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This love ain’t grand: Online ‘romance’ scams growing at record pace
As the Netflix megahit documentary “Tinder Swindler” continues to draw millions of viewers around the world, new federal data shows online romance scams are growing at a record clip and led to bilking would-be lovers out of more than $500 million just last year.
The Federal Trade Commission report released Thursday notes online dating apps and platforms “can be a great way to find lasting love” but are also a prime hunting ground for grifters.
In the past five years, people have reported losing a staggering $1.3 billion to romance scams, more than any other FTC fraud category. And, the numbers have skyrocketed in recent years. In 2021 alone, losses hit a record $547 million, six times more than the reported losses in 2017 and a nearly 80% increase compared to 2020 according to FTC data. The median individual reported loss in 2021 was $2,400.
But how are they getting away with it?
The FTC says romance scammers are masters of disguise who create fake online profiles with attractive photos swiped from the web and sometimes even assume the identities of real people. They may also study information their targets have posted online and then pretend to have common interests.
One tell-tale of a possible fraudster is the details they share about themselves will always include built-in reasons for not being able to meet in person, the FTC reported, which may include a handy excuse like saying they are in overseas military service or working on an offshore oil rig.
While most victims of romance swindles report having first been contacted via a dating app platform, the FTC says you don’t have to be looking for love to be courted by a scammer. Reports of unexpected private messages on social media platforms are common and, according to FTC data, more than a third of people who said they lost money to an online romance scam in 2021 said it began on Facebook or Instagram.
The FTC report noted the fastest-growing group of victims of romance fraud falls in the 18 to 29 age group, which expanded tenfold from 2017 to 2021, but older daters are suffering the biggest financial losses. Victims’ median losses increased with age with people 70 and older reporting the highest individual median losses at $9,000, compared to $750 for the 18 to 29 age group, according to the FTC.
Ron Long, head of aging client services for U.S. banking giant Wells Fargo, said online activity, including using dating apps, is mostly a positive for aging users as it helps alleviate issues of loneliness, but that single factor also provides a powerful pivot for would-be scammers.
“Online dating is popular (among older users) and that’s a good thing,” Long said. “But, we do find that one of the key factors in elder financial abuse is loneliness and isolation.”
Long said a recent Wells Fargo report found most senior citizens are aware of and employing safe practices when it comes to engaging someone new online but that even just a minority of users failing to take precautions provides plenty of potential targets for scammers.
Data gathered in the report, Long said, found men are more apt to engage in making risky decisions about online meetings, including fewer men than women doing background checks on the people they meet on websites or apps. Also, a bigger portion of men, 36%, are willing to get picked up at their homes by a new acquaintance versus women, of whom only 14% said they would ever make such an arrangement.
“Being male does not offer any additional protection against these kinds of scams,” Long said. “There is no protection against the psychological and emotional vulnerability on which these scammers prey.”
And seeing potential vulnerability in those who turn to online dating apps when looking for love is not a point that seems to be lost on potential perpetrators of online romance scams. The Wells Fargo report found that 63% of online daters have been contacted by a scammer.
The alleged romance scammer in “Tinder Swindler” is 31-year-old Simon Leviev, from Bnei Brak, Israel (who has no connection to the billionaire Russian-Israeli diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.) His real name is actually Shimon Hayut, per Esquire.
Hayut told three women in the film that he was a billionaire founder of jewel supplier LLD Diamonds.
He would first show off his lavish lifestyle, making his victims trust him by spending money on luxurious food, trips, activities and shopping sprees. Then, he would claim that he is in danger and his enemies are after him so he needs access to someone else’s credit card so he is untraceable, according to the film.
One woman estimated that she lent him $40,000, another said upward of $200,000. The film, according to USA Today, estimates that Hayut swindled $10 million from victims across the world.
Hayut has since taken to social media to proclaim his innocence.
