Why Keanu Reeves is Not in Love With You

Transcript

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Rob: Hello, and welcome to Won't Fix. Somewhere out there, Keanu Reeves is desperately in love with you. So is Jason Statham, and a brave peacekeeping soldier who just needs a few gift cards to get home. Of course, none of them are real. Keanu Reeves isn't even on social media, but that hasn't stopped scammers from impersonating him again and again. My guest today has had more of these online romances than anyone alive. Becky Holmes joined Twitter during lockdown, started stringing scammers along for laughs, and built a following of more than 100,000 people under the name Death to Spinach. Then victims began reaching out: people who'd lost their life savings, their friendships, and sometimes more. And the joke turned into a mission. Her book, Keanu Reeves Is Not in Love With You: The Murky World of Online Romance Fraud, is both funny and heartbreaking, often at the same time. It takes on the scammers, the scripts, and the shame that keeps victims silent. Her follow-up, The Future of Fraud, came out this spring. I had a great conversation with Becky, which I think you'll enjoy. And as always, please send me your feedback. Here we go. Hi, Becky. It's good to meet you.

Becky: Likewise. Thank you for having me.

Rob: A few months ago my kids gave me your book, which was a very good read. They obviously knew I'd find it interesting. So I'm excited to talk to you about it, and I know there are other books you've written or are writing, so I'd love to hear about those as well. How long did it take you to write? And did you have contacts in the publishing industry? How did it turn into a book?

Becky: I was incredibly lucky, I have to say. It became a book because I noticed that one of my favorite authors was following me on Twitter. I messaged her and said, "Oh my God, I love your stuff." I was really being a fangirl. And she messaged back and said, "I love your Twitter account. I should get my agent to speak to you." So I got a literary agent that way, and that's how it became a book. I don't think I would have had the willpower to sit and write a book out of nothing. I was just incredibly lucky that it happened the way it did.

Rob: So why Keanu Reeves? Why did you choose him for the title and the focus? What's special about Keanu?

Becky: Well, there's everything special about Keanu. We all know that. I used him in the title because at the time, and maybe still, he was one of the most impersonated celebrities on social media. I'm over 200 Keanu accounts now. There was a point when I was getting a new Keanu following me every day, across X and Instagram. Over the last couple of months, two Keanu Reeveses have tried to connect with me on LinkedIn. He's struggling for work at the moment, he's looking for some freelance. I think scammers like him because he's in so many big films, so everybody worldwide knows who he is. Everybody's seen The Matrix or John Wick. He's nice looking and known to be a nice guy. Unfortunately, he's a common face for impersonation.

Rob: Why would someone send Keanu Reeves money? Surely he has a lot of money. What's the story people tell themselves?

Becky: Before I wrote the book, I would have asked exactly the same thing. He's a multimillionaire. But fraudsters pretending to be celebrities operate slightly differently from those pretending to be regular people. They might say they're involved in a charity and looking for donations, and of course you have to donate through them because they get tax breaks, or whatever they come up with. Really common is offering a meet-and-greet package. This happens very often with country singers, for some reason. There are tons of Luke Bryan scammers out there. They'll contact somebody who's been on a Luke Bryan fan page and say: for $500, you can come to a concert not everyone knows about. For $1,000, a concert and an intimate soirée. For $1,500, we can have dinner. "Unfortunately I have to charge you, it's what my management says." So they have these extra ways of making it seem real. Having said that, I've been asked by a couple of Keanu accounts to send money or gift cards to help with the editing of a film. Some of them are just terrible scammers, really bad at their job. But generally they find a more convincing route than "I need your money."

Rob: I'm very familiar with the LinkedIn ones, where they find people at the same company and say your boss needs gift cards for a special presentation. A few days ago I got one from myself to myself: "Rob needs gift cards for this special presentation, Rob." Maybe double-check your automation.

Becky: That's a terrible scammer. He should be struck off.

Rob: He's going to get kicked out of the scammer union. I did an analysis comparing celebrity mentions on social media against various measures of their popularity, and some stand out, like Keanu. Another I see everywhere is Sandra Bullock.

