I've been happily playing online Scrabble (Words with Friends) for many years. It's a one-on-one game where players usually have a photo or random image. It's largely anonymous, with little contact apart from the occasional "Merry Christmas" or "good game." It has always felt like a safe, old-fashioned pastime.
But the landscape is changing. Over the past year I've noticed more invitations from very attractive young women, often with a strategically chosen photo. The game starts normally, then comes a casual question such as, "Where are you from?" You reply "Australia," and they say they're somewhere in America. Soon they ask if you're married. When I reply that I am, with grandchildren, the response is usually "age is just a number," followed quickly by a suggestion to move the conversation to Telegram.
That's usually where I stop. However, one day, purely in the interests of research, I decided to see what would happen if I kept going. I declined to move to Telegram but continued chatting within the game. What followed was quite extraordinary and went on for the better part of two months.
I met "Cassie", who supposedly owned a hairdressing salon in South Carolina, and "Linda", who claimed to be a three-star general with peacekeeping troops in Syria. Both were divorced, each had one child, and both quickly developed a keen interest in my life. Their stories were detailed and believable. The conversations were friendly, sometimes flattering, and always engaging.
But there was one constant. When I suggested something as simple as a FaceTime or Zoom call, the conversation ended abruptly-no excuses, no explanations, just silence.
So what was going on? I asked ChatGPT, which explained that this is a classic romance scam, often called a "pig butchering" scam-because you, the intended victim, are the pig being fattened up. The scammers invest time building trust before eventually asking for money. The photos are stolen from real people's social media accounts, and many of these operations are run from compounds in Southeast Asia using trafficked workers. My "friends" Cassie and Linda never existed.
The reason they try to move you to Telegram is that it allows anonymous accounts, has little moderation, and takes the conversation away from the original platform where suspicious behaviour might be detected. Once you leave the original platform, you are effectively on your own.
Then came a different approach.
I received an email from a reader saying they had a throat infection and could not speak, asking to communicate by email. It seemed reasonable, so I replied. The response was a request for a $100 cryptocurrency donation to help a sick child.
It was an obvious con. But ChatGPT explained the real purpose: not the $100, but testing for engagement. Once you respond, you're marked as a target.
Sure enough, for the next three months I received a steady stream of similar emails-all claiming throat infections.
The next scam was more sophisticated-and far more convincing.
An email arrived from someone calling himself Raylan McCarty. He congratulated me on my book Wills, Death and Taxes and offered to feature it in a group he runs called "The Perks of Being a Book Addict." The email was well written and sounded authentic. He spoke about readers facing mortality and people suddenly responsible for managing someone else's affairs, saying the strength of my book was that it gave people the language to deal with those issues.
It was exactly the sort of feedback any author would be pleased to receive.
He suggested I participate in online forums, saying readers engage more with authors they see as real people. It sounded reasonable, and I was intrigued enough to reply.
That was the turning point.
The organisation was supposedly based in Edinburgh, and there would be an upfront fee of US $250 to cover administration and distribution. It was just enough to seem reasonable, and small enough not to trigger suspicion.
I was considering the offer, but something made me pause. Once again, I checked with ChatGPT. The explanation was clear: a classic scam. The overseas location adds credibility while making verification difficult, and the small fee increases the likelihood of payment. Multiply that by hundreds of people and the numbers add up quickly.
The final proof came a week later when I received an almost identical email from someone else.
This is a numbers game: thousands of approaches, a small percentage responding, and enough money flowing to make it worthwhile. These scams don't rely on technology-they rely on human nature. You have been warned.