Don’t be seduced by a digital lover

Becky Holmes digs into a dark new variety of online scam – but her jollity mars her research

KEANU REEVES IS NOT IN LOVE WITH YOU by Becky Holmes

224pp, Unbound, T £9.99 (0844 871 1514), RRP£10.99, ebook £5.99

Last year, I was the victim of a banking scam. For a while, it appeared that I had lost everything, but, luckily, the perpetrator was so eerily accomplished at mirroring the bank’s technology and phone numbers that they agreed I wasn’t at fault and the money was refunded to me. What struck me most about the whole thing was how quickly my critical faculties failed when a few logistical practicalities were falsified and an enormous amount of psychological pressure was exerted upon me in a short time. Like everyone else, I would have assumed, if asked, that it would be impossible to deceive me in such a way, but, at that moment, I happened to be upset, disorientated and vulnerable already. The effect of someone well-practised at exacerbating selfdoubt and panic was immediate. At the time, it was devastating: not only was I terrified by the actual loss, I was also ashamed of being weak enough to be preyed upon.

Becky Holmes, a popular presence on X (formerly Twitter), has written a book about a different sort of fraud, one much more personally invasive and traumatic than the kind I experienced. She writes about romantic fraud, in which a perpetrator assumes a false identity – in more outlandish frauds, sometimes posing as a celebrity (there’s more than one Keanu Reeves out there) – to woo another person online, eventually using the relationship to extort money and gifts. This has, as she shows in her entertaining debut, been a widely misunderstood phenomenon, partly because of the attendant shame felt by victims, and partly because of the patronising attitude others often display towards them. Holmes gives case studies of some of the victims she has interviewed and provides context for the deceptions landed upon them. She also recounts how she became personally invested in the area, having begun interacting with the attempted scammers who filled her inbox and posting the comical results to the amusement of her now more than 100,000 followers.

This mix of relatively deadpan reporting and frivolous humour is, tonally, a problem. In general, Holmes writes in the sort of jolly, happily vulgar register popularised by Caitlin Moran and others, and if you do not happen to enjoy that, then it will be difficult to enjoy the book, no matter how interesting the subject matter. More specifically, the book – produced by the crowdfunding publisher Unbound – is a result of the well-enjoyed Twitter schtick that made a name for Holmes. Accordingly, much of the first third consists of images of the exchanges that went viral. It’s not my favoured comic register – I balk at a particular kind of crude British zaniness (“I told one chap that my house was made of dung, another that I was looking for a man who was willing to eat a whole duvet”) – but even if it were, it is slightly wearying to be exposed to (admittedly inventive) variants on the same joke for so long. I think it’s worth mentioning also that books are pleasurable partly because they precisely are not Twitter, and there is something stuffy and claustrophobic about having that format imposed in what should be a different realm.

These are all matters of personal taste, and Holmes’s many fans will surely enjoy parts that I did not. More appealing are the serious segments, which are used as case studies to illuminate different aspects of romance fraud – and, hopefully, to serve as a warning not only for us to heed, but to explain how educated, intelligent, attractive women can be vulnerable to seemingly ridiculous lies and demands. Holmes focuses on women victims, not, she says, because they make up the larger proportion of victims – who tend to be fairly evenly divided – but because she is a woman herself.

There is Sue, a cancer patient and widow, whose kindness and vulnerability are preyed upon by someone pretending to be an oil-rig worker (a common choice of fake profession) and who eventually reveals himself to be a Nigerian man named Kelvin. Even after this revelation, Sue’s susceptibility to his need means she continues sending money, remaining embroiled in the situation and keeping it a secret from her children up until her death.

There is Claire, who begins an online affair despite being married for 40 years and who is horrified to be blackmailed with explicit photos of herself when her scammer reveals his true identity. There is Francesca, who repeatedly sends money to cover hospital bills for her increasingly misfortune-prone boyfriend, eventually ending up in terrible debt to friends and family. All of these women were in moments of situational vulnerability and were wholly convinced they were in genuine, loving relationships; their attachments were so strong in some cases that they continued to experience romantic desire for years after the truth was revealed to them. Most fascinating are the complex dynamics of competing vulnerabilities experienced by these women and by the disadvantaged men who are sometimes responsible for manipulating them.

This is not to suggest that economic misfortune excuses the behaviour, but there is a compelling study to be made of what leads a man to write to one of his victims: “When your British people was colonising, enslaving, exploiting and impoverishing us, stealing our crude oil and other natural resources, creating artificial boundaries in Africa, making us hungry… what were you thinking? How do you want us to survive?”, and about how such disparities enable the guilty co-operation of lonely women. An intensive analysis of such dynamics is not to be found here, but, in the meantime, Holmes has written a useful overview for newcomers to a complex and hidden modern phenomenon.

Holmes winds up one scammer by telling him she wants ‘a man who can eat a duvet’