By Lance The PI
She sent him forty thousand dollars. She never met him once — not a single video call, not a single handshake. And when she finally called a private investigator to find out who he really was, he didn’t exist. Not anywhere.
That case is the reason for this video. It’s a new twist on identity theft that police departments across the country are actively warning people about heading into 2026 — and it doesn’t look like the scams most people were taught to recognize.
This Isn’t Old-Fashioned Catfishing
It starts the way most online relationships do. Someone matches with you on a dating app, or slides into your messages on social media. They’re attentive, complimentary, and they move fast — a pattern called love bombing. Within days, they push the conversation off the platform and onto WhatsApp, Telegram, or Signal, away from anywhere that could flag the pattern.
Then comes the reason they can’t meet in person, or get on a video call. Working overseas. Military deployment. An oil rig. For years, that vagueness was the tell. Not anymore — scammers are now using AI to fake video calls in real time, and the profile photos themselves are often AI-generated faces that were never real to begin with, which means a reverse image search won’t save you the way it used to.
The Numbers Are Worse Than People Expect
One in seven adults has lost money to someone they met online. The median loss sits around two thousand dollars per victim, and total losses cross a billion dollars a year in the U.S. alone. People over sixty-five lose more than any other age group. And of the people who get targeted, most don’t walk away clean — most fall for it. This isn’t about being gullible. It’s about being human.
What I See From the Investigator’s Side
I’ve done this job for over 25 years as a licensed private investigator. Before that, 10 years in law enforcement. People call me shaking, embarrassed, sometimes after sending money for a year straight. They give me a name, a phone number, an address, and ask me one question: is this person real?
I run it the way I’d run any background investigation — public records, address history, phone ownership, photo verification. Most of the time, the person doesn’t exist at all. Or the photos belong to a real person who has no idea their face is being used to run a scam on a total stranger. That’s identity theft too. It just has two victims instead of one.
How to Verify Before You Send Money
- Reverse image search every photo they’ve sent you.
- Ask for a live video call on your terms, with a specific, unscripted request in the moment.
- Search their name alongside the job, city, and employer they’ve claimed.
- If you’ve already sent money or you’re unsure, a professional records check can confirm what a Google search can’t.
If you’ve already started sharing personal details with someone you haven’t verified, it’s also worth tightening up what’s publicly findable about you in the first place. Remove Your Name From People Search Websites so scammers have less to work with when they’re building a profile on you.
Don’t Be the Next Call I Get
Verifying before you send money doesn’t ruin a real relationship. A real person will understand you checking. It only exposes a fake one — before you’re forty thousand dollars in.
For more breakdowns like this one, browse the full identity theft prevention stories library, or learn more about my background as a licensed private investigator and how these verification checks work.
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