How to spot romance scam signs after mum lost £140,000 to deepfake fraudsters

Helen's mother met him on Facebook, and he seemed perfect. Within weeks, he was asking for money. He needed surgery at a Shanghai hospital, he said, and she believed him enough to hollow out a book, stuff £10,000 in cash inside, and mail it across the world. When he recovered, they would finally be together. But the surgery was only the beginning. Then another man appeared—kidnapped, held for ransom, about to be killed unless she paid. Then another crisis, another plea. Over months, the woman transferred £140,000 to people she had never met, whose faces she had only ever seen through a screen.

Helen first realized something was wrong when her mother accidentally sent her a message meant for the scammers. Then the secrecy deepened. Her mother took constant calls and video chats but refused to say with whom. Helen felt, as she later described it, emotionally drained—watching her mother disappear into something she couldn't name and having no idea how to stop it.

The scammers had used artificial intelligence to alter their appearance in photos and video calls, a technique known as deepfake. Helen's mother, 80 years old, had met them on Facebook and believed every word. She was not alone. In 2025, scammers stole over £1.3 billion from people across the UK, and romance fraud—the kind that preys on loneliness and the human need to be wanted—remains one of the most effective weapons in their arsenal.

When Helen finally convinced her mother to let her join a video call with the man she believed she loved, Helen spotted the deception almost immediately. The image was fuzzy, the voice out of sync with the movement of his lips. It was clearly artificial. But her mother did not see it that way. She heard only criticism, felt only shame. "She was saying I made her feel disgusted," Helen recalls. "That I should let her have her relationship and not intervene." The scammers had done their work well. They had made her mother feel loved, and now any attempt to break that spell felt like an attack.

Helen turned to her bank. She had lasting power of attorney, which meant she could act on her mother's behalf and put safeguards in place. The bank, once alerted, moved quickly. They recognized the hallmarks of the fraud and began the work of stopping the bleeding. To date, they have recovered £45,000. But the scammers had already woven themselves deep into her mother's life. Even after Helen changed her mother's phone number three times, her mother gave the new number to the criminals. Helen eventually replaced her mother's smartphone with a basic device that could only make calls and texts.

The path out of a romance scam is not straightforward, and it requires patience that most families do not naturally possess. Police fraud officers advise approaching victims with curiosity rather than confrontation—asking open questions, listening to how they met, what promises were made. A forensic linguist working on the BBC's Scam Secrets program notes that family members entering the situation are, in the victim's mind, destroying happiness. The victim does not see a scam; they see love. The intervention feels like betrayal.

Banks can help where families alone cannot. They can freeze accounts, spot suspicious transfers, reset digital footprints—changing phone numbers, email addresses, social media accounts—so that scammers lose the channels through which they contact their victims. But the emotional work falls to those closest to the person being scammed. It requires them to stay calm when they are frightened, to ask questions when they want to demand answers, to accept that breaking free from a romance scam is not a moment but a process. Helen's mother is still learning to trust again, still processing the shame of having been deceived by people who understood loneliness better than she understood deception.