Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer

If you got a DM from an unverified Jon Bon Jovi account after commenting on one of his official Instagram posts, what would it take to make you believe it was really the rock star hoping to connect? And at what point when he starts asking you to send money—like lose-your-house kind of money—would you snap out of the fantasy and stop draining your bank account? In a documentary premiering Saturday—Super Scam Me—investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller goes deep into this toxic love-bombing terrain. In a clip that Ars is exclusively debuting below, you can see how van Zeller worked with an ethical hacker, Arman the Cyber, to use a fake bitcoin receipt and bait the fake Bon Jovi, giving the victim some much-needed closure.

如果你在评论了乔恩·邦·乔维（Jon Bon Jovi）的官方 Instagram 帖子后，收到了一条来自未验证账号的私信，你需要什么证据才会相信这位摇滚明星真的想和你建立联系？当他开始要求你汇款——那种会让你倾家荡产的金额——你会在什么时候从幻想中清醒过来，停止掏空你的银行账户？在周六首映的纪录片《超级诈骗我》（Super Scam Me）中，调查记者玛丽安娜·范·泽勒（Mariana van Zeller）深入探讨了这种有毒的“爱心轰炸”领域。在 Ars 独家发布的片段中，你可以看到范·泽勒如何与道德黑客“Arman the Cyber”合作，利用一张伪造的比特币收据诱骗假邦·乔维上钩，从而为受害者提供了一些急需的了结。

Broadcasting on National Geographic at 9 pm ET and available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu, the documentary takes viewers on an empathetic quest to understand how the line between “lover” and “fraud victim” gets blurred in romance scams that the Federal Trade Commission says cost Americans nearly $1.5 billion in losses each year. Often targeting older women with resources who lack community and seek out connections online, such as widows or divorcées, these scams are now a leading form of financial fraud in the US, the FTC has warned. Most victims never get their money back, and overseas scammers are only getting more sophisticated, thanks to AI, Experian forecasted in January.

该纪录片将于美东时间晚上 9 点在国家地理频道播出，并可在 Disney+ 和 Hulu 上观看。它带领观众进行了一场充满同理心的探索，试图理解在浪漫诈骗中，“爱人”与“诈骗受害者”之间的界限是如何变得模糊的。据美国联邦贸易委员会（FTC）称，此类诈骗每年给美国人造成近 15 亿美元的损失。FTC 警告称，这些诈骗现在是美国主要的金融欺诈形式，通常针对那些拥有资源、缺乏社交圈并寻求在线联系的年长女性，例如寡妇或离异女性。大多数受害者永远无法追回资金，而益博睿（Experian）在 1 月份预测，得益于人工智能，海外诈骗者正变得越来越老练。

In Super Scam Me, viewers get a chance to go beyond a single victim’s story and see how romance scams operate so effectively to squeeze funds out of the people they target on social media apps like Instagram or dating apps like Match and Tinder. Van Zeller has spent years reporting on the scam industry, and when she saw how many victims were broken and stranded by romance scams, she devised a social experiment in which she became the target. Her plan worked quickly, hooking a scammer in Ghana who began posing as a handsome overseas four-star military general named “Mark Turner.”

在《超级诈骗我》中，观众有机会超越单一受害者的故事，了解浪漫诈骗是如何在 Instagram 等社交媒体应用或 Match 和 Tinder 等约会应用上有效运作，从而榨取目标人群资金的。范·泽勒多年来一直报道诈骗行业，当她看到许多受害者因浪漫诈骗而崩溃并陷入困境时，她设计了一项社会实验，让自己成为了目标。她的计划很快奏效，成功钓到了一名加纳的诈骗者，对方开始冒充一名名为“马克·特纳”（Mark Turner）的英俊海外四星级军事将军。

Relying on a wig, big glasses, and a prosthetic nose to cover her true identity as a journalist (should the scammer try to reverse-image search her profile), van Zeller posed as a middle-age antiques dealer named “Mary Zelle.” She staged her pictures to show she was a fun-time gal living her best single life. Once she hooked the scammer, she used the same tactics that outed the fake Bon Jovi in a scheme to meet her scammer face to face. To track him down, she partly relied on distributing flyers in his neighborhood that included a mashup photo of the supposedly loving couple that “Mark Turner” made to woo “Mary Zelle.”

