Technique

Dating Profile Farming

Also known as: Catfishing, Romance Baiting

TARGETING

Creating fake profiles on dating platforms to identify and engage potential romance scam victims. Scammers construct fraudulent identities using stolen photographs, AI-generated images, and fabricated personal details (often claiming military service, overseas engineering work, or missionary roles).…

Common attack flows

How it fits in a scam

This technique shows up duringTARGETING

Before

After

Defense

How to defend against this

How to spot it

  • Profile photos appear overly polished
  • AI-generated
  • or reverse-image-search reveals use elsewhere online
  • Rapid declarations of love or intense emotional escalation within days of matching (love bombing)
  • Consistent refusal to video call or meet in person
  • citing military deployment
  • overseas work
  • or personal tragedy
  • Pressure to move conversation off-platform to WhatsApp
  • Telegram
  • or email
  • Profile claims high-status occupation (military
  • engineer
  • doctor) but minimal verifiable digital footprint
  • Generic or templated opening messages; identical phrasing seen across multiple conversations
  • Unusually broad age preferences or demographic targeting that doesn't match stated profile details
  • Grammatical inconsistencies or pronoun confusion despite claimed native English fluency
  • Recently created social media accounts with few friends
  • posts
  • or interaction history

Tools you can use

Steps you can take

Seen in the wild

Where we’ve seen it

Campaigns

Commonly targets

Further reading