Online Daters Must Protect Themselves Against Fraud

A national campaign has been launched by the City of London Police to warn people about the risks of romance fraud.

Family members of online daters are being urged to help protect their relatives from becoming a victim of romance fraud, as new figures show almost £92 million has been lost through dating scams this year alone.

Despite a peak of romance fraud reports and losses of £8.7 million reported in March, the financial spike came two months later in May 2021 where losses of a staggering £14.6 million were reported.

Detective Chief Superintendent Matt Bradford, from the City of London Police, 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."

Police are 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.

Criminals often use a range of stories to get victims to transfer them money without it raising suspicion. The stories are often believable, to a certain extent, and something that the victim would find hard to say no to, especially because of their emotional attachment.

Examples of stories include funding travel to visit the victim, money to pay for emergency medical expenses, lucrative investment opportunities and pretending to be military personnel or working overseas.

How to help protect people you know are online dating 

• Help your friends and family to ensure they have adequate privacy settings on their social media accounts to ensure strangers don’t have access to their personal information.

• Stay in regular contact with your friends and family who are online dating to help spot any changes in behaviour or things that don’t seem right.

• Make friends and family aware of the signs of romance fraud so that they are conscious of the tactics criminals use to carry out these scams and reiterate that you should never transfer money to someone that you have never met in person.

• Encourage people to report to Action Fraud and the police if they have become a victim of romance fraud and not to be embarrassed about doing so.

Between November 2020 and October 2021, 8,863 cases of romance fraud were reported a significant increase fromfrom 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 advise 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.

Take Five To Stop Fraud Advice

• Stop:Taking a moment to stop and think before parting with your money or information could keep you safe.

• Challenge: Could it be fake? It’s okay to reject, refuse or ignore any requests. Only criminals will try to rush or panic you.

• Protect: If you think you’ve been a victim of fraud, contact your bank immediately and report it to Action Fraud online at police.uk or by calling 0300 123 2040.

Action Fraud:   SouthYorkshire Police:     Northants Police:    West Midland Police:    Independent:     ITV:   

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