Super Scam Me documentary shows what it takes to catch a romance scammer
If you got a DM from an unverified Jon Bon Jovi account after commenting on one of his official Instagram posts, what would it take to make you believe it was really the rock star hoping to connect? And at what point when he starts asking you to send money—like lose-your-house kind of money—would you snap out of the fantasy and stop draining your bank account?
In a documentary premiering Saturday—Super Scam Me—investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller goes deep into this toxic love-bombing terrain. In a clip that Ars is exclusively debuting below, you can see how van Zeller worked with an ethical hacker, Arman the Cyber, to use a fake bitcoin receipt and bait the fake Bon Jovi, giving the victim some much-needed closure.
Sneak peek at National Geographic’s Super Scam Me.
Scamming a romance scammer
Broadcasting on National Geographic at 9 pm ET and available to stream on Disney+ and Hulu, the documentary takes viewers on an empathetic quest to understand how the line between “lover” and “fraud victim” gets blurred in romance scams that the Federal Trade Commission says cost Americans nearly $1.5 billion in losses each year.
Often targeting older women with resources who lack community and seek out connections online, such as widows or divorcées, these scams are now a leading form of financial fraud in the US, the FTC has warned. Most victims never get their money back, and overseas scammers are only getting more sophisticated, thanks to AI, Experian forecasted in January.
In Super Scam Me, viewers get a chance to go beyond a single victim’s story and see how romance scams operate so effectively to squeeze funds out of the people they target on social media apps like Instagram or dating apps like Match and Tinder. Van Zeller has spent years reporting on the scam industry, and when she saw how many victims were broken and stranded by romance scams, she devised a social experiment in which she became the target. Her plan worked quickly, hooking a scammer in Ghana who began posing as a handsome overseas four-star military general named “Mark Turner.”
Images of Mary Zelle in her everyday life.
National Geographic
National Geographic/Daniel Hollis Diamond
The “Mary Zelle” and “Mark Turner” ad posted in Accra, Ghana.
National Geographic/Daniel Hollis Diamond
Images of Mary Zelle in her everyday life.
National Geographic
The “Mary Zelle” and “Mark Turner” ad posted in Accra, Ghana.
National Geographic/Daniel Hollis Diamond
Relying on a wig, big glasses, and a prosthetic nose to cover her true identity as a journalist (should the scammer try to reverse-image search her profile), van Zeller posed as a middle-age antiques dealer named “Mary Zelle.” She staged her pictures to show she was a fun-time gal living her best single life. Once she hooked the scammer, she used the same tactics that outed the fake Bon Jovi in a scheme to meet her scammer face to face. To track him down, she partly relied on distributing flyers in his neighborhood that included a mashup photo of the supposedly loving couple that “Mark Turner” made to woo “Mary Zelle.”
