Victim of photo & identity theft

Archaeologists, geologists and field scientists

Expedition photos that explain months off-grid

science

romance scam

identity theft

Illustration of how these photos are reused in fake profiles. We never republish a victim's stolen photograph.

Fieldwork photography supports personas who are unreachable for weeks at a time, often paired with stories about artefacts, samples or grant money held up in customs.

Where the photos come from

University field reports, expedition blogs, museum press coverage and research social media.

Personas built from them

A researcher on a remote dig or survey
A scientist whose grant is held by an institution abroad
An expert authenticating a fake artefact in another scam

Where they show up

Facebook

Dating apps

Red flags

Customs or export fees on artefacts, samples or equipment
Grant money that requires a personal payment to release
Field photos that span incompatible terrain and seasons
An expert who appears only to confirm the other person's story

How to verify

Grants are paid to institutions, never released by a partner's payment
Check the researcher against their university's own staff directory
Ask for a live call at a time you choose
Search the contact details in our database

Search a name, phone, email or wallet

Romanticised isolation

Fieldwork carries a built-in narrative: remote, meaningful, temporarily unreachable. Scammers use expedition photography to sell exactly that, and it attracts targets who find the story intellectually appealing rather than merely glamorous.

The artefact variant

A second use inserts the stolen scientist into someone else's scam as an authenticator — confirming that a "recovered" artefact, meteorite or mineral sample is genuine and valuable, so the victim pays storage, export or authentication costs.

Researchers affected

Academics discover their published fieldwork attached to fake profiles, sometimes with their institution named, and spend time correcting enquiries from people who believed they were in contact with them.

If these photos are yours

You are the second victim of this scam. The money goes to strangers, but the face, the name and the reputation are yours — and the angry messages from defrauded people land in your inbox, not the scammer's.

Save everything: profile URLs, screenshots with visible usernames, message threads, and the dates you found them.
Report the fake profile on the platform itself under impersonation, not spam. Impersonation reports are actioned faster and you can usually attach a photo ID.
File a report with your national fraud body (IC3 in the US, Action Fraud in the UK, the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre, or your local police cyber unit).
Submit the scammer's contact details — the email, phone, wallet or profile handle, never your own — to our database so the next person who searches that identifier finds a warning instead of a fake romance.
If someone contacts you believing they were talking to you, be kind and clear: send them to a search page so they can verify the details for themselves.

If you were talking to one of these profiles

Slow down before you send anything. Ask for a live video call on a platform the other person did not choose. Ask for a photo holding a handwritten note with today's date and an unusual word you pick. Run the phone number, email, username or wallet address through our database. A genuine person will pass all three in minutes; a stolen-photo persona will produce excuses — bad signal, hospital shift, offshore rig, army firewall, "you don't trust me".

Never send money, gift cards, crypto or copies of your own ID to someone you have not met in person, no matter how complete the story sounds.

Important

This profile describes a pattern of photo and identity theft. It does not accuse any person pictured in such photographs of wrongdoing — they are victims. We do not republish stolen photo albums. If a report on scamers.org names you incorrectly, use our I'm Innocent review process and we will investigate.