A police officer turned private investigator, Kylee Dennis is extremely passionate about helping people. It’s what drives her.

And that’s crucial because as head of Two Face Investigations – an agency specialising in uncovering digital deception and protecting people from romance scams – Kylee has to help her clients escape the online clutches of the lowest of the low.

But it’s not new ground for Kylee because in the NSW Police Force she was investigating and helping to apprehend criminals for 14 years. During this time, she served in numerous roles, including intelligence officer, hostage negotiator, undercover operative, detective, adult sexual assault investigator and child protection specialist.

Her experience and skill-set mean she is more than well equipped to take on global crime syndicates.

That’s good news for law-abiding civilians, bad news for crooks.

A personal connection

Kylee decided to switch her professional focus in 2023 and start Two Face Investigations after an online romance scammer targeted a friend’s mother and Kylee helped to extract the 78-year-old woman from the situation.

Online romance scammers use fake dating profiles – often with a stolen identity and photos of a model or an innocent person who has nothing to do with the scam – to start an online relationship with a man or woman with the aim to get that person to send money or gift cards.

These scammers operate across social media and dating apps, seeking to exploit innocent people who are looking for personal intimate connection and love.

In 2022, online romance scams cost Australians more than $40 million, according to the Australian government’s Scamwatch, run by the National Anti-Scam Centre.

When Kylee saw how devastated her friend’s mum was in the aftermath of the crime – and the sheer volume of online romance scams that were occurring every day – she knew she had to dedicate herself to researching, tracking and shutting down these criminals and criminal networks.

“It took me a couple of weeks to use a bit of persuasive technique to get her to understand that who she was actually talking to [was a scammer]. And she then went through the shame, the embarrassment and everything.

“As a result of watching her go through this – and it was such a simple, easy exercise to go online [to identify and investigate scams] – I went, ‘Okay, what's out there?’

“So I've gone: ‘How many people are losing, are sitting at home believing that they're falling in love?’ That just broke me. So I said: ‘No, I'm gonna try to do something, I’m gonna focus solely on this because everyone deserves to feel loved or be loved or want love, but you don't deserve to lose your home over it in the scamming world.

“That's what we are looking at: their sole purpose is to obtain a benefit [steal your money] through deception. And the deception is breaking your heart.”

Kylee says large-scale online romance scamming operations are based in three distinct regions Nigeria, Ghana, and South-East Asia. 

“There are pockets of people who just do it [the scams] by themselves, because they're watching other people do it, but if we're going to put them all under an umbrella, yes, they are crime syndicates.” 

And there are scammers based in the UK, the US and here in Australia, she says.

Frighteningly though, online romance scams are only a small part of something much bigger and even more insidious.

“This [online romance scamming] moves into another whole world of pig butchering* and human trafficking. And this goes very deep.” ( * Pig butchering is a term used to describe the act of forcing the victim of your online romance scam into an investment scam, taking even more of their money in the process. It’s executed by way of the criminal tempting the victim with the prospect of making money through investments, as well as the lure of being able to afford expensive gifts and exotic travel, fattening them up for the slaughter. Hence, pig butchering.)

“And then right at the end – when you have then given all the money you've got, you've given them a hundred thousand dollars, you've asked friends for money – they then shut down the [fake investment scheme] webpage. It's now “under maintenance”, you try to ring, get in contact with your friend and you’re slaughtered, done. You've lost everything.

“It's coercive behaviour manipulation at its worst.”

There’s no shame in being the target of a romance scam

One of the misconceptions about scamming Kylee is keen to dispel is that victims are somehow silly for falling prey to such criminal operations.

“Don’t be ashamed or embarrassed. It happens to everyone, you’re not stupid.

“You shouldn't feel silly, because these scams are finely tuned, orchestrated, they have a playbook. 

“They go and buy scripts [about what to write and say] and all that sort of stuff. And these are things that have been honed over time, through tens of thousands of people.

“It's heartbreaking. 

“Someone said to me the other day: ‘We’ve all done something stupid in love, every one of us.’

“So I would say to anybody who contacts me: It’s actually okay to talk about it.

“The first step is to say, okay, you've been isolated. Tell me your story. Allow me to hear your story. And it's between you and I, just you and I. It's not for the world to know. And that's where we start. 

“It's all about just that first step of communication. I will be empathetic, I will listen and I will show you the respect that you deserve and then we'll walk through it. 

“If you have even a little bit of doubt, come and talk to me. And then we will work through the processes of identifying who you're talking to. 

“It is all confidential, it’s between you and I.

“So you just go onto my webpage and book in a time and we'll have a 15-minute phone call. That's it. You don't have to take it any further. 

“And then I can say to you, from what you are saying to me, I feel that there are red flags there. If you want to go further, you can. It's your decision. 

“If I feel that there are red flags there, and you choose to go down that path, I then do the investigation and it'll take about seven days, I’ll try to get as much data that I can for you. 

“There may be times where there is no information, so then we have to look at the content of emails. There's always red flags.”

The fight never stops

During her investigations, as Kylee collects more and more data on scammers and scamming operations, she shares it with the appropriate government agencies. 

“I think every scam needs to be reported to, whether it be to Scamwatch or whatever, because I don't think the data is a hundred percent correct, because there would be a lot of people that are not reporting it, for various reasons. 

“I'm guiding my clients down that path [of reporting the scam]. And also the path of making sure they look after themselves, their mental health. 

“It's not about the offender – it's about you. I care about you. I want to make sure you are okay.”

For Kylee, the fight never stops. As well as helping her clients, she currently runs two fake identities on online dating websites as part of her constant monitoring, recording and reporting of the tactics of online romance scammers. She also reports fake Facebook accounts to Meta and lets dating apps know about fake profiles on the sites.

Kylee is building an ever-growing database of the language and imagery that online romance scammers use.

But to win the fight against online romance scammers we all need to do our bit.

“My motto is: it takes a network to destroy a network. So the idea is that we collectively come together to destroy a network. I hope that I have an impact. But it's just one step at a time, basically. 

“I’d like to be a disruptor, I’d like to help people to not go down that path [of being scammed]. I would like people to find true romance.”

Kylee’s tips to avoid being the victim of online romance scammers

An urgent desire to move a conversation off a dating site is a warning sign. 

“If they're messaging you and asking you to go straight from the dating app onto a Gmail account or WhatsApp or another messaging service, that's a red flag,” Kylee says.

If an online dating profile looks too good to be true, then it probably is.

“There's a lot of model-like photos, that’s a red flag.”

Recently Kylee found that a photo on a dating app of a man claiming to be a Wollongong resident was actually just a cropped version of a photo of an overseas male model, whose identity had been stolen.

Another thing to watch out for is that online romance scammers intentionally don’t include much information on their dating profile.

“The limited amount of information is a red flag.They might write: ‘Male, 65, 175cm tall, loves fishing’ – and that's it. That’s a red flag.”

If the person you’re in touch with online consistently can’t or won’t meet you in person then you’re likely interacting with a scammer. 

Kylee also says another red flag is if your potential love interest claims they are working overseas – on an oil rig, as a pilot, businessman, military, doctor or if they say they’re in the military.

For more information visit Two Face Investigations