Don’t Be a Victim of These Online Dating Scam
When people date online, their hope is, of course, to meet someone and fall in love, and hopefully have a long-term relationship. Unfortunately, there are scammers in the world who want to take advantage of online daters.
There are a lot of ways that you can get scammed when you put yourself out there and date on sites like eHarmony, or use apps like Bumble and Hinge.
According to the FTC, in the past five years, people reported having lost $1.3 billion to romance scams—that’s more than any other fraud category tracked by the FTC. The losses in 2021 hit a record of $547 million. That’s more than six times the reported losses in 2017, and it was an 80% increase compared to 2020. The median reported loss per individual affected in 2021 was $2,400.
Very often, the victims of romance scams are older people, such as widows, but reports about these scams increased for all age groups in 2021. The increase was actually the most dramatic for people between the ages of 18 and 29, but the reported median loss went up with age. People 70 and older reported the highest median losses at $9,000.
Being aware and mindful of the potential for scams can help you protect yourself, and the following are some of the most important things to know before you jump into digital dating.
1. Military Romance Scams
There are many types of scams that unscrupulous people will engage in online. One type is a military romance scam.
In this situation, a fraudulent person will use the name and photos of an actual soldier in some cases. In other cases, they’ll completely make up a profile.
The scammer sends out messages telling the other person they’re close to the end of their career. They’ll use real base locations, titles, and military language. In these scams, they start to create an emotional connection, but before they can meet in person, they say they’re being deployed.
Then, at that point, the scammer starts to ask for money. They might say they need the money to pay for flights home or for medical coverage. They might even have people working with them who pretend to be doctors or lawyers.
These military romance scams are so common that the U.S. Army created a fact sheet about them.
As a variation of this scam, sometimes the fraudsters will say they’re working overseas on an oil rig or in similar occupations that keep them out of the country.
2. Investment Advice
In 2021, there was a relatively new type of scam where people would use the idea of romance to get people to make bogus investments, especially into crypto. The people being scammed are convinced their new online romantic interest is an investor. They think they’re very successful at what they do, and then they start to offer investment advice.
Eventually, the investment opportunities include forex trading or, again, crypto. Then, if people follow the so-called advice they’re given, they lose their “investment.”
The biggest reported losses in romance scams were paid in crypto last year– $139 million in total.
3. Intimate Activities
Another way to scam people is by convincing someone to connect with them on their webcam for a chat. The person who’s the fraudster in this situation, once it’s time for the video call, will say their camera is broken. Then, they’ll try persistently to flatter the other person into undressing or doing other intimate things on the video.
Then, the scammer reveals their identity. They tell the person they made a video recording. They’ll threaten to share it with mutual connections on social media or post it online unless they send money.
4. Inheritance Scams
The strange story of Anna Delvey shone a light on inheritance scams with the recent Netflix series “Inventing Anna,” but the fake heiress certainly wasn’t the only one pretending to have a mega-wealthy family.
A scammer will sometimes tell a person they need to get married to inherit their fortune. Marriage is a requirement of a relative’s will. Then, a young woman will contact the victim, saying that she can’t remove the inheritance from her country because she can’t pay the marriage taxes or duty.
At this point, the scammer will ask for help getting their fortune into the victim’s country. The scammer will say they’ll fly to the country of the victim to show they’re real, so they ask for money for a flight. Of course, the scammer doesn’t even show up.
5. Other Versions
There are so many other ways that scammers operate online.
A general scam is asking for money to pay for flights to visit them. They might tell the victim they need to help get a new phone or computer to maintain communication with them. They could say they need medical treatment or a close relative does, and they need money to cover it.
Some scammers will tell people their valuables were seized by Customs, and they have to pay taxes before they can recover them.
6. Red Flags
How can you know if you’re potentially the target of a scam?
There are often red flags that you can watch for.
One is someone who tries to get you off the dating site or app quickly because these platforms usually have teams that monitor strange behavior. They’ll flag suspicious behavior, so the scammer wants to get off the site quickly and talk elsewhere.
Another red flag is when conversations quickly get very emotional and romantic. You may feel like you’re being love-bombed, and they’ll even tell you they’re falling in love with you, or they’ve never felt this way before.
The scammer might ask you a lot of questions about yourself. They do this because they’re learning more so they can eventually manipulate you.
Finally, you have to remember that if someone is telling a lot of lies, it gets harder for them to keep up with what they’re saying, so there may be inconsistencies in their stories.