Whether he is guilty of fraud or not, the tale shared by his alleged victims fits with what the FTC described as the most common method of romance fraud, where the perpetrator claims to need help after having some sort of financial or health crisis. The report found scammers’ stories frequently involve a sick child or a temporary inability to get to their money for a whole range of reasons.
And, the FTC said people who lost money to a romance scammer often report sending money repeatedly, believing they’re helping someone they care about.
So how can you spot scammers if you’re looking for love online? The FTC offers this commonsense advice to help avoid becoming a victim:
- Nobody legit will ever ask you to help by sending cryptocurrency, giving the numbers on a gift card or by wiring money. Anyone who does is a scammer.
- Never send or forward money for someone you haven’t met in person, and don’t act on their investment advice.
- Talk to friends or family about a new love interest and pay attention if they’re concerned.
- Try a reverse-image search of profile pictures. If the details don’t match up, it’s a scam.
Beware! Romance scammers love cryptocurrency; Here is how stop them on WhatsApp, Tinder
Love makes the world go round! Yes, but there are times when it can become a losing experience, and we are not talking about relationships here, we are referring to money loss. It can be a double whammy- first it hits you in the heart and then the wallet! A lethal combo indeed. Because that is what online romance scammers do, they hit you with these one-two sucker punches. Valentine's Day has just passed and now we can talk a bit about what some unscrupulous people have been doing in the name of love.
An online romance scam refers to a fraudster who tries to manipulate money from a victim in the name of love. It sounds like a tough task, but it seems the strategy is quite successful, considering the amount that romance scammers have been able to steal from gullible, love-lorn, people. A report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) reveals that there is nearly an 80 percent rise in romance scams in 2021 as compared to 2020. And shockingly, romance scammers got away with a total of $139 million and that to in, of all things, cryptocurrency. This is five times more than the amount taken in 2020. The crypto payment angle in romance scams makes for a huge chunk in the whole amount, which is $547 million, that Americans lost in 2020 while finding love.
Many people use online dating apps such as Tinder, Bumble, OkCupid, or messaging apps like WhatsApp, to find new love and online scammers know very well how to make money out of this situation. These scammers generally create a fake profile with a randomly picked profile picture (usually photos of good-looking men and women) from the internet and then go fishing for new friends. When someone responds to them positively, they build up trust and once they succeed in moving the relationship into the so-called 'zone of love', they start playing up the tragedies in their life. In short, they are preparing to make the victim to give them their money by narrating a fake story to make them believe that they are in urgent need of money. In this process, they will always make excuses not to meet the victim in real life. These romance scammers are quite good at what they do, as is clear from the amount of money they have stolen.
However, you can make sure not to fall victim to any romance scams. Just do this.
How to know if it's a romance scam
Most of these scammers try to have a conversation on other social media platforms instead of dating apps. So, after making the initial contact on an online dating app, they will try to make the victim leave it an instead carry on the relationship over other apps like WhatsApp. If they are in a hurry to talk to you on other social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook, or Instagram then know that something something is wrong.
Also, they will always make excuses to not meet you in real life and will cancel the plan at the last moment. Know it's a red alert for you!
When someone you've met online requests payment in gift cards or cryptocurrency or wire transfer, it's better to say no than falling for a scam.
Most importantly, never send the money, gifts, or cryptocurrency to strangers- those whom you have never met in real life- no matter what.
If you are having a doubt bout someone, then the good trick is to do the reverse image search of their profile photo via Google tool to see if the person's identity has been used somewhere else or not.
Not just a romance scam, but a lot of people try to convince you to put your cash into an unknown cryptocurrency scheme. Never fall for offers that are way ‘too good looking’.
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First Published Date: 17 Feb, 04:27 PM IST
Tags: CryptocurrencyWhatsAppTinderBumbleFacebookInstagram
Источник: [https://torrent-igruha.org/3551-portal.html]Published
March 1, 2022 at 10:45 AM
NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - The man from the dating app Hinge checked all of Ms Tho Vu's boxes.
