2025/09/26

Romantic Social Engineering

The research conducted discusses the different methods used to investigate the troubles of rampant scamming on dating apps, through means of social engineering, and monetizing on victimization through cryptocurrency. As technology has progressed, dating apps have become more popular, and so have the methods of attack. No longer are attackers preying simply on individuals’ desires for wealth, but now they are also attacking their needs for belonging and love.

Used as an independent variable, there were the methods in which offenders would profit and launder money, through cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the techniques used to obfuscate their trail. The reasoning behind this is likely because it is present and unchanging regardless of incident.

The dependent variable in the experiment, which is the amount of financial loss an individual experienced, which is directly affected by the mode of digital money laundering by the offender. This is to investigate whether high encryption methods are related to riskier asks, for example a direct deposit to the offenders account, versus a cryptocurrency transfer, that is then “peeled” off into other wallets. They do so by using Breadcrumbs, which is a blockchain analysis program that follows transactions from one account to the other, and when victims report their losses, they are then able to track funds to the address.

The methods used are accurate and help aid unbiased research as it focuses less on the epidemic of user’s naivety, and more on the numerical side of financial damage that the scammers cause. Indirectly, however, it makes a good call to positive changes for society as it then brings attention to the platforms which these scammers frequently use, helping companies realize where they can improve to make scams less prevalent on their services.

The research does well in keeping parsimony, as its explanations are simple, and only risk complexity when having so many different methods be the independent variable. While it may seem confusing at first, they better illustrate attackers’ methods through use of charts and frameworks, which make it easy to follow along with their logic and reasoning. For example, they explain the attackers frequently used method of “peeling” which is taking the funds of victims and fragmenting them off to different digital wallets, making them harder to track (Lim, A. & Choi, K. 2025). To someone knowledgeable about blockchains this may seem simple, but they go into further detail by using diagrams and illustrations which show the different sources that these funds go to and essentially map out their system for non-technical readers to understand.

The only criticism I have of the research is that it perhaps fails to capture the full scope of the issue, as it relies heavily on reported cases. In their own paper they too acknowledge that dealing with the subject of catfishing, many victims are too embarrassed to report their incidents, as many have sent explicit texts or photos. Because of this, it is possible that the results of the experiment may suffer from its sample size. However, they are still able to find substantial evidence that the more spread-out deposits are, the more likely attackers are to ask for larger sums.

Otherwise, the article is effective in highlighting youth and elderly who are susceptible to the dangers of social engineering and even brings attention to often not talked about vectors, dating apps. Often phishing is thought to be through emails, or phone calls pretending to offer jobs or prizes, but it is not often talked about that many social engineers often create the illusion of romantic relationships over months at a time for financial gain. The fact that they also use blockchain technology to also leverage their crimes, also brings into question our willingness to fully adopt a decentralized system for finance, as it facilitates criminal activity. In doing all of this, the research does a good job at coming to a concrete conclusion but also shedding light on some of the ignored areas of cyber safety.

Sources Cited
Lim, A. & Choi, K. (2025). Modus Operandi and Blockchain Analysis of Romance Scams: Cryptocurrency-Driven Victimization. International Journal of Cybersecurity Intelligence & Cybercrime, 8(2), – . DOI: https://doi.org/10.52306/2578-3289.1220
Available at: https://vc.bridgew.edu/ijcic/vol8/iss2/2