Romance Scams on the Rise

According to a recent release from the FTC, romantic scams are on the rise and have grown from 8,500 in 2015 to more than 21,000 cases, and a reported loss of over $140 million in 2018.

This disturbing information and increase serves as valuable education to those looking for love online and are advised to NEVER provide any personal information via any form of online communication.

While you may think you’d never fall for such a scam, these criminals are a lot smarter and are far more invested in getting to know their victims to gain their trust than ever before.

In fact, these scammers will even go as far as having video chats with their victims over several months in effort to convince their victim that they’re not a scammer. Furthermore, they’ve been known to acquire the credit card information of the victim and make it look as though they’ve paid some of the victim’s credit card debt off. Only to forfeit the credit at unsuspecting times of day and then selling the victims information on the dark web or making large fraudulent purchases.

Consequently, a victim that willingly provides their credit card information to a romantic scammer will discover after the dirty act has happened, that the finance institution for which their credit card is with, can deny it as fraud, therefore still holding the victim accountable for the loss and charges made to their account.

There are many ways to protect yourself, but the primary solution is to NEVER provide any personal information (credit card, street address, parents names, past employment history) to anyone that you’ve never physically met in person.

If it is love you’re looking for online, it is possible to find but you must be cautious and understand that this world is filled with predators who have their sights set on you as their prey and will stop at nothing, even if it takes 3-6 months of time investment, so BEWARE!

For more information on this topic, click HERE.