Lew Alessio is a retired public health professional and an antiques dealer. He lives in
Greene.

We’ve all read the stories about people losing enormous sums of money to scams. A senior couple loses their life savings to a fraudulent investment. A grandparent wires funds to resolve an emergency that never occurred.

Public reaction is predictable. Outrage at the scammers. Disbelief at the victims. And, too quickly, judgment: How could anyone fall for that? And then — why didn’t someone
stop it?

We picture scams in familiar forms of fraud and finance. But some of the most effective scams begin elsewhere — with the promise of a fulfilling, loving relationship. Over many months, I watched a friend become entwined in just such a deception. The identifying details aren’t mine to tell. What I can describe is the structure.

This scam was neither impulsive nor clumsy. It was patient, coherent. Textbook.

It began believably — on a dating site for older gay men, where a profile presented a young man in a foreign country with a believable personal history.

The story carried an additional layer of credibility. The man presenting himself to my friend claimed to be living in a country openly hostile to LGBTQ relationships. Privacy, discretion and emotional caution were not suspicious but necessary. Distance became understandable. Secrecy became virtuous. Vulnerability became enticing.

My friend delighted in sharing conversations and photographs of “Targen” — a name I invented for a man who almost certainly had invented his own. The images showed an extraordinarily handsome young man: gym-developed muscles, a warm smile framed by bright white teeth, poses lifted from fitness magazines or modeling portfolios. The photographs were confident, unmistakably erotic.

They were also plainly false.

Basic online and reverse image searches revealed that the photographs belonged to a professional model who appeared across multiple websites. The images were real. The person claiming them was not.

One image even showed the man — who claimed he had never left his homeland — posed before an easily identifiable U.S. city skyline. From the outside, this might seem decisive. It was not. But verification was never truly in play. To verify would have dismantled something my friend deeply wanted, perhaps needed, to believe.

Gradually, I understood something unsettling: People protect identity more fiercely than
truth. Attention intensified. Decades of age difference were no barrier. Distance immaterial. My friend was not being rushed; he was being engaged.

Targen’s tone was caring, admiring. Mutual interests materialized. Flattery broadened. Plans for a shared future emerged — specific enough to feel tangible, remote enough to avoid verification. Obstacles preventing reunion became part of the narrative. Sexual language emerged naturally, even tenderly. Eventually, the intimacy became too personal for me to read. Authentic or fabricated, it didn’t matter.

By this stage, the relationship no longer resembled an obvious deception. It looked like a love story already in progress. And then, gradually, the subject of money appeared. Not as a demand, but as circumstance. Support framed as commitment arising within the relationship.

I began to feel my own objectivity slipping. What was my role here? Advisor, skeptic, red-flag waver, detective — or simply witness?

These scams do not succeed because people lack intelligence. They succeed because they are built patiently around something profoundly, inherently human: the wish to be desired, to be chosen, to believe intimacy is still possible.

Eventually, I understood that “Targen” was never merely a man. He was a mirror — reflecting not who my friend was, but who he longed to believe he could still be.

Before asking how someone could fall for such a deception, we might ask harder questions.

How easily would we ourselves recognize manipulation if it arrived wearing the face — and the body — of desire? And what if what is offered is exactly what we long for? What if what is offered is not merely what we desire, but the person we desire to be?

These questions aren’t comforting. But they brought me closer to understanding how these scams truly work — and why witnessing them may be as agonizing as enduring them.