He was a boyishly handsome architect from China, staying in Maryland on a long-term assignment. They had never met in person - he was still waiting to get his Covid-19 booster shot, he said - but they had texted back and forth for months, and she had developed a serious crush. He called her his "little sweetheart" and told her that he was planning to take her to China to meet his family when the pandemic was over.
So when the man, who went by the name Ze Zhao, told Ms Vu, who works in customer service for a security company, that he could help her make money by trading Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, she was intrigued.
"I'd heard a lot about crypto in the news," she said. "I'm a curious person, and he actually was very knowledgeable about the whole trading process."
But the man was not trying to help Ms Vu invest her money. He was entrapping her in an increasingly popular type of financial scam, she said, one that combines the age-old allure of romance with the newer temptation of overnight cryptocurrency riches.
Within weeks, Ms Vu, 33, had sent more than US$300,000 (S$407,600) worth of Bitcoin, nearly her entire life savings, to an address that Zhao had told her was connected to an account on the Hong Kong cryptocurrency exchange OSL. The website looked legitimate, offered 24/7 online customer support and had even been updated to show Ms Vu's balance changing as the price of Bitcoin rose and fell.
Zhao - whose real name could not be verified - had promised her that her crypto investments would help them get married and start a life together.
"We can make more money on top of OSL and go on a honeymoon," he said, according to a screenshot of their texts that Ms Vu shared. But there was no honeymoon, and no crypto windfall. Instead of going into an exchange account, Ms Vu's money went into the scammer's digital wallet, and he vanished.
Now, she is struggling to make sense of what happened. "I thought I knew him," she said. "Everything was a lie."
Romance scams - the term for online scams that involve feigning romantic interest to gain a victim's trust - have increased in the pandemic. So have crypto prices. That has made crypto a useful entry point for criminals looking to part victims from their savings.
About 56,000 romance scams, totalling US$139 million in losses, were reported to the United States Federal Trade Commission last year, according to agency data. That is nearly twice as many reports as the agency received the previous year. In a bulletin last fall, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Oregon office warned that crypto dating scams were emerging as a major category of cybercrime, with more than 1,800 reported cases in the first seven months of the year.
Experts believe this particular type of scam originated in China before spreading to the US and Europe. Its Chinese name translates roughly as "pig butchering" - a reference to the way that victims are "fattened up" with flattery and romance before being scammed.
Mr Jan Santiago, the deputy director of the Global Anti-Scam Organisation, a non-profit that represents victims of online cryptocurrency scams, said that unlike typical romance scams - which generally target older, less tech-savvy adults - these scammers appear to be going after younger and more educated women on dating apps like Tinder, Bumble and Hinge.
"It's mostly millennials who are getting scammed," he said.
Ms Jane Lee, a researcher at the online fraud-prevention firm Sift, began looking into crypto dating scams last year. She signed up for several popular dating apps and quickly matched with men who tried to offer her investing advice.
"People are lonely from the pandemic, and crypto is super hot right now," she said. "The combination of the two has really made this a successful scam."
Ms Lee, whose company works with several dating apps to prevent fraud, said that these scammers typically tried to move the conversation off a dating app and onto WhatsApp - where messages are encrypted and harder for companies or law enforcement agencies to track.
From there, the scammer bombards the victim with flirtatious messages until turning the conversation to cryptocurrency. The scammer, posing as a successful crypto trader, offers to show the victim how to invest his or her money for fast, low-risk gains.
Then, Ms Lee said, the scammer helps the victim buy cryptocurrency on a legitimate site, like Coinbase or Crypto.com, and provides instructions for transferring it to a fake cryptocurrency exchange. The victim's money appears on the exchange's website, and he or she starts "investing" it in various crypto assets, under the scammer's guidance, before the scammer ultimately absconds with the money.
What makes this particular scam so insidious is how much more elaborate it is than the Nigerian prince scams of yore. Some victims have described being directed to realistic-looking websites with charts and tickers showing the prices of various crypto assets. The names and addresses of the fake exchanges are changed frequently, and victims are often allowed to withdraw small amounts of money early on, making them more comfortable with depositing larger sums later.
