Daters who strike up online relationships between Christmas and Valentines Day tend to be the most susceptible to romance fraud, police suggest. The Action Fraud reporting service in England and Wales points to a spike of 901 reports recorded by the police’s National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) in March 2021.
Despite a peak of romance fraud reports and losses of £8.7m reported in March, the financial spike came two months later in May 2021, where losses of a staggering £14.6 million were reported.
Temporary Detective Chief Superintendent Matt Bradford, from City of London Police, the UK lead force for fraud, said: “Typically, romance fraudsters will spend weeks gaining their victims’ trust, feeding them fabricated stories about who they are and their lives – and initially make no suggestion of any desire to ask for any money, so the victim may believe their new love interest is genuine.
“But weeks, or sometimes months later, these criminals will ask for money for a variety of emotive reasons and as the emotional relationship has already been formed, victims often transfer money without a second thought.
“We’re calling on family members who think their relatives may be dating online to help make them aware of the warning signs that they could be falling victim to fraud, particularly if the person dating online is not particularly tech savvy.”
Police warn that criminals often use a range of stories to get victims to transfer them money without it raising suspicion. The stories may be believable, to an extent, and something that the victim would find hard to say no to, because of their emotional attachment. Stories could include funding travel to visit the victim, money to pay for emergency medical expenses, investment opportunities; and pretending to be military personnel or working overseas.
Comment
Rachel Jones, CEO and founder of SnapDragon Monitoring, said: “Dating scams are rife today and these figures from Action Fraud show just how much money criminals are earning through them. These crimes are very easy to carry out as the web offers the perfect shield for scammers to hide behind computer screens, building out fictitious lives and fake personas, with the real aim of duping people into falling in love so they can extort money from them.
“When it comes to protecting against scams, dating site users are advised to never give away sensitive or personal information to anyone they meet online until they know they can be trusted. If you are targeted with an online lover this Valentine’s Day who seems too good to be true, never send them any money because the chances are you are going to get hit by the arrow of a fraudster, rather than the arrow of cupid.
“The problem of counterfeit goods and fake domains only grows in the run up to holidays, like Valentine’s Day, and businesses must take steps to fight back against them. Fake domains not only threaten a brand’s reputation, but they can also seriously harm customers through safety risks and by fraudsters stealing their financial information. Businesses are advised to work with partners that can carry out monitoring to detect illegitimate versions of their website online, as well as fake versions of their products, and work to get any found taken down immediately.”
Between November 2020 and October 2021, 8,863 cases of romance fraud were reported to NFIB, up from 6,968 reports in the 2020 calendar year. However this is not likely to be an accurate picture, as romance fraud is a crime victims are less likely to report.
Of the reports in the last 12 months, 20 per cent of victims were aged 50 – 59 years, 18 per cent were aged 40 – 49 years old and 17 per cent of victims were aged 30 – 39 years old. Half of romance fraud victims were women, just over a third (39 per cent) were men and some victims (11 per cent) did not report their gender.
City of London Police would urge anyone who is speaking to people they do not know or have not known for a long period of time to follow the Take Five To Stop Fraud advice: visit https://www.takefive-stopfraud.org.uk/.
