More than £33 million lost to internet dating scams
According to the UK’s national fraud centre, online dating fraudsters conned their victims out of more than £33 million in the last year. Often preying on the lonely and the vulnerable looking for love, fraudsters pick and choose their victims carefully and then embark on a process of gaining trust before asking for money.
Very often fraudsters will ask for money to pay for items such as travel costs or medical bills. After winning the trust of their victim they will fabricate what is very often a hard luck story and then convince their victims to part with their cash to help them out.
The sad reality is that some people have lost everything to online dating scammers and Action Fraud have reported that in the UK alone 3, 453 people were reported to have fallen victim to dating scams in 2014-15.
There are some respectable and responsible dating sites that do their best to vet their members but unfortunately many others very rarely vet their members to prevent fraud and this is the hub of the problem. Many people join dating sites in the mistaken belief that members are vetted but this isn’t the case. Online dating fraudsters have become very adept at luring in their victims and are very convincing at drawing people in with their ‘hard-luck stories’.
Online dating scammers will routinely use multiple, fake profiles to target a single victim. They will often send abusive or unpleasant messages from some of the fakes and then make their main bogus profile seem comparatively kind, considerate and caring to lure their victims in. These fraudsters have designed social engineering specifically to target the vulnerabilities of those seeking relationships and then through a highly sophisticated approach, they begin to gain the trust of their victims.
If you believe that you may be a victim of internet dating fraud or are unsure about the person you have been corresponding with then contact us now and we can carry out a background investigation.
