Kevin Vereen

Stolen Valor romance scammers like LTG Vereen are extremely common across all major social networking platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, Threads, and even Quora. Personal financial losses linked to fake relationship scams totaled $1.14 billion in the U.S. in 2023, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Romance scams target both men and women, but do so differently. Those targeting older women, for instance, may pretend to be a respected older professional like LTG Vereen. Scams targeting older men, on the other hand, may use the profile of an attractive younger woman who initiated contact “by accident.”

Often, romance scammers impersonate real people by stealing their images and videos. LTG Kevin Vereen, for example, is a real person who served in Iraq and was awarded a Bronze Star. The real Kevin Vereen has had his photos and videos stolen, but scammers take things even further by stealing photos and videos of his family members, like his brother, son, and sister-in-law. The LTG Kevin Vereen profile has a whole fake family of profiles built for the sole purpose of propping up the LTG Kevin Vereen scam account.

Scammers may also augment the credibility of the profile using AI, as is the case with the video included on LTG Vereen’s profile. This video was not legitimate and was created using content taken from LTG Vereen and augmented using generative AI.

Romance scammers compete with each other, and will insist theirs is the only valid social media profile for the individual they’re impersonating. This fake LTG Vereen profile, for example, is just one of hundreds of social media profiles using the name and images of LTG Kevin Vereen. Thus, the AI-generated video helps this scammer’s LTG Vereen profile compete with the other fake, scammy LTG Vereen profiles out there on the internet.

Scammers often gain the trust of their victims first on public social media like Facebook before directing their target to chat with them on private messaging services such as Telegram or WhatsApp, where their scam is less likely to be caught or stopped. Then, they convince their target to send them money in the form of wire transfers, gift cards, or cryptocurrency. The lies they tell to persuade their targets may include tales of financial hardship, a pitch for a fake investment opportunity, or asking for travel funds to meet their target in person. If these tactics aren’t effective, romance scams can sometimes take the form of blackmail, where the scammer convinces the target to send intimate photos of themselves, and then threatens to publicize those photos unless the target sends them money.

The nature of a romance scam varies depending on the target. While LTG Kevin Vereen seemed to target older, adult women, younger women are often targeted by what is called a “sugar daddy” scam. These often come in the form of direct messages from accounts purporting to be wealthy men offering money for a relationship. This is a pretense, however, to build trust and collect banking and personal information to defraud the victim.