Preying on lonely hearts is big business

Global Fraud Focus: Examining cross-border issues

Actress Loretta Young once said, "Love isn't something you find. Love is something that finds you." Unfortunately, it's often not love that's seeking defenseless victims but ruthless, determined criminals who have complete disregard for victims and laugh at their vulnerabilities as weaknesses.

Romance, sweetheart or dating scams are widespread and are becoming even more prevalent worldwide. Once again, the fraudsters are targeting the vulnerable.

A brief web search will show that the FBI, FTC, Secret Service, U.S. Army plus agencies in the Canadian, Australian and U.K. governments have all issued warnings about the dangers of these scams. A TIME magazine article by Charlie Campbell reported on July 9 that Malaysia is becoming the current crime hub for this fraud.

Some fraudsters are getting seriously rich with these schemes. Media reports show victims in just four countries have recently lost more than US$190 million.

According to the Australian Mail, 2,700 reports were made last year resulting in $25 million in losses. (See Love lost online, by Amy Ziniak, Aug. 11.) And according to George Haslock, communication officer with Action Fraud — the U.K. fraud reporting center — 2,183 were victims of this type of fraud between July 2013 and June 2014. That's an average of 182 crimes per month. Haslock said, in an email exchange, the reported annual losses were £28,889,147 in the U.K. alone. Romance fraud is one of the top five crime types reported to Action Fraud.

According to the Ontario Ministry of Government and Consumer Services, Canada lost almost $15 million from romance fraud in 2012. In the U.S., the losses for 2013 were $105 million, according to Fraud Facts: Online dating scams: The price some will pay for love, by Stephanie Wood, March 10, The Daily Record.

At press time, a Google search of "online love" returned more than 1.75  billion results; online dating, 14.8 million; online brides, 35 million; online husbands, 15 million; and online spouse, more than 61.5 million.

Clearly online romance is big business, but the percentage of fraudulent efforts is unknown. However, like Nigerian 419 scams, only a miniscule number needs to be successful for the fraudsters to profit and make lonely hearts miserable. And not unlike boiler room frauds (see the September/October 2014 Global Fraud Focus.) some criminal gangs use well-rehearsed scripts to subtly exploit victims' vulnerabilities.

How a romance or sweetheart scam works

Six out of 10 Americans believe online dating sites are a good way to meet people, according to Online dating now widely accepted, survey says, by Doug Gross, CNN, Oct. 22, 2013. And Forbes reports that a third of recently married couples met online. See Larry Magid's June 3, 2013, article.

So how does fraud enter into this arena? Victims might use dating websites that are part of the scam, or they might sign up at a legitimate site. But they still fall prey to fraudsters who also are site members and are able to ensnare and entrap potential dates.

After the fraudster has contacted a mark (or the victim unwittingly contacts the fraudster), he or she will quickly become very friendly and ask the victim to text, use instant messaging or other methods apart from the website so investigators might later have difficulty tracing the communication trail.

A fraudster looks for a victim who's wearing the proverbial rose-tinted glasses — the overoptimistic lonely heart who has a predetermined image of the person with whom he or she can spend the rest of their lives or at least enter into a serious relationship. The fraudster crafts his communication to be that type of person. For example, fraudsters targeting U.S. citizens looking for U.S. military personnel — a prime category — will send photos of attractive people, downloaded from the Internet, in fatigues.

Online communication continues, the relationship becomes more intimate, and the fraudster might mention love and long-term relationships. Inevitably the victim's new friend will ask for money. The victim might think he or she is communicating with a soldier on active duty, who eventually asks for money for transportation, medical fees or other services. (See Online romance scam information, on the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Command site.)

Fraudsters might request money for:

• Airline tickets they can't quite afford or were dramatically stolen.
• Travel visas. 
• Money to pay hospital bills for "chronically ill" children or who were supposedly injured in a hit-and-run accident.
• For a business deal gone wrong.

As soon as a victim gives the fraudster money, the relationship intensifies and they exchange more messages. The fraudster will ask for more money for stranger but seemingly plausible reasons. The victim is hooked and will continue to dole out the cash so their "relationship" won't end and the dream will continue.

Romance fraudsters often target "silver surfers" — seniors who have limited Internet experience and might have recently lost a spouse or partner. Brenda Park, a silver surfer, tells her story on the Action Fraud website to prevent others from getting ripped off. A manipulative, subtle fraudster rooked her of £60,000 in two months.

"Having previously considered myself to be a bright and intelligent woman who has successfully created a secure financial environment for my retirement," Park writes, "I believed that if I could be manipulated and reduced to ‘a puppet on a string' because of this man's subtlety and supposed sincerity, then there are millions of vulnerable people out there just waiting to be abused by a very professional and consummate actor. It is so cunning and amazingly well done that I am left reeling with shock at my own vulnerability."

Many websites are dedicated to warning about the dangers of embarking on online romance. One site, www.romancescams.org, claims to have assisted 80,000 victims since 2005. Other sites include databases of scammers and publish photographs of alleged scammers with pseudonyms and possible real names. (I'm unsure of the legality of doing that.)

How we can help

How can we, as CFEs, help reduce the number of victims of romance fraud?

We need to educate our families and friends about the dangers of using the Internet to further relationships and meet people. (See tips below.)

The effective way to counter this type of fraud is with coordinated intelligence and global cooperation among law enforcement agencies, and education remains the best preventive solution.

Tim Harvey, CFE, JP, is director of the ACFE's UK Operations and a member of Transparency International and the British Society of Criminology.

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