"This kind of scam is quite labour-intensive and time-consuming," said Mr Santiago, of the Global Anti-Scam Organisation. "They're very meticulous in their social engineering."
Cryptocurrencies are particularly useful to scammers, experts say, because of the relative privacy they offer. Bitcoin transactions are publicly visible, but because digital wallets can be set up anonymously, technically sophisticated criminals can obscure the trail of money. And since there is no central bank or deposit insurance to make victims whole, stolen money usually cannot be recovered.
Ms Niki Hutchinson, a 24-year-old social media producer from Tennessee, fell victim to a crypto romance scam last year. She was visiting a friend in California when she matched on Hinge with a man named Hao, who said he lived nearby and worked in the clothing business.
The two continued texting on WhatsApp for more than a month after she returned home. She told Hao that she was adopted from China; he told her that he was Chinese, too, and that he hailed from the same province as her birth family. He started calling her "sister" and joking that he was her long-lost brother. (They video-chatted once, she said - but Hao only partly showed his face and hung up quickly.) "I thought he was shy," she said.
Ms Hutchinson had just inherited nearly US$300,000 from the sale of her childhood home, after her mother died. Hao suggested that she invest that money in cryptocurrency. "I want to teach you to invest in cryptocurrency when you are free, bring some changes to your life and bring an extra income to your life," he texted her, according to a screenshot of the exchange.
Eventually she agreed, sending a small amount of crypto to the wallet address he gave her, which he said was connected to an account on a crypto exchange named ICAC. Then - when the money appeared on ICAC's website - she sent more.
She could not believe how easy it had been to make money, just by following Hao's advice. Eventually, when she had invested her entire savings, she took out a loan and kept investing more.
In December, Ms Hutchinson started to get suspicious when she tried to withdraw money from her account. The transaction failed, and a customer service agent for ICAC told her that her account would be frozen unless she paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxes. Her chat with Hao went silent. "I was like, oh, God, what have I done?" she said.
Now, Ms Hutchinson is trying to pull her life back together. She and her father live in their RV - one of the few assets they have left - and she is working with police in Florida to try to track down her scammer.
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Romance scams in 2022: What you need to know + online dating scam statistics
The unfortunate truth is that too many people have been a part of a love story that never ends in a happily ever after. Some of the proof is in these online dating scam statistics.
Romance scams on the rise
Loneliness — especially during COVID-19 isolation periods — and the development of new technologies have contributed to the rise of romance scams in the past years.
- About half of all romance scam reports to the FTC since 2019 involve social media, usually on Facebook or Instagram. In the first six months of 2020, victims reported a record high of losing almost $117 million to scams that started on social media. (FTC, October 2020)
- Over 35,000 victims reported that social media was the medium or tool used to facilitate online crimes. (FBI, 2020 Internet Crime Report)
- The number of romance scams people report to the FTC has nearly tripled since 2015. (FTC, February 2021)
- In 2020, more than 32,000 consumers filed a report with the FTC about romance scams. (FTC, February 2021)
- Nearly 24,000 people fell victim to confidence/romance scams in 2020. (FBI, 2020 Internet Crime Report)
The real price tags of online dating
Romance scams can affect your emotional wellbeing and sense of trust, and can also be costly and irreversible.
- Total reported losses to romance scams were higher than any other scam reported to the FTC in 2020. (FTC, February 2021)
- In 2020, people reported losing $304 million to romance scams. That’s nine times higher than it was five years prior, at $33 million in 2015. (FTC, February 2021)
- In 2020, the median individual amount loss to a romance scam was reportedly $2,500. (FTC, February 2021)
- In 2020, the median individual loss to a romance scam was ten times higher than the median loss across all other fraud types. (FTC, February 2021)
- Romance scam was the top six riskiest scam in 2020. (BBB 2020 Scam Tracker Risk Report)
- Confidence/romance scams cost victims upward of $600 million in 2020, the second-highest internet crime loss. (FBI, 2020 Internet Crime Report)
Online dating scams and older adults
- Dating scams can happen with people of all ages, but are especially risky to older adults.
