Romance scammers are an international plague that have stolen more than a billion dollars from American victims alone in 2025. These scammers look for lonely hearts, love bombing people and then asking for money and creating false anxiety. Award-winning investigative journalist Mariana van Zeller undergoes a full makeover to do what she can to get intentionally romance scammed and get her scammer on camera. Using social media and dating profiles as bait, she quickly finds a “four-star general deployed to Syria.” The documentary Super Scam Me not only shows the process of what it looks like to be scammed, but interviews people who have been affected to show why these scams are so common.
Mariana van Zeller is gracious and kind to the victims of these scams, making it very clear as to why it happens every day. The documentary is smart, empathetic, and educational. My only concern was an AI cat put in the documentary to try and spew facts. It was jarring and really pulled away from the earnestness of the documentary.
Super Scam Me comes to National Geographic on October 17th, before premiering on Disney+ and Hulu.
