Romance should not be only on Valentine’s day, February 14 – and romance fraud is not either, say police. Fraudsters will spend weeks gaining their victims’ trust, feeding them fabricated stories about who they are and their lives – and initially make no suggestion of any desire to ask for any money, so the victim may believe their new love interest is genuine, said Temporary Detective Chief Superintendent Matt Bradford, from the City of London Police.
He said: “But weeks, or sometimes months later, these criminals will ask for money for a variety of emotive reasons and as the emotional relationship has already been formed, victims often transfer money without a second thought. We’re calling on family members who think their relatives may be dating online to help make them aware of the warning signs that they could be falling victim to fraud, particularly if the person dating online is not particularly tech savvy.”
Police say that criminals often use a range of stories to get victims to transfer them money without it raising suspicion. The stories are often believable, to an extent, and something that the victim would find hard to say no to, especially because of their emotional attachment. Stories may include funding travel to visit the victim, money to pay for emergency medical expenses, investment ‘opportunities’ and pretending to be military personnel or working overseas.
Police offer advice on how to help protect people you know are online dating:
– Help your friends and family to ensure they have adequate privacy settings on their social media accounts to ensure strangers don’t have access to their personal information.
– Stay in regular contact with your friends and family who are online dating to help spot any changes in behaviour or things that don’t seem right.
– Make friends and family aware of the signs of romance fraud so that they are conscious of the tactics criminals use to carry out these scams and reiterate that you should never transfer money to someone that you have never met in person.
– Encourage people to report to Action Fraud and the police if they have become a victim of romance fraud and not to be embarrassed about doing so.
Comment
Andrew Renshaw, a financial crime expert at software firm Feedzai, said: “These scams are about coercion and manipulation of emotions. Individuals need to be careful about what they post on social media. For younger generations, that could mean heart break or recent break-ups, while older people might need to be especially careful right after a death of a loved one. As crass as it sounds, fraudsters love obituaries, they offer up very emotional insights into one’s life and all the remaining survivors. For example, a fraudster might call up an elderly woman and inform her that her grandson is in jail, after reading the name and other identifiable information in the obituary. In other instances, scammers might impersonate a former co-worker of the deceased, and use that as a way to gain the victim’s trust.
“At this time of year, people are advised to pay attention to what they share on social media (Facebook / Instagram / Tinder) – personal information such as a recent breakup might be weaponised as part of elaborate social engineering scams. Fraudsters often create intricate narratives that will make use of any publicly available information, whether that is the name of relatives, friends, or other details that might add credibility to their story and help them befriend their targets.
“The ubiquity of romance and affective scams makes it ever more important to raise awareness on the issue. Anyone could fall victim to this type of fraud, especially the most vulnerable. For this reason, people should always seek the advice of a trusted person when they are contacted by someone out of the blue, and should never feel ashamed to seek verification that the person they are talking to is who they say they are.”
