Suddenly, after I lost my husband, all sorts of military personnel got in touch with me
After losing my husband, I changed my Facebook status to widowed and all of a sudden I was a very popular woman.
I was contacted by so many men, wanting to chat or know more about me. From captains to generals, there was a whole host of military personnel wanting to get in touch.
I was sceptical, so I Googled it – and that’s when I found out about romance scams. The fact I was retired and widowed made me a perfect target.
My research led me to realise there were plenty of places to report romance fraud – but nothing existed to warn women before it happened.
So, five years ago, I set up Scamhaters United, a forum where women could share their experiences of online dating fraud.
Between the website and social media channels, Scamhaters receives 7,000 hits a day from women around the globe who have either been contacted by scammers or duped out of money.
They share pictures, names and information about the scammers in the hope they can prevent other women from parting with cash.
It has taken over my life, but I can’t back down.
We have helped thousands of women, but it’s just a fraction of those affected.
So many get sucked in. They trust this man at the other end of the computer and, for them, it becomes reality.
I’ve heard of cases where people’s lives have been ruined.
These scammers work in teams and in shifts, so they’re there all the time – and invite women to sites like Google Hangouts so they can connect with lots of women at a time.
It’s like a full-time job for them.
It’s often a military person and usually starts off friendly with them calling you “babe” or “beautiful” or “my love”.
The scammers are clever and even go so far as to engage in webcam chats.
They spend weeks recording footage of someone then use it in a chat. They can pause it, make it jump to a point where the person is laughing, type when the person is typing, etc. It comes off as realistic. And all makes victims further believe the lie.
They get into your head and develop a relationship you think is real. But soon they will ask for money, whether for food or medical bills, or to pay for a ticket so they can come and see you – or paying to release a package.
Those are the telltale signs it’s a scam.
To help women, we need to educate them and raise awareness. It’s okay to talk to people online but, as soon as they ask for money, people need to realise it’s a scam and it’s time to walk away.
There needs to be more scepticism.
We’re so aware of other types of scams, like calls from the Microsoft engineer asking for bank details. We need to make sure romance fraud registers on the same level so the romance scammers can be stopped before any damage is done.
www.scamhaters united.com
As through this world I rambled, I’ve seen lots of funny men, Some will rob you with a six-gun, And some with a fountain pen – Pretty Boy Floyd by Woody Guthrie
The legendary folk singer wasn’t wrong then but, today, in this digital age, robbers don’t even need the pen.
The man behind Britain’s biggest bank heist had no six-gun, wore no balaclava, and never raced to a getaway car shouting “Go, go, go.”
Feezan “Fizzy” Hameed, 26, was armed with nothing more than a plausible telephone manner, a knack for accents, and an understanding of banking procedures when he opened an internet fraud factory that would con 750 RBS and Lloyds customers out of £113 million.
Jailed for 11 years in 2016, Hameed enlisted and drilled an army of skilled and convincing telephone operators to pretend they were calling from the banks’ anti-fraud teams and prey on unwary customers.
Their success was so spectacular and their boss raked in so much money – £3m a month, according to one estimate – that he did not know what to do with it, even flying his favourite car valets from Glasgow to Lahore to polish his luxury cars.
That was three years ago. It would be nice to think security is much tighter now, customers are better protected, and such a massive internet fraud could never happen again. Nice but fanciful.
Do any of us not now know someone who has lost money to online fraud or become a victim ourselves? The amounts being stolen are so vast, so mind-bogglingly huge, they are hard to imagine. And for every Fizzy behind bars, there are 1,000 more hitting the phones right now.
Of course, it is not just our banks who are battling international crime gangs adept in coupling old-school cons with new technology to devastating effect. Despite all the parliamentary inquiries and investigations, the internet remains the Wild West, full of anonymous outlaws robbing the innocent with impunity.
Today, we reveal the heartache and penury left by just one gang preying on women looking for love online. Of course, it is difficult to stop them but, worryingly, too many of our politicians and expert police officers believe many of the sites being used by these criminals are not even trying.
Technology is available to make it harder for these men to operate. Everything from facial recognition systems to tighter checks on new registrations could do a lot to protect potential victims. Of course, we all have a responsibility to take care online but we are lambs surrounded by wolves; skilful, resourceful, organised, and criminal wolves.
Internet giants, the big platforms and most popular sites, have made billions in the last decade’s digital free-for-all.
It is time they spent a few of those billions protecting the people who use their sites and, if they do not, our government, or, ideally, a new regulator, must find new ways to make them.
No guns or masks, just old cons and new technology