By BECKY RUTHERFORD
Los Alamos
How much do you think Americans lost to romance scams last year? $1 million? $30 million?
Nope … according to the F.B.I. $1 billion in losses was reported last year.
Love’s labour lost indeed.
This was in fact the most lucrative year ever for romance scammers!
The FTC—which only reports scams reported to its “Consumer Sentinel Network”, a database for scams—said this week that losses from romance scams rose to $547 million in 2021, up from $307 million in 2020 and $202 million in 2019.
A few interesting trends:
- Scammers are adding a new element to romance scams – cryptocurrency! 25 percent of romance scammers were paid with cryptocurrency last year, or tricked their victims into investing in fake cryptocurrency. Yikes.
- The greatest increase of romance scam reports was actually for the age range of 18-29, though their average loss is lower, only $750, compared to $9,000 for ages 70 and up.
- Though many people targeted by romance scams are first contacted via dating apps, over a third of the reporters were first contacted on Facebook. Watch out for fake profiles and stories that sound too good to be true!
Romance scams are on the rise, and we can probably blame the pandemic for that. With the increased social isolation, more and more people are relying on technology to meet their social needs. These scams frequently begin on dating apps, or other social media sites like Facebook, Instagram, etc. The average amount lost to romance scammers is about $9,770.
You might be wondering how people could possibly lose this much money to a scam that seems simple. Romance scammers are the worst of the worst, they gain their victim’s trust and love and then use those feelings against them.
How does it generally go down? You’ll be contacted, they’ll message you and work to build a relationship with you. When you want to meet up, they’ll always have an excuse. They frequently pretend to be soldiers stationed overseas. To make this pretense more believable they scrape photos of real soldiers off the internet and use these to build their fake profiles. Once they have gained your trust and reeled you in they will come up with some kind of sob story, and only you can help them! They go after cash, but also after gift cards.
Romance scams have been in the news lately … A documentary on Netflix called “The Tinder Swindler” details the story of an Israeli man who is alleged to have posed as “Simon Levieve”, scion of an Israeli diamond miner. He then allegedly used this persona to trick multiple women into giving him over $10 million. He has been banned from dating apps, and Tinder has now released tips to users to avoid romance scams. The documentary is trending on Netflix, and could be a fun Valentine’s day watch!
How can you avoid these scams?
- Scammers are lazy. Use Google image search to check to see if their profile picture has been used elsewhere.
- Take your time, ask lots of questions. If things seem weird, you are probably dealing with a scammer.
- If they seem too perfect it’s probably a scam. If they start urging you to move off the dating app to texting, email, etc. be cautious. This is usually the first step in a scam.
- Another red flag, they make plans to meet up, but something comes up last minute and they have to cancel. Or bizarre excuses, like claiming to be held up by customs overseas and needing you to send them money to help.
- Never, ever send money to someone you don’t know. Also avoid sending inappropriate pictures as these could potentially be used to extort you.
- If you think an online relationship is a scam, cease contact immediately. If you are a victim of a romance scam, file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.
Editor’s note: Becky Rutherford works in information technology at Los Alamos National Laboratory.