Offshore oil rig workers: the 'no signal' alibi

Why the rig story is perfect for fraud

An offshore rotation answers every awkward question in one sentence. Why no video? Bad satellite link. Why no meeting? Six weeks on, two off, and the two off got cancelled. Why the strange bank details? Offshore payroll. The stolen photographs — hard hat, coveralls, sea in the background — make the story visual and therefore believable.

The financial arc

These are slow cons. Nothing is asked for in the first month. The engineer is attentive, sends good-morning voice notes, discusses a future together in detail. Then a work incident occurs: equipment damaged, wages frozen, a contract penalty, a medical evacuation. The sums start small and grow, and each payment is framed as protecting a much larger sum that is about to be released.

The real engineers

People whose rotation photos are stolen describe a specific kind of harassment: strangers arriving in their LinkedIn inbox convinced they have been in a relationship for months, sometimes furious, sometimes heartbroken, occasionally threatening. Employers get dragged in. Some workers have had to make their entire professional presence private, which harms their own careers.

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.