Romance scams continue to be a major problem. In fact, these scams have increased dramatically during the Coronavirus pandemic. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Americans lost more money to romance scams last year than to any other scam and the situation is getting more serious. The FTC reports that Americans reported losing a record 304 million dollars to romance scams in 2020. It is also important to note that romance scams are not limited to the United States, but occur worldwide. Recent figures from Hong Kong show the incidents of romance scams have also increased there dramatically in the past year. Romance scams generally follow a familiar pattern with the scammers establishing relationships with people, generally women, online through various legitimate dating websites and social media using fake names, locations and images. The scammers often pose as Americans working abroad or in the military serving abroad. In many cases, the scammers steal the identity and photo of a real person serving in the military, which has been recently reported to have been done many times by scammers using the name and photo of U.S. Navy officer Mike Sency. After building trust with their victims scammers ask for money to help them through some sort of emergency.
Recently federal prosecutors charged nine people from Ghana, Nigeria and the United States with operating romance scams. A number of these scammers posed as “Daniel Moore” who claimed to be from Michigan, but working on an oil rig in Dubai. According to prosecutors this romance scam ring took in more than 2.5 million dollars from their victims over the last four years. According to U.S. Attorney Lisa Johnston, “Crimes involving romance scams and other online scams are increasing at an alarming rate. This case is a reminder that users of email, texts and social media should be aware of such scams and exercise extreme caution.”
While anyone can be the victim of a romance scam, according to the FBI, the elderly, women and people who have been widowed are particular vulnerable. Most romance scams are online and involve some variation of the person you meet through an online dating site or social media quickly falling in love with you and then, under a wide variety of pretenses, asking for money. Since 2019 approximately half of the reported instances of the romance scam have started on social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram rather than on dating sites or dating apps according to the FTC. One particularly scary statistic is that people over 70 years old victimized in a romance scam lose, on average, about $10,000 as contrasted to $2,800 for younger victims of romance scams.
Two interesting new developments in romance scams involve money mules and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. In the cryptocurrency romance scam, the scammer convinces his victim to leave the dating site and use a texting app such a WhatsApp where they tell you about a family member who has made a lot of money investing in cryptocurrencies and lures the victim into putting money into a phony cryptocurrency investment where the funds are quickly stolen by the scammer.
In the second scam, the scammer actually sends the victim money under a variety of pretenses and then asks the victim to wire the money back to them. In this case, the victim becomes a criminal because he or she is actually participating in money laundering. This has been seen a lot this year in relation to the massive filing of phony claims for unemployment compensation where the scammers will have the money sent to the romance scam victim and then use them to send the money to the scammer overseas, often in Nigeria. In other instances not involving the romance scam, the scammers will post phony ads for work at home jobs where the job is to receive money in your bank account and wire it to someone else.
TIPS
There are various red flags to help you identify romance scams. I describe many of them in detail in my book “The Truth About Avoiding Scams.” The most important thing to remember is to always be skeptical of anyone who falls in love with you quickly online without ever meeting you and early into the relationship who then asks you to send money to assist them with a wide range of phony emergencies.
Here are a few other things to look for to help identify an online romance scam. Often their profile picture is stolen from a modeling website on the Internet. If the picture looks too professional and the person looks too much like a model, you should be wary. You also can check on the legitimacy of photographs by seeing if they have been used elsewhere by doing a reverse image search using Google or websites such as tineye.com. Particular phrases, such as “Remember the distance or color does not matter, but love matters a lot in life” is a phrase that turns up in many romance scam emails. Also be on the lookout for bad spelling and grammar as many of the romance scammers claim to be Americans, but are actually foreigners lying about where they are and who they are. Of course you should be particularly concerned if someone falls in love with you almost immediately. Often they will ask you to use a webcam, but will not use one themselves. This is another red flag. One thing you may want to do is ask them to take a picture of themselves holding up a sign with their name on it. In addition, ask for a number of pictures because generally when the scammers are stealing pictures of models from websites, they do not have many photographs. Ask for the picture to be at a particular place that you designate to further test them. If you meet someone through a dating website, be particularly wary if they ask you to leave the dating service and go “offline.”
You also should be particularly wary of online relationships with people in the military because while many real military personnel do use social media and dating websites, they are a favorite disguise for scammers.
As for the cryptocurrency scam tie to the romance scam, the rules still apply that you should never invest in anything you do not fully understand. In addition you should always be skeptical when your new romantic partner is in a rush to get off of the dating site to communicate in another fashion.
In regard to being a money mule, there is no legitimate reason for someone to have money wired to you merely to wire to someone else. This is always a scam.
For those of you receiving the Scam of the day through an email, I just want to remind you that if you want to see the ever increasing list of Coronavirus scams go to the first page of the http://www.scamicide.com website and click on the tab at the top of the page that indicates “Coronavirus Scams.” Scamicide was recently cited by the New York Times as one of three top sources for information about Coronavirus related scams.
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