr Elisabeth Carter about the ways in which romance scammers cleverly use the language of seduction and persuasion to gain the trust of their victims and manipulate them. Elisabeth takes David through a real-life example of messages between a victim and a scammer, and shows how the relationship develops and the fraud is perpetrated.

To find out more about who might be running these scams, David hears from journalist Hannah Ajala, creator of the Love, Jannesa podcast. Hannah has researched romance fraud and explains how she met people behind some of the scams in Ghana, and how for them it can be a full-time job involving multiple victims at the same time. She also reveals how western e-waste – old computers sent for recycling – can be hacked into to provide scammers with information about potential victims.