Scammers tend to create ecosystems of fake accounts in large cities or communities, such as the expat community in Paris.

These are easy to fabricate and maintain, and consist of a social network of individuals who are either loosely connected or constantly changing.

They use these accounts to collect data about key people, events, meet-ups and news events.They have developed a full lifecycle for these accounts. Creation, enrichment, data collection, then consumption and end of life when they are used for scams.

They are playing the long game.