- Romance scams are riskiest to people in the 55 – 64 age group. (BBB 2020 Scam Tracker Risk Report)
- Older adults reportedly lost nearly $139 million in romance scams in 2020, followed by prizes, sweepstakes, and lottery scams at $69 million. (FTC 2020 - 2021 Protecting Older Consumers Report)
- In 2020, 68% of the dollars reported lost on romance scams by older adults were sent by wire transfer.(FTC 2020 - 2021 Protecting Older Consumers Report)
- Bank transfers and payments sent in connection with romance scams accounted for about $31 million, nearly a third of the dollars older adults reported romance scam losses. (FTC 2020 - 2021 Protecting Older Consumers Report) Romance scammers reportedly took an additional $12 million total in cryptocurrency from older adults. (FTC 2020 - 2021 Protecting Older Consumers Report)
Who’s most susceptible to romance scams
Online dating scams happen all over the world, but certain demographics tend to be more susceptible.
- Romance scams have a 45% susceptibility risk to their targets. (BBB 2020 Scam Tracker Risk Report)
- Women are more susceptible to romance scams than men. And following online purchase scams, romance scams are the second-riskiest scam type to women. (BBB 2020 Scam Tracker Risk Report)
- Californians lost the most to dating scams in 2020 at $120 million. (FBI, 2020 State Report)
- Californians were the most caught up in confidence/romance scams in 2020, with 3,110 people scammed. (FBI, 2020 State Report)
Stalkerware is trending up
The use stalkerware, a software that enables someone to monitor a person's device without their knowledge, is another facet of romance scams that’s on the rise.
- 86% of adults are unaware of stalkerware or have only heard the name (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
- Around 42% of younger Americans from ages 18 – 39, who currently have a romantic partner, believe their partner is at least somewhat likely to download an application to monitor their activity. (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
- Three in five of Gen Z and Millennial Americans, aging from 18 – 39, have admitted to stalking an ex or current partner online. (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
- There was a 63% uptick in the number of devices infected with stalkerware, amounting to more than 250,000 compromised devices per month, between September 2020 and May 2021. (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
- Men are three times more likely than women to use invasive apps to spy on a significant other. (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
- More than one-third of Americans aging from 18 – 39 believe it is harmless to stalk a current or former
partner online. (2021 Norton Cyber Safety Insights Report)
Falling in love can be great. But before you let someone steal your heart online, keep these romance scam warning signs and online dating pointers top of mind.
After all, you don’t want your love story to end in a cybercrime — everyone deserves a happily ever after.
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The con typically works something like this: You post a dating profile and up pops a promising match — good-looking, smart, funny and personable. Supposed suitors might also reach out on social media; more than a third of people who lost money to a romance scam in 2021 reported that it started on Facebook or Instagram, according to the FTC.
This potential mate claims to live in another part of the country or to be abroad for business or a military deployment. But he or she seems smitten and eager to get to know you better, and suggests you move your relationship to a private channel like email or a chat app.
Over weeks or months, you feel yourself growing closer. You make plans to meet in person, but for your new love something always comes up. Then you get an urgent request. There’s an emergency (a medical problem, perhaps, or a business crisis) and your online companion needs you to send money fast, usually via gift cards, prepaid debit cards, cryptocurrency, or a bank or wire transfer.
They'll promise to pay it back, but that will never happen. Instead, they will keep asking for more until you realize it's a scam and cut them off.
Romance scams can overlap with or evolve into other forms of fraud. For example, international criminal gangs use dating sites to recruit unwitting “money mules” to launder ill-gotten funds through their bank accounts or other means. And con artists are increasingly luring supposed sweethearts into fraudulent cryptocurrency investments.
The older the target, the heavier the financial toll. The median individual loss from a romance scam for people 70 and over was $9,000 in 2021, according to the FTC, compared to $2,400 across all age groups.
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