KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — With Valentine’s Day comes a surge of activity on dating websites, with singles looking to the internet for a love connection.
Unfortunately, these sites are rife with fraudsters who use affection to manipulate their victims out of their money.
Worse, a new Better Business Bureau (BBB) report finds, online romance scams often escalate as scammers turn their victims into unwitting accomplices to fraud, known as “money mules.”
In February 2018, the BBB issued an in-depth investigative study on romance scams, describing how fraudsters target people who are looking for love.
BBB’s most recent study – “Fall in Love – Go to Jail: A BBB Report on How Romance Fraud Victims Become Money Mules” – details how fraudsters exploit those relationships further.
How these romance scams work:
Scammers typically contact their victims through dating websites, apps or social media, often using fake profiles and even stolen credit card information.
They may spend months building what the victim believes to be a loving relationship before asking for money to handle an emergency or travel expenses.
The financial damage inflicted by these scams, which is often accompanied by far greater emotional harm, is often just the tip of the iceberg.
According to the new BBB report, 20 to 30 percent of romance scam victims were used as money mules in 2018 alone, with these victims numbering in the thousands.
Money mules act as financial middlemen in a variety of scams, laundering money from other victims by receiving money or goods purchased with stolen credit cards and sending them on to the fraudsters, often out of the country.
This often happens when the romance scam victim has no money or already has given all of their money to the scammer.
The victim may be a willing accomplice or may have a variety of other motives – love, fear, financial compensation for their own losses, but at the end of the day, the victims are still aiding and abetting a variety of other frauds.
As law enforcement cracks down on these frauds, money mules at times have been prosecuted as well, facing jail time and hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines and restitution payments.
In most cases, however, there is no desire to take criminal action against unwitting participants who had no financial gain and who stop transferring money for crooks as soon as they realize the role they have been playing.
“The money mule phenomenon adds insult to injury for romance scam victims,” said Tony Binkley, BBB president and CEO. “After losing money and dignity to fraudsters they believed were loving romantic partners, these victims find themselves tangled in a web of even more serious crimes, possibly facing consequences themselves. Law enforcement and educators should work together to expose and stop these scams, to help unwitting fraud victims avoid being re-victimized.”
The report recommends:
- Warn people about romance frauds before they get invested in an online relationship. Alert them that the loss of their money is not the end of the matter because fraudsters may try to enlist them as money mules. It also is important to exercise caution in one’s own online dating ventures in order to avoid falling for a romance fraud at the outset.
- Romance fraud victims often need counseling to help them overcome the trauma of this fraud. More victim support groups like those in Los Angeles and Ventura, Ca., would be helpful.
- More warnings to money mules may help alert romance fraud victims that they are engaged in assisting frauds and encourage them to stop.
- More prosecutions of romance fraudsters would help deter romance fraud.
- Banks can do more to alert law enforcement to the use of money mules’ bank accounts.
- Increase cooperation and sharing of information between law enforcement officials in different jurisdictions working on the same cases.
- More training and cooperation is needed internationally to recognize and combat romance fraud.
What to do if you are the victim of a romance scam:
- Complain to bbb.org
- Report the fraud to bbb.org/scamtracker
- Report it to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or call 877-FTC-Help
- Report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3
- Report it to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre. Toll free from the US at 1-888-495-8501.
- Report it to the Senate Aging Committee Fraud Hotline at 1-855-303-9470 or through its website.
- Victims who have sent money through Western Union should complain directly to them at 1-800-448-1492.
- Victims who have sent money through MoneyGram should notify them directly at 1-800-926-9400.