The Collar

Internet Fraudsters Steal Hearts and Cash

By Luke Mullins

Posted: April 22, 2008

There was a time when you only had to worry about a potential lover breaking your heart. Now it seems that you've got to keep your eyes on your bank account, too.

As Americans have turned in greater numbers to the Internet in search of love, scammers have found a fresh batch of potential victims and created a new field of fraudulent activity: "romance fraud: a scam designed to prey on [people's] emotions to get [their] money," CNN reports.

Romance scammers troll dating sites to find potential victims. After convincing them of their love, the scammers start hitting their targets up for cash.

I know, it sounds like regular dating to me, too. But such schemes have apparently triggered steep financial losses, trails of broken hearts, and voicemail boxes full of unreturned calls.

From CNN:

Barb Sluppick runs RomanceScams.org, a Web site dedicated to helping victims of romance fraud, like herself. She said the site has had more than 30,000 members since its start in June 2005.

The number of broken hearts aside, romance fraud costs victims millions of dollars each year. Of her 30,000 members, Sluppick said, 883 people have reported their financial losses. They add up to $8,244,800.05, she said.

So how to prevent yourself from becoming a victim?

RomanceScams.org also lists a few red flags to detect a possible scammer: If their spelling is horrible, they use emoticons heavily and they appear to be available at unusual hours for your time zone, they may be scamming you.

So there yu have it. :( Fair warneing.

Spotting 'Scammers'

I used to work for a Bank in East London, UK. Spotting scammers and fraudsters was a part of every day life..

Over the past year I started to use two different web-sites, Tallfriends.com and Parship.com. The first you can get free membership, the second is fee paying and not well known.

At Tallfriends, I was contacted by two people, apparently, women. One claiming to be English but living in the States and the other American. Their Grammar was terrible, evaded all my questions and then came the decider.... " please help me, I am in Nigeria, one for a funeral of her Nigerian born Father (but her picture was of a blonde Anglo Saxon) and the second was staying in a hotel because her boyfriend had "dumped her" (again a picture of a white woman) and can not pay the Hotel Bill......"!

I realised their deception immediately, strung them along, saying that I had sent the money to WU as they had asked. I really wasted their time. What better service to all genuine people than to scam a scammer!

It was worth all the abuse they gave me when I wrote to them saying how inept they were.

I even went as far as reporting their given telephone number and contact details to the Nigerian Police. They are just as inept as the scammers!

Keep up your good work.

Peter White @ Sep 16, 2008 15:38:25 PM

ScamVictimsUnited.com

Education is the key to fighting these scams! Learn the warning signs. NEVER wire money to anyone that you have never met in person, for any reason. Even if the bank tells you that the check is clear or that funds are available . . . it could still come back as counterfeit . . . that is what happened to me.

Shawn Mosch of MN @ Apr 29, 2008 20:31:01 PM

If You Think Thats Bad, Listen To This!

Scammers used to be confined to Africa, now it's a world wide crime. In 2/2007 I received an email from a company, supposedly from Switzerland saying they saw my resume on Careerbuilder.com, they offered me a job as a re shipper. They said that my job entailed receiving orders from companies that didn't ship overseas initiated from overseas customers. I was to weigh the package, notify them, they would send me the required postage and a shipping label where to send the package. The scammer had duplicated the actual company's website in every detail except one, the actual company wasn't hiring overseas workers.

The phone number used in the phony website turned out to be Hertz Rent A Car at Zürich Airport, they said they had been getting numerous calls concerning this company and it wasn't there. I told them I'd call back, went to whois, checked out the domain, it came up as being registered in 1/2007, the real company had been in business for over 15 years. The phony site was based in China, I called back the rent a car company, told them what was going on, emailed the actual company and gave them the info that I found on whois plus the results of my tracking where the email came from. Don't be fooled by these online scam artists, no matter how bad you need a job, scrutinize everything you receive that you didn't initiate. There are services on the web where you can track an email's origin if you think it's suspicious, just view all headers, copy the IP number and use it to track the email.

F. Davis of CA @ Apr 23, 2008 00:38:47 AM

Add Your Thoughts
About You

advertisement

The Collar

Luke Mullins is an associate editor at U.S. News, covering banking, real estate, and white-collar crime. He came to the magazine from the American Banker, a financial services daily newspaper, after a stint in the Peace Corps in West Africa and 18 months coaching baseball in the Dominican Republic. Mullins earned a master's degree in journalism from Syracuse University in 2005 and now lives in Washington, D.C., where he grew up. He has written about white-collar criminals for the American magazine, and his work was included in 20 Something Essays by 20 Something Writers: The Best New Voices of 2006, a Random House anthology that appeared on the Boston Globe's bestseller list.

People who read this also read ...

Best of The Collar

advertisement