Be on your guard for romance scammers

These confidence tricksters commit the worst of crimes by manuipulating emotions, taking your heart and cash too

- BY DR RAJ PERSAUD, CONSULTANT PSYCHIATRIST

Romance scams exploiting our psychological vulnerabilities are on the rise. Confidence tricksters use fake profiles to attract interest and secure trust. And, defraud victims of large sums of cash.

Of course, these scams don't all involve financial exploitation. Perhaps the most common is being duped into falling for someone who is not nearly as nice as you first thought — or even not who you thought they were at all.

The scam here targets a different investment — that of emotions, time and commitment. Confidence tricksters detect you feel unhappy and want to change up to someone else more successful and attractive.

To become truly confident in all relationships you need to develop the assurance to just be who you are. But why are so many of us vulnerable to people who pretend to be someone they're not, overtly or covertly? The rules of this emotional manipulation are well worked out by fraudsters.