Valentine’s Day a target for cons

Romance scams on the rise during virus, officials warn

Valentine’s Day is supposed to be a time for lovers but, according to law enforcement officials, can also be a time for scammers.

With the holiday weekend on the horizon, the FBI in Little Rock is concerned about romance scams that, in some cases, can run victims hundreds of thousands of dollars.

According to FBI spokesman Connor Hagan, people trying to defraud individuals in romance scams go about differently than other types of scams.

“Most scams will have this almost timeliness essence to it,” Hagan said. “If you think of a tech scam, they’ll say ‘we see a virus on your computer, and you need to remove it.’”

Individuals going after others in romance scams

take their time and do not rush their victims, often building relationships with them, usually without ever meeting in person, before slowly beginning to drain money.

“These scammers are, in my opinion, worse than your usual breed of scammers. because they do take time to form relationships to build up trust, in some cases what is perceived to be love,” Hagan said. “Their goal is a long-term confidence scam. It’s to prey upon somebody who’s lonely or isolated or looking for companionship.”

Not only do the victims often sustain greater financial damage, they also may be wounded emotionally by a romance scam.

Since 2015, according to FBI statistics, both the number of victims of romantic scams and the magnitude of the lost money has increased.

Hagan said about 12,000 victims lost a total $200 million in 2015. But those figures have increased to 24,000 victims in 2020 losing $600 million.

“We can come in after the fact and investigate it, but the best way to deal with a scammer is to not deal with the scammer, is to not fall for the scam in the first place,” Hagan said. “We’re sorry, but there’s a lot of times you’re not going to get your money back.”

The average amount lost in these scams is $40,000$50,000, compared to the loss of only thousands for many other crimes. Scammers, when caught, may also face less time in prison compared to other crimes.

Hagan said he got a firsthand account of a romance scam and its effects when he worked in Texas, giving presentations to senior citizens and retirement communities, where people would often tell him about scams that victimized them or someone close to them.

“I had a woman come up to me, and she had actually gone back to her room at the retirement community and come back with a stack of papers,” Hagan said. “And it was all this correspondence she had with a guy she’d been talking to online for three years.”

The woman had a binder of evidence printed off after she had gotten suspicious of the correspondence. She estimated she had $375,000 taken from her over that period, according to Hagan, who said she refinanced a house and sold two vehicles to pay out the sum over the years.

“When you’re facing a victim like that, my heart hurts for her because she’s destroyed both emotionally and wrecked pretty bad financially,” Hagan said. “But the bigger thing was, she spent three years talking to this guy. The guy had a whole backstory for her.”

The scammers will often utilize social media to both find relevant information about their victims and craft fake profiles with enough coincidences to make their victims think they are legitimate in their approaches.

These may include setting up fake companies, websites and personal backgrounds to go after several victims. Scammers may even converse with their victims daily either over the phone or through messaging services, according to Hagan.

Scammers may also pretend to be family members to gain trust, Hagan said.

Hagan said that meeting in-person is a key factor in determining a potential scam.

“If you have never met the person face-to-face, sat down physically in person, that’s a red flag, especially if you’ve been dating over six weeks,” Hagan said.

With more people going online for social connections because of the covid-19 pandemic, Hagan said older people, who are the primary target of romance scams, may be at higher risk than normal.

“I think you can definitely apply it to older folks who may be lonely,” Hagan said. “We’re not getting together as friends. We’re not seeing our families as much.”

The pandemic also provides an excuse for scammers to not meet up with their victims.

As with other scams, Hagan recommended to not send money to unknown individuals.

“The victims feel like they do know them,” Hagan said. “They feel like they can trust them. In some cases, we see these romance scammers say ‘I’m at an airport. My card’s been declined. They’re not taking my points. I just need $500 dollars to get home.’”

Even more devious, according to Hagan, the scammers may give the money back to gain even more trust so they can get an even bigger payout.

“Again, they’re playing the long-term game here,” Hagan said. “They will send it back after a week and say, ‘thank you so much.’ What does that do? It builds trust.”

Individuals may also try to use the scam to obtain the personal information of their victims to commit identity theft.

Pulaski County has been seeing a general increase in calls reporting scams over the past year as well, according to sheriff’s office spokeswoman Kristin Knox.

The sheriff’s office, Little Rock Police and the Arkansas Attorney General tweeted about the dangers of scams this week.

Knox said the sheriff’s office has a partnership with the University of Arkansas for Medical Science’s geriatrics division to give tips to seniors to avoid scams, and they are available to take a report if called about a scam.

“We always encourage them to call us and let us know,” Knox said. “We can take the complaint or file a report if we need to help the seniors on their behalf, and then send that to the Attorney General’s office