范·泽勒戴上假发、大眼镜和假鼻子来掩盖她作为记者的真实身份（以防诈骗者试图对她的个人资料进行反向图片搜索），并化名为“玛丽·泽勒”（Mary Zelle），扮演一名中年古董商。她精心布置照片，展示自己是一个享受单身生活的快乐女性。一旦钓到诈骗者，她就使用了揭露假邦·乔维时所用的相同策略，策划了一场与诈骗者面对面的会面。为了追踪他，她部分依赖于在他的社区分发传单，传单上印有“马克·特纳”为追求“玛丽·泽勒”而制作的所谓恩爱夫妻合成照。

On the journey, van Zeller shared her own complicated feelings about the connection she formed with her scammer as they texted day and night. These insights, along with her work to illuminate a path to track down scammers targeting Americans, are critical. Experts largely agree that ending rampant romance scams means engaging communities to show more empathy and pay attention to the signs. That could meaningfully deter threats to victims, who are also victims of social norms that isolate older women. It’s easy to assume that romance scam victims must be gullible or uneducated, but research suggests that victims tend to be well-educated.

在旅程中，范·泽勒分享了她与诈骗者日夜发短信时所建立的复杂情感。这些见解，连同她为追踪针对美国人的诈骗者所做的努力，都至关重要。专家们普遍认为，终结猖獗的浪漫诈骗意味着要动员社区展现更多同理心并关注相关迹象。这可以有效地遏制对受害者的威胁，而这些受害者同时也是孤立年长女性的社会规范的受害者。人们很容易认为浪漫诈骗的受害者一定很轻信或缺乏教育，但研究表明，受害者往往受过良好教育。

In Super Scam Me, audiences can see how trust is slowly built in these scams, how shame prevents victims from getting help, and how simply wanting a relationship to be real can lead smart women like the victim in the Bon Jovi case to bankruptcy. “I’ve spent years reporting on scams, and the reaction I hear most is ‘How could anyone be so stupid? That would never happen to me.’ But it can, and it does happen to anyone,” said van Zeller. “So this time, I made myself the target.”

在《超级诈骗我》中，观众可以看到这些诈骗中信任是如何一点点建立起来的，羞耻感如何阻碍受害者寻求帮助，以及仅仅渴望一段真实的关系如何导致像邦·乔维案受害者那样聪明的女性破产。“我花了多年时间报道诈骗，我听到最多的反应是‘怎么会有人这么蠢？这种事永远不会发生在我身上。’但它确实可能发生在任何人身上，”范·泽勒说。“所以这一次，我让自己成为了目标。”

Fearlessly feeling for these women and flying to Ghana to raise awareness of their struggles, van Zeller highlighted in her documentary the tactics and technologies scammers use. National Geographic touts her documentary as exposing the devastating real consequences of largely unchecked romance scams. The one-hour special notably drops shortly after a congressional investigation into dating app scams ended with a finding that scammers are getting harder to catch, NBC News reported. Watching Super Scam Me makes it feel possible to catch these predators, offering victims and society a glimmer of hope.

范·泽勒无畏地同情这些女性，并飞往加纳以提高人们对她们困境的认识，她在纪录片中强调了诈骗者使用的策略和技术。国家地理频道称她的纪录片揭露了在很大程度上未受监管的浪漫诈骗所带来的毁灭性现实后果。据 NBC 新闻报道，这部一小时的特别节目发布时，正值国会对约会软件诈骗的调查结束不久，调查发现诈骗者正变得越来越难以抓捕。观看《超级诈骗我》让人觉得抓住这些掠夺者是有可能的，为受害者和社会带来了一线希望。