Romance Tax and Fee Scam

The romance tax scam is a fee-escalation mechanism layered onto pig-butchering, inheritance, and benefactor scams. Each time the victim pays one fee — a tax clearance, an anti-money-laundering charge, a customs duty, a legal notarisation cost — a new obstacle requiring another fee emerges. The fees appear authoritative, often accompanied by fake government documents, official-looking correspondence, and professional-sounding phone calls from confederates posing as lawyers, officials, or bank compliance officers.

The escalation can continue for as long as the victim has accessible funds. The promised underlying sum — an inheritance, a business profit, an investment withdrawal — is used as the carrot justifying each new fee. Victims rationalise each payment as a necessary cost to access a much larger sum.

No legitimate government or financial institution charges private individuals advance fees via informal payment methods to release funds. Any sequence of fees that must be paid before receiving money should be treated as a scam.