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By the time a wedding date gets mentioned, most people have stopped asking hard questions. That’s exactly the moment a staged wedding scam is built to exploit, whether it’s a romance scammer using an upcoming “wedding” as the excuse for one last enormous transfer, or a completely separate operator posing as a planner, photographer, or […]

A typical scenario looks like this: a man messages a woman on a dating site, and she replies within the hour. Her photos are professional quality, her English is good but not quite perfect, and somehow that imperfection makes her feel more real. By the second week they are talking every day. Three months in, […]

You matched with a Ukrainian woman on an international dating platform. The conversation is good, she has genuine personality, she talks about her family in Kharkiv, Ukraine, and she seems interested in something real. So how do you tell whether you are at the beginning of a meaningful relationship or at the beginning of an […]

She messaged you first. Four professional photos of an attractive Russian woman, a warm opening line, and within 48 hours she was calling you “her kind soul.” Three weeks later you were looking at a bank transfer form for a girl you had never met, sending money to cover her visa paperwork. By the time […]

She matched with him on a dating app on a quiet Sunday night. His profile looked normal. Not too polished. Not too strange. He said he was an engineer working outside the country. He liked dogs, old movies, and simple family life. He asked real questions. He remembered small details. He did not ask for […]

He spent four months and roughly $3,200 exchanging messages with a woman on an agency-based Russian dating site. Long letters, translated by the platform, detailed her childhood, her ambitions, her feelings for him. Then he asked to move the conversation to email. She said the site’s terms did not allow it. When he finally found […]

The profile looked genuine. Four photos, each from a slightly different angle, each with the kind of natural lighting and small imperfections that real selfies have. She said she was 31, an architect in St. Petersburg, recently single, and she messaged him first. After two months of daily messages, he agreed to send $1,800 for […]

He had been talking to her for six weeks. She was 34, a civil engineer in Moscow, recently divorced, no children. The photos were high quality but not obviously professional. She remembered his dog’s name. She asked about his mother’s health. Then, three days before she was supposed to fly to meet him, her bank […]

The digital era brings unprecedented convenience but equally significant risks, especially in cyber security and personal data protection. Now, with simmering geopolitical tension, actors like Russian scammers have mastered the art of cyber espionage and social manipulation, creating formidable risks to U.S. government personnel. This paper demonstrates how scammers use this and several other manipulative […]

A new case emanating from Russia shows that there is a reason to travel advisory to high-risk countries. Correspondents to NBC News Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains report that U.S. soldier Staff Sgt. Gordon Black has been detained after taking an unauthorized trip to Vladivostok, Russia. Assigned to South Korea, the trip was personal: he […]