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FBI
Romance Scams
Online Imposters Break Hearts and Bank Accounts
They met online. He said he was a friend of a friend. The woman, in her
50s and struggling in her marriage, was happy to find someone to chat
with. “He was saying all the right things,” she remembered. “He was
interested in me. He was interested in getting to know me better. He
was very positive, and I felt like there was a real connection there.”
That connection would end up costing the woman $2 million and an untold
amount of heartache after the man she fell in love with—whom she never
met in person—took her for every cent she had.
It’s called a romance scam, and this devastating Internet crime is on
the rise. Victims—predominantly older widowed or divorced women
targeted by criminal groups usually from Nigeria—are, for the most
part, computer literate and educated. But they are also emotionally
vulnerable. And con artists know exactly how to exploit that
vulnerability because potential victims freely post details about their
lives and personalities on dating and social media sites.
Trolling for victims online “is like throwing a fishing line,” said
Special Agent Christine Beining, a veteran financial fraud investigator
in the FBI’s Houston Division who has seen a substantial increase in
the number of romance scam cases. “The Internet makes this type of
crime easy because you can pretend to be anybody you want to be. You
can be anywhere in the world and victimize people,” she said. “The
perpetrators will reach out to a lot of people on various networking
sites to find somebody who may be a good target. Then they use what the
victims have on their profile pages and try to work those relationships
and see which ones develop.”
In the case of the Texas woman who lost everything, it was her strong
Christian faith—which she happily publicized on her Facebook
profile—that gave “Charlie” an incredible advantage when he began
courting her.
“I’m very active on Facebook,” said the woman, who agreed to share her
story in the hopes that others might avoid becoming victims. “I thought
it was safe.” After she friended Charlie—without verifying his bogus
claim that they had a mutual friend—“he would read my wall, I would
read his wall. We would post things, he would like things. Then it got
to where we would share e-mails. We started sharing pictures.”
According to Beining, this is standard operating procedure for romance
scammers, who assume other people’s identities to trick their victims.
“They make themselves out to be average-looking people,” she said.
“They are generally not trying to build themselves up too high.”
The scammer’s intention is to establish a relationship as quickly as
possible, endear himself to the victim, gain trust, and propose
marriage. He will make plans to meet in person, but that will never
happen. Eventually, he will ask for money.
According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which
provides the public with a means of reporting Internet-facilitated
crimes, romance scams—also called confidence fraud—result in the
highest amount of financial losses to victims when compared to other
online crimes.
In 2016, almost 15,000 complaints categorized as romance scams or
confidence fraud were reported to IC3 (nearly 2,500 more than the
previous year), and the losses associated with those complaints
exceeded $230 million. The states with the highest numbers of victims
were California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania. In Texas
last year, the IC3 received more than 1,000 complaints from victims
reporting more than $16 million in losses related to romance scams.
‘I was Looking for Happiness’
When she first encountered Charlie in 2014, the Texas woman recalled,
“I was in an emotionally abusive marriage, and things had not been good
for probably at least 10 years.” Her new online friend seemed to come
along at just the right time. “I was looking for happiness,” she said.
“I thought I could find that with Charlie.”
Romance scammers often say they are in the building and construction
industry and are engaged in projects outside the U.S. That makes it
easier to avoid meeting in person—and more plausible when they ask
their victims for help. They will suddenly need money for a medical
emergency or unexpected legal fee. “They promise to repay the loan
immediately,” Beining said, “but the victims never get their money
back.”
Charlie claimed to be in the construction field. “He was trying to
finish up a job in California,” the woman said, “and he needed some
money to help finish the job. I thought about it long and hard. I
prayed about it. I’ve always been a very giving person, and I figured
if I had money … I could send him some [money]. And he promised to have
it back within 24 to 48 hours. I thought, ‘I could do that.’ It was
kind of a statement of faith, too.”
She wired him $30,000. A day passed and then another, and she didn’t
get her money back. “I still thought everything was okay,” she said,
“just that he was the victim of some bad luck.” And then Charlie needed
another $30,000.
