⚠️ Warning: The following is a real account of an active scam tactic. It’s shared for educational purposes. If you’re on dating apps, be aware: scammers are using AI to fake videos and identities.
Hunting Scammers on Dating Apps
I don’t use dating apps the way most people do. I’m looking for scammers. My goal is to find them, engage just long enough to draw out their tricks, and then expose their methods so others won’t fall for them.
On Mature People Mingle, one of those apps that tends to attract more… opportunistic profiles, I quickly spotted a candidate. “Carol” messaged me with the usual friendliness. I didn’t bother pretending — I told her straight away that I work in cybersecurity and spend my free time baiting scammers online. You’d think that would make her bail. But no, she was either overconfident or didn’t read my profile carefully. She wanted to keep going, so I played along.
Just as expected, she asked me to move the conversation off the app and onto Telegram. That’s always the first big red flag. Scammers don’t like staying on platforms with security checks and reporting features. On Telegram, they can operate with impunity. I agreed, because that’s where I wanted the scam to unfold.
The AI “Proof of Life”
Once on Telegram, I didn’t waste time. I asked for a video proof of life. Most scammers can’t produce one — or they make excuses. To my surprise, Carol sent me a short clip.
The moment I saw it, I knew something was wrong. It was less than 4 seconds long, square-shaped, and had a strange flickering quality. The woman in the video looked like Carol’s photos, but her expressions and movements seemed subtly distorted.
I ran the video through analysis tools. The results were definitive:
- Low facial symmetry and warped frame artifacts — not normal for real video.
- No metadata or device info — which genuine phone videos almost always contain.
- Uniform compression patterns that screamed “machine generated.”
The fingerprints matched output from Runway Gen-2 or Pika Labs, two popular AI video-generation platforms. In short, Carol had taken a stolen photo and run it through an AI model to generate a fake video.
Confronting the Fake
I told her flat out: “This was made with AI. Probably Pika Labs. Nice try.”
Her response was denial, of course: “I don’t even know what you’re talking about.” But that’s what scammers do when cornered — they bluff, hoping you’ll doubt yourself.
I laughed and reminded her that I had already told her I’m in cybersecurity. Then I detailed exactly why her video was fake. That was the end of our little dance. Within minutes, I was blocked.
Why This Matters
For me, this was sport. But imagine someone who isn’t expecting scams and doesn’t know the signs. That short video could easily have convinced a lonely person that Carol was real. And that’s the danger.
Scammers are now leveraging AI to generate “proof” that used to be impossible for them to provide. Just a few years ago, video was the gold standard of verification. Now, it’s another tool in their arsenal.
Here are some lessons from this hunt:
- Moving off-platform early = bad sign. Apps like Telegram are the scammer’s playground.
- Short clips are suspicious. A 4-second video is easier to fake than a live call.
- Look for glitches. Warping, flickering, weird lip-sync — all red flags.
- Stay skeptical. If someone brushes off your questions or seems to ignore details you give them, odds are they’re following a script.
- The endgame is always money. Even if Carol didn’t get that far, most scams eventually pivot to “help me financially.”
Final Thoughts
This was just another day at the office for me — baiting a scammer, analyzing their tricks, and shutting them down. But the fact that they’re now using AI deepfakes should be a wake-up call for everyone. What used to be rare is becoming common, and the scams are only going to get more convincing.
So remember: the next time someone you just met online sends you a video, don’t take it at face value. If something feels off, it probably is.
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