Becky: I get a lot of romance fraud victims messaging me, and a lot of men say they've been contacted by Sandra Bullock impersonators. I don't really understand that, because she doesn't do that much anymore, unless I'm really out of touch.

Rob: I don't know the exact reason, but we definitely see her a lot. Scammers like to copy what works. If it happened to start that way and other scammers saw it, they copy. They stick with the formulas that work.

Becky: Yeah, I think you're right.

Rob: Speaking of which, you talk about Jason Statham, and how he doesn't seem to listen to you very well. Tell me more about that.

Becky: It's funny, because I wrote the book some time ago, it's been out a couple of years, and I hadn't had contact with any Jason Stathams for ages. Then very recently a Jason Statham account popped up. I posted it on Twitter and it started trending, and I thought, why has this happened? It turns out I'd posted it a day after his latest film came out, so all the keywords were there. What you're referring to is scammers who don't read what you write. They're so busy sticking to their scripts and trying to steer the conversation to money that they just keep going. You can say anything. The number of times I've confessed to a fraudster that I've got bodies buried, that I'm dismembering somebody, and they just say, "OK, can we talk about the money?" I've put photos together and sent pictures, and they still don't react. It's glorious. It's how I spend my free time.

Rob: What's an absurd thing a scammer actually went along with? As you point out, a lot of the time they won't respond, but sometimes they engage.

Becky: One of my favorite interactions was with someone pretending to be Brad Pitt. My friend came round, and I took a picture of him lying on my kitchen floor covered in ketchup, with a kitchen knife next to him. I sent it to this Brad Pitt account and said, "I've done something really awful. I've killed this tumble dryer repairman." He said, "Why have you done that?" I said, "He didn't have the right parts." I expected him to block me or swear at me. Instead, he ran with it. He said, "I have a friend who's really high up in the US military, and he can help you." Then I got a message from someone else entirely calling himself General Mark Milley, who at the time actually was very high up in the US military. This account said, "I hear you've got a problem. For 30,000 euros" (I think that's what it was) "I can come and remove that body for you." Even then, trying to get money out of me. I remember reading it in my flat thinking, thank God, this is the best exchange ever.

Rob: One thing I liked about the book is that you see the humor and you mess with the scammers, but it's also a serious topic, and you cover a lot of serious ground. Do you think the platforms are doing enough to stop this? Are they responsive? From your discussions with victims and others, what's the state of things today?

Becky: If you're talking about social media platforms, they're doing nothing. Absolutely nothing. It amazes me. In the UK we now have the mandatory reimbursement scheme, where if somebody is the victim of a scam, the bank reimburses them up to £85,000. I'm not a fan, because the onus then falls on the bank. It seems ludicrous that such a high percentage of these frauds start on social media and nothing happens to the platforms. They aren't made to pay in any way. They start on Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram. They even start in online games. You play Words With Friends and a Keanu Reeves pops up in the messages: "Hi, I've just had a really good word score." They're starting on social media, and the platforms get away scot-free. It's always the same line: "We're just the hosts, we're not responsible for the content." That's rubbish. Absolute rubbish. I could get very animated about it. But the answer is no, they're not doing enough. They're not doing anything.

Rob: I've talked to some folks in Australia about their law, which tries not to make it only the bank's responsibility, but also brings in telecom companies and platforms.

Becky: There should be an equal spread. Everyone needs to take responsibility. It can't just be on one group, particularly because by the time it gets to the bank, the fraud's already happened. The person has already been controlled to the point where they're going to send their money. So the burden needs to be shared more between social media, telecoms companies and banks.

Rob: You've talked to a lot of victims. Which stories have stuck with you most?