Empty Promises
For the next two years, the woman believed Charlie’s stories after each
new request for funds. Everything he said made sense, and, after all,
they were in love. Eventually, the woman’s financial adviser became
alarmed about her steadily dwindling accounts and, suspecting fraud,
urged her to contact the FBI.
The subsequent investigation led by Beining resulted in the arrest of
two Nigerians posing as South African diplomats who had come to the
U.S. to collect money from the woman on behalf of Charlie, who claimed
he was paid $42 million for a construction project he completed in
South Africa. The woman believed she would be paying to have the
money—including the repayment of her $2 million—transferred to the U.S.
from South Africa, where Charlie was still supposedly working.
In July 2016, the two Nigerian co-conspirators pleaded guilty in
connection with their roles in the scam, and a federal judge sentenced
them each to 36 months in prison last December. But Charlie is still at
large, presumably in Nigeria, and there may be little hope of bringing
him to justice.
“This is a very difficult crime to prove,” Beining said. “When someone
is using a computer to hide behind, the hardest thing to find out is
who they are. We can find out where in the world their computer is
being used. It’s identifying who they actually are that’s the hard
part. That is why this individual remains a fugitive.”
It also explains why romance scams are on the rise: It’s a lucrative
and easy crime to commit, and easier still to remain anonymous and
beyond the reach of authorities. “It’s not like going in a bank and
holding a gun to the teller,” Beining explained, “because there are so
many leads that you provide law enforcement when you do that. Even if
you are able to get out of the bank, we can probably find out who you
are and track you down. But with an Internet crime like this, it’s much
more difficult.”
As for the Texas woman, she came forward “because I don’t want this to
happen to anybody else. I not only invested money in this man but there
is a big, huge piece of my heart that I invested in him,” she said.
“It’s not just the finances, it’s the emotional part, too—being
embarrassed, being ashamed, being humiliated.”
“I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I not only invested money
in this man but there is a big, huge piece of my heart that I invested
in him.”
Romance scam victim
Even now, though, she remains conflicted. A part of her still wants to
believe that Charlie is real and that their relationship was real—that
the e-mail exchanges about church and the phone calls when they sang
together and prayed together meant as much to him as they did to her.
She even holds out hope that one day Charlie will repay her, as he
promised to do so many times.
Otherwise, there is no doubt that he is a heartless criminal who robbed
her and broke her heart—and who is almost certainly continuing to
victimize other women in the same way.
“I can’t even imagine a man, a person, that could be this bad,” she
said. “I can’t think of him that way. … There can’t be a man in this
world that could be this horrible to have purposefully done what he’s
done to me.”
Don’t Become a Victim
The criminals who carry out romance scams are experts at what they do.
They spend hours honing their skills and sometimes keep journals on
their victims to better understand how to manipulate and exploit them.
“Behind the veil of romance, it’s a criminal enterprise like any
other,” said Special Agent Christine Beining. “And once a victim
becomes a victim, in that they send money, they will often be placed on
what’s called a ‘sucker list,’ ” she said. “Their names and identities
are shared with other criminals, and they may be targeted in the
future.”
To stay safe online, be careful what you post, because scammers can use
that information against you. Always use reputable websites, but assume
that con artists are trolling even the most reputable dating and social
media sites. If you develop a romantic relationship with someone you
meet online, consider the following:
Research the person’s photo and profile using online searches to see if
the material has been used elsewhere.
Go slow and ask lots of questions.
Beware if the individual seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave
a dating service or Facebook to go “offline.”
Beware if the individual attempts to isolate you from friends and
family or requests inappropriate photos or financial information that
could later be used to extort you.
Beware if the individual promises to meet in person but then always
comes up with an excuse why he or she can’t. If you haven’t met the
person after a few months, for whatever reason, you have good reason to
be suspicious.
Never send money to anyone you don’t know personally. “If you don’t
know them, don’t send money,” Beining said. “You will see what their
true intentions are after that.”
If you suspect an online relationship is a scam, stop all contact
immediately.
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