‘I felt inhuman’: Reformed romance scammer’s confession, leaked catfish bible reveals con artist secrets

At first, Chris felt fine scamming the woman into handing over money.

The Nigerian man in his 20s told the Herald he used the 61-year-old’s financial gifts to live a lavish lifestyle.

New Zealanders have lost millions to romance scammers, and the Christmas holidays are high season for catfishing.

Chris, 25, used tactics that can be deployed on people of any nationality.

“She gave me a lot of money, she gave me about US$21,000 [$33,000]. At first I felt so comfortable getting the money… because she was rich.”

Chris was a catfish, using a fake profile of an attractive person he thought likely to trick a victim.

“I just went on Instagram. I looked for a cute picture of a good-looking military guy. I set up a fake profile. I went on Facebook.”

He then found the older Australian woman online, and made contact.

During the scam, he never showed his real face.

“I only did voice calls. I talked to her on calls and she was able to fall for me because I seemed real to her.”

Chris said he used his skill with accents to pretend to be American. And it only took four days before the catfish got money from his target.

“She buys gift cards, she uses Bitcoin, she sent Bitcoin.”

Apart from the $33,000, the duped woman sent Chris…