Becky: Every victim story is notable in its own way, and the people I've spoken to have been incredible. It's mainly women I spoke to for the book. Romance fraud is such a big subject that I had to pick a demographic, so for the book it was women. There are two I think about a lot. One I now consider a friend, which is a nice outcome. A very clever lady. I went to her house to interview her and walked into this lovely cottage thinking, I'd love to live here. She was elegant, articulate and clever, and I thought, I'd love to be you. She told me she wasn't particularly fussed about meeting anybody. She wasn't lonely. She was divorced from her children's father, but that was fine, and she had a good social life. Then she was having drinks with some girlfriends who said, "Let's put you on online dating." She said, "OK, what's the worst that could happen?" Within three months, she'd remortgaged her house and sent £120,000 to a series of bank accounts in Europe. Anyone listening might think that's ridiculous. But she was not a foolish woman. What struck me more was what happened after she found out. She rang the HR department of the oil rig company this man said he worked for, and they told her, "This person doesn't exist, and we hear this a lot." After that she completely shut down. She lost weight. She'd get home, draw the curtains, and sit shaking under the duvet. To this day she keeps the radio on, because silence makes her think about everything that happened. She lost friends and family, because she'd borrowed money and told people lies to cover up what she was doing. It had a profound impact on her, and again, this is a smart woman. The other was really tragic, and I never got to meet her. I spoke to her on the phone several times, and she had stage four cancer. She told me the only way her son would ever find out she'd been defrauded was when she died and he got no inheritance. I was due to interview her, and we'd been messaging on Twitter, as it was then. Then I got a message from her account. It was her son, saying, "Mum's passed away, but I've just been reading this conversation. What on earth is going on?" I had to ring him at nine or ten on a Friday night and explain what had happened. It stuck with me because he was lovely. He said there was no way in the world he'd have been cross with his mum. He'd have been furious at the fraudster, done everything he could to find him, and supported her every step of the way. It breaks my heart that she died without confiding in him. That was a really heavy burden for her.

Rob: I remember that story from the book. Victims not telling anyone, and the shame attached, is one of the big themes and problems. Do you think we can change that as a society, reduce the shame, and help people come forward? These stories really do help people.

Becky: I very much hope so. A lot of us are fighting for that. We need to change how we talk about victims of fraud, romance fraud in particular, and the media needs to change how it reports on them. I give a lot of talks around the world about victim impact, and I always say: let's stop saying people "fell for" fraud. No one ever says you fell for a burglary or a mugging. But with romance fraud, "Oh, you just fell into it." No, you didn't. You were the victim of a crime. Or "How much money did you lose?" No, you didn't lose money. You had money stolen. There are small things we can do with language that would encourage people to come forward and not feel this needless shame. I deal with fantastic police officers every day, but I also hear the worst from victims whose officers said awful things to them, and then they didn't want to take the report any further because they felt too embarrassed. Banks need to think more about how they talk to victims too. Every time somebody is derogatory or dismissive toward a victim of romance fraud, it's another barrier to someone else coming forward. We need to normalize it. If somebody's been the victim of a crime, treat them with the respect that's due.

Rob: I agree. Your book focuses on women, but I think men are probably even more reluctant to come forward. You've said about half of victims are men, and I worry they're even less likely to report.

Becky: I think that's absolutely right. When I give talks I say it's like trying to get a man to go to the doctor. Unless something has literally fallen off: "No, it's fine, I don't need to see anybody." It's that sort of thing. "I'll just keep this to myself." Interestingly, although the split is roughly 50-50, men and women are approached quite differently. Often, though by no means always, when a man is the victim of romance fraud there's a more sexual element. That means the scammer can start blackmailing him, so it moves into sextortion. The reporting gets a bit muddled, so we're not quite sure which categories overlap. But if you've sent intimate photos as part of a relationship and they're now blackmailing you, and you have a wife, you're certainly not going to want to report it. Nor if your blackmailer says, "I know where you work, I'll send these to your colleagues." I've spoken to female victims of sextortion as well, but it does seem to be primarily men.

Rob: Something I'd thought about, but you made clear has a big impact, is in your chapter on the victims who lose more than money. You write about Steven Kelly, a soldier whose photos and details have been used in these scams, and how people have tracked him down asking, "Are you the person who's been scamming me?" What did you learn from him? Stolen details are a big part of what scammers do.

