Pen Pal Scams: The Warning Signs, and What They Actually Look Like

Pen pal sites attract scammers for a simple reason: the people on them are, by definition, willing to build trust with a stranger over time. That is exactly the raw material a confidence trick needs.

This is not a reason to stay away. It is a reason to know the scripts. Almost every scam that runs on a correspondence site follows one of about five patterns, and once you have seen them written out, they become very hard to un-see.

The one rule

Nobody you have met online should ever receive money from you. No exception has ever been genuine.

Not a small loan. Not a gift card "just to help with the phone bill". Not a customs fee to release a parcel. Not a plane ticket to finally come and meet you. Not an investment they swear by. Not a hospital bill for their mother.

If you remember nothing else from this page, remember that sentence. Every scam below, however elaborate, eventually arrives at the same door. If you have decided in advance that the door does not open, the rest is just an unpleasant waste of your time rather than a disaster.

Script one: the fast romance

How it runs. Warm from the first message. Compliments early. Within a week or two, unusual emotional intensity — you are special, they have never felt this understood, they think about you constantly. They may say they are travelling, working offshore, deployed with the military, or working on an oil rig. Photos are attractive and slightly too professional. They will not video call, and each excuse is plausible on its own.

Then, at some point: the crisis. It is always a crisis. Frozen bank account, medical emergency, stuck at an airport, a contract that pays out next week but they need three hundred now.

What gives it away early: the speed. Real affection between two strangers writing letters takes months and feels tentative. Anything that arrives at devotion inside two weeks is a manufactured product, and the manufacturing is what you can feel when it seems slightly too good.

Worth knowing: this is the reason PenPalConnect has no dating category at all. Not as a moral stance — because romance framing is the single most effective vector for this fraud, and removing it removes most of the incentive.

Script two: the investment friend

How it runs. Perfectly normal correspondence for weeks. Genuinely interesting letters. Then, casually, they mention how well a trading platform has been treating them lately — crypto, forex, gold, sometimes a "family friend's" fund. No pressure. They will even discourage you slightly, which is the clever part. Eventually they offer to walk you through it.

The platform looks real. Your first small deposit shows a healthy profit and you can even withdraw it. The second, larger one cannot be withdrawn without a "tax clearance fee".

What gives it away: an unprompted mention of money-making, at all, from someone you met on a letter-writing site. That is not a thing that happens between friends who are actually just writing letters.

Script three: the parcel

How it runs. They want to send you a gift. Something expensive — a phone, jewellery, sometimes a large sum in cash that they need to "keep safe". A courier company then contacts you demanding a customs or insurance fee before it can be released. The courier is them.

What gives it away: unsolicited generosity of a size that does not match the friendship. Also: real international post does not work like this. You are not billed by email by a courier you have never heard of.

Script four: the platform hop

How it runs. Within the first two or three messages, they push to move to WhatsApp, Telegram, Hangouts or email. Often with a reason — "I'm barely on this site", "it's easier for me there".

Why it matters. This is the setup move for all of the above. On PenPalConnect, blocking is mutual and total, reports reach a human moderator, and repeat offenders get recognised across accounts. On WhatsApp you have none of that, and they know it. Moving you off-platform is not a preference; it is a prerequisite.

This is worth stating plainly because it is the one red flag people routinely talk themselves out of. It seems so reasonable. It is the single most reliable early indicator there is.

Script five: the sextortion trap

How it runs. Fast escalation to flirtation, then a request for a photo or a video call of a certain kind. Whatever you send is recorded. Then come the threats to send it to your contacts unless you pay.

What to do if it happens: do not pay — payment invites more demands. Block, report to us with the profile link, keep the messages as evidence, and report it to your local police. This is a crime, you are the victim of it, and the shame that keeps people silent is precisely the mechanism the criminal is relying on. Tell someone.

The general shape of a scam

Beyond the specific scripts, most fraudulent correspondents share a texture:

• Their answers don't quite match your questions. Ask something specific about their city and you get something general about their feelings.
• The details drift. Age, job, city or family composition changes slightly between letters. Scammers run many conversations at once.
• The English is oddly formal in a particular way — "my dear", "kindly", "God bless you" — in a person who claims to be from an English-speaking country.
• Photos are too good and too few. A real person's photos are inconsistent: bad lighting, odd angles, a kitchen in the background. Ask for a photo of something mundane and specific — their street, their lunch, their bookshelf — and watch what happens.
• They never video call. Ever. There is always a reason.
• Urgency arrives suddenly. Weeks of calm, then something that must be resolved today.

What we do at our end

Every profile photo is reviewed before it goes live, and obvious stock or lifted images are rejected. Members can earn a Verified badge by recording a short video proving they are the person in their photos — it is the strongest signal on the site and worth looking for. Blocking is mutual and silent: block someone and they cannot see your profile, find you in discovery, or write to you, and they are never told. Every report reaches a human moderator with the messages attached.

We also nudge you automatically when a new contact mentions another app or asks for outside contact details, because that is where the risk concentrates.

None of that is a substitute for the rule at the top of this page.

What to do if it has already happened

If you have sent money: stop immediately, do not send more to "recover" it (the recovery scam is a whole second industry), contact your bank or the card issuer right away — some transfers can be reversed within a short window — and report it to your national fraud service. In the UK that is Action Fraud; in the Netherlands, the police fraud desk; in the US, the FTC and IC3.

Then report the profile to us. Even if it is too late for you, it very often is not too late for the next person, and the report is what lets us find the other accounts.

And please do not carry the embarrassment. These scripts are written and refined by organised teams who run them thousands of times a week. Being taken in by a professional is not a character flaw. Staying quiet about it afterwards is the only part that helps them.

Our full Safety Centre covers sharing personal details, sending real post, and meeting a pen pal in person.