Paulina Montesinos met a man named Baruc, an Italian in his thirties with an attractive profile, on the dating app Bumble. After they matched, their story moved quickly: they chatted for days, went out on a few dates and soon he started showing strong affection and lavish gestures. “I’ve met the perfect man,” she thought. He also presented himself as vulnerable, neurodivergent and with an intense past that aroused deep empathy in Montesinos.

It was April 2024 and six months later Baruc had vanished with roughly 170,000 pesos ($9,000) he had scammed from her. Since then Montesinos has pursued a legal battle that, barely two years on, is beginning to take shape with a hearing this Friday, after the State of Mexico Prosecutor’s Office managed to locate Alfonso N. That is the real identity of the man who hid behind the names Ezra, Luca and Lazlo on Bumble and Tinder and who defrauded at least 15 women over a period of 10 years.

The Baruc she met had a well-crafted story. On early dates he told Montesinos about his work as an art appraiser and his life abroad. He shared more intimate details, saying his family treated him badly and that his mother had died. “At that moment I felt enormous empathy. The story of a deceased mother worked as the first emotional hook that made me drop my guard and feel vulnerable to his situation,” says the 39-year-old from the State of Mexico. “I received a very long message, like a scroll, in which he told me his whole life and his supposed story that his parents never loved him, abandoned him, and he described himself as neurodivergent, which justified certain controlling behaviors such as asking me not to wear perfume or lipstick so as not to upset him,” she tells this newspaper in a phone interview.

Once she felt “completely hooked,” requests for help disguised as financial crises began. “First he asked me to check prices for Apple devices because supposedly his were failing. Then he said he needed money for a project in Mexico City with a friend,” she explains. He threatened that those problems could make him leave the country. “I told him that if things were that bad we could leave it at that. Then he ‘turned it around,’ making me feel guilty for not helping him in his worst moment,” she says. Guilt worked, and Montesinos gave in: “I went to buy Apple devices like iPads, an Apple Watch, an Apple Pencil and headphones using credit cards borrowed from my mother, and I also gave him my own money.”

That same night she received a message implying he and his friend had been kidnapped and she spent the night awake trying to contact him. “The next day reality set in, and I felt the emptiness of knowing I had lost my money,” she says.

Montesinos was a victim of so-called romance scam, in which a scammer builds an online romantic relationship with a victim and wins their trust in order to obtain money. According to cybercrime police, 60% of reports received nationwide are filed by women aged 25 to 40. Most incidents involve this type of fraud. “I spent 10 whole days in a deep depression, locked up, not wanting to eat and crying inconsolably.” She had to sell her car to pay off the debt, but her family, which has “a culture of reporting crimes,” pushed her to go to the prosecutor’s office.

Some time later she found Facebook groups where women share similar experiences and warn about scammers they meet on those apps. “After I posted my case, a girl messaged me saying she was dating the same guy,” she says. Over time about 15 more women came forward. Together they discovered the identity of the man who had defrauded them: Alfonso N, a Mexican national, married, father of one, who lies about his age and has spent a decade scamming women using the same method. In one case he had taken 500,000 pesos (over $26,000) from a single woman. It was these women who traced him until they found his real name and address. Then the threats began. “They told me they were watching me, that they were outside my house. I was very scared; I didn’t want to leave,” Montesinos says.

Armed with that information, she pressured the prosecutor’s office to move the investigation forward. After being turned away by five public prosecutors and enduring two and a half years of struggle, Alfonso N has now been located and the other victims have filed their own complaints. Along the way, the scammer’s lawyer offered Montesinos 100,000 pesos ($5,300) to drop the complaint. When she refused, he threatened: “Well, he will get away.” But the process continues with precautionary measures requiring Alfonso to sign in periodically, and initial hearings have taken place. This Friday is the next one.

In the reporting process she also encountered another reality she “did not expect to find”: revictimization and public scrutiny after telling her story to the media. “I have had to rebuild myself little by little, restore my finances. I accept my responsibility, but I did my part by reporting and warning others so they don’t go through the same thing. Today I just want to get my life back and stop being Paulina, the scammed woman,” she concludes.

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