Becky: Of course. Even with celebrities whose identities are used, people think, they're celebrities, what do they care? But their identity has still been stolen. Steven Kelly, the guy I write about in the book, is an army officer, now I think an ex-army officer. He runs a training business where kids spend time in the wild, building fires and so on. So as you can imagine, he's a really fit guy, nice to look at, with lots of photos of him doing manly stuff. For a scammer that's great, because there are loads of pictures to send women: "Look at me, aren't I lovely?" Meanwhile, Steven Kelly is sitting on the sofa with his wife, and his wife is getting messages from women saying, "I've been seeing your husband." Or he gets messages from somebody's brother saying, "You've had £20,000 off my sister and I'm coming to get it." He's had death threats. His wife has constantly been told he's being unfaithful. It's really affected their lives, and he's just one of many. People have told him, "Just shut your social media down." But he's starting a new business. Why should he? That puts the onus on him. He shouldn't have to change anything. He should be free to run his online business however he wants.

Rob: I assume service members, doctors and pilots are often used this way too. I talked to a New York Times journalist maybe two years ago who'd found a lot of doctors being impersonated for health-related scams.

Becky: Yes, for certain. There's one doctor in particular, I can't for the life of me remember his name, whose image crops up all the time. And you can see why they choose these jobs and these men. It's often men in good, stable jobs that are exciting or glamorous: a surgeon, an oil rig worker, someone fighting for his country. Interesting jobs we don't know much about unless we work in those fields. And crucially, they're jobs that keep them away a lot. So, what a surprise, they can't meet you.

Rob: There's also a lot of content online teaching people how to be scammers. You wrote about the Facebook group you joined where people discuss how to be Yahoo Boys, as they're known. What did you learn from that?

Becky: I learned just how blatant scammers are. A few years down the line, that's no surprise to me. But at the time I thought, what is this? I went onto Facebook and typed in "Yahoo Boys," which is what the lads in Nigeria who commit this kind of crime call themselves. There were a number of groups you could join where Yahoo Boys teach each other how to commit these crimes. I thought, this is insane. I reported it to Facebook and it never got taken down. It's probably still up there today. I should go and look. Things have moved on slightly. It's less on those groups now and more on encrypted apps like Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, where it can't be shut down and nobody can be found. They sell each other tips. They leave voice messages saying, "I've got details for this scam, I can sell you a new client." Client is what they call their victims. They're running it like businesspeople.

Rob: We've seen that too, with supply chains and lead generation. If you look at the code of some websites, you can see they're tracking things. With tech support scams, for example, if a victim stays on the page for over three minutes, it fires a conversion event, which is presumably how one group gets paid for driving a valid victim to another. Tracking and analytics help separate groups work together on scams.

Becky: I hate myself for even thinking this, but it's clever. I look at it and think, this is an impressive setup. This isn't a Nigerian prince tapping out an email. This is a proper industry now. It's remarkable, and sometimes I find myself reluctantly impressed.

Rob: We think the platforms can do more. What about law enforcement? There's clearly far more fraud than resources to counter it. Maybe it's harder to counter because it happens on people's phones and home computers. Is there a failure here that can be addressed?

Becky: It's a really hard one. The stat I use in the book still stands today in the UK: fraud accounts for around 40% of crime, all fraud, not just romance fraud. It's now between 40 and 50%. But police resources dedicated to fraud are 1%. It's a remarkable difference. I'm talking about the UK, but it probably extends to the US as well. The police are hugely under-resourced, with very little training budget. People with real expertise in cyber, security or crypto often go to the private sector because they'll earn three times the money, and why wouldn't you? And people aren't signing up to be coppers anymore. It's a really tough job. With romance fraud in particular, the prosecution rate may as well not exist, because so much of it comes from outside the police force's jurisdiction. Somebody has their life savings, £10,000, stolen by a fraudster in Ghana, let's say. There's nothing the police can do. If it was £10 million, they might get Interpol or Europol involved. But when it's a small amount to them, even though it's everything that person owns, they can't do anything. Until police forces can work together to bring people to justice across borders, I don't see it changing. There's also corruption in police forces across the world. I've heard of cases, particularly in Nigeria with romance fraud, where police officers are just bought off. They hear about the crimes, and then nothing happens.

Rob: In some countries, to become a police officer you have to pay, so you take a loan from gangsters, who then want repayment in favors. So not only is it cross-border, there are different standards of how things are done.

Becky: Yes. What chance do we have? With the pig butchering scams in Southeast Asia, there are incredible police officers there, as there are all around the world, but they're up against a lot of corruption too.

Rob: Absolutely. You've mentioned receiving threats for speaking out. What keeps you motivated? Do you ever doubt whether it's worth it, given that the platforms and law enforcement aren't doing enough?

Becky: There hasn't been a single day since I started looking into this when I've questioned whether it was worth it. Not for a second. There are times, a hundred times a day, when I feel frustrated. I speak to another victim and think, when is this going to end? Or I speak to someone in the police who's had an inquiry shut down. But I never think it's not worth it, because I'm fortunate to have a voice on some platforms. I speak at conferences, to banks, to the Crown Prosecution Service. The joy comes from seeing people register the impact this has on victims, when perhaps they'd dismissed it before as a lesser crime. I find it really gratifying when I come off stage and people say, "I didn't realize X, Y and Z." It's those little bits of education. I've also become a bit of a fraud nerd. I like listening to things about other types of fraud. I'm frightened I'm becoming incredibly boring. When I start talking about fraud, my friends all start edging away.

Rob: I have to be careful too, talking about fraud and AI. But that's a good topic. You've written a second book and you're working on a third, is that right?

Becky: The proposal for a third book. Let's not get overexcited. The second book is called The Future of Fraud. It's a much smaller book. It looks at AI, crypto and social media: where we are now, where we'll be in the future, and what we should be trying to do. It's for anyone who's interested but doesn't want to learn it all. It's a quick read, a whistle-stop tour of what's going on in fraud.

Rob: On this podcast I've talked to a few people working on interesting angles. The first episode was about hiring and recruiting scams and North Korean IT workers. What have you seen with AI and deepfakes? It seems to change month to month, getting better or worse depending on how you look at it.

Becky: It's weird. The Keanu Reeves book came out in 2024. That's two years ago, and it's a completely different world now. I should rewrite it with an AI chapter, because even in those two years romance fraud has really moved on. The main problem with AI in romance fraud is that so many of the red flags we used to tell people to look out for no longer apply. We used to say, very basically, if they can't send you a voice message, that's not a real person. Now they can send a voice message pretending to be anybody. And we're entering real-time video manipulation. Someone pretending to be Keanu Reeves could video call me with Keanu Reeves' face and voice, and we could have a conversation. When you tell people, "Clearly that's not him, because you've never spoken to him," they can say, "Actually, I have." Romance fraud will continue as it is. What will get harder is getting people to understand it's fraud, because those red flags don't exist anymore.

Rob: One thing I get asked all the time is what people can do to protect family members, a parent, or an uncle with dementia. I wish I had better answers sometimes. What do you tell people if they suspect a family member is being scammed?

Becky: Like you, I get asked it a lot, and it's really hard. If we had the right answers, nobody would ever get scammed. Funnily enough, I'm writing an article for The Times on exactly this right now. Romance fraud is a very emotionally driven crime, so it's really important not to go in with an accusation. Telling someone "You're sending money to a scammer" is really not the way to go. The best thing is to plant little seeds of doubt. Suggest a reverse image search, or ask, "Has anything ever struck you as odd about it?" Get them to start questioning things themselves. The most important thing is to make sure that person knows you're not going anywhere. Something romance fraud victims fear, and that happens all the time, is that friends and family walk away. So they don't want to reveal what's happening, because they don't want to push people away or hear "You're so stupid, I'm off." Reassure them: "I'm not sure about this relationship, but that's your choice. If anything ever goes wrong, or you want to talk about it, I'm not going anywhere." I think that's really, really important.

Rob: I agree. That's a great note to leave it on. I'll include links to your books and your Twitter, which is a great follow. I really appreciate you taking the time to chat, Becky. It was really good to meet you.

Becky: Likewise. It's been a pleasure.

Rob: And if you ever want a follow-up conversation, we can definitely talk more in the future.

Becky: I'd love that.

Rob: Great.