Much like the social media requests, catfishes will think of excuses not to chat on the phone. You have to question why someone would declare their love for you but decline to have a conversation. If your catfish is in the same country as you, they seem more authentic. It is worth remembering that the majority of female personas are really male scammers so in this case, a phone call is simply not possible on their part. Popular excuses include the scammer saying their phone is 
broken and they cannot make calls. This really isn’t a valid excuse. Said in isolation, you might give them the benefit of the doubt but if this excuse is made and you are already suspicious, you should walk away from the conversation at this point.
You need to be really persistent if you find your partner is reluctant to chat on the phone. No relationship is ever going to be sustainable with this obstacle in the way. You have valid grounds for pursing this request. If they blatantly refuse to chat on the phone, walk away.
They ask for money
Some catfish scams are designed to waste your time while others have a defined endgame. If your catfish scammer works overseas on an oil rig or both their parents are dead, you’ll know very early on in the conversation that this scammer will ultimately try to get money out of you. Unfortunately it’s not as black and white as that. Some scammers might be playing the perfect partner role. Out of the blue they may ask for money because some emergency has come up.
It is important to keep things in perspective. You’ve never met this person, you’ve never spoken to them on the phone so why should you send them money? Depending on the scammer they may just cut all contact after you have paid them. The more callous ones will try to eek more payments out of you on a regular basis.
If the scammer provides a paypal address or any other account information, it is important that you report this to the appropriate site. Although it will be easy enough for them to create a new account, it is all about inconveniencing them. If they have any funds still in the account when it is suspended, they will have trouble accessing these. It is important not to tell them that you have reported their account.
Selfies are off limits
We’ve already discussed that catfish don’t usually have a wide range of pics on their profile. A step further from asking for more pics is to ask for a selfie of them at that particular moment. It is impossible for the scammer to satisfy this request but it doesn’t mean you can’t ask. The clever scammers will have one or two images that they deliberately didn’t publish online so that they can be used in this exact situation. These images will be close up facial photos which probably are selfies taken by the rightful owner. Now the scammer may get away with sending one of these images, the key is to ask for another one later in the conversation.
Asking for a second selfie is key. The chances are the lighting will be different and more crucially, in the second selfie, the person will be wearing totally different clothes. The scammer would actually be pretty silly to send this. They would more than likely come up with an excuse why they couldn’t send another.
If you really want to make the scammer work for a reason why they can’t send you a selfie, ask them to send you one of them touching their nose and pulling their tongue out. They definitely won’t have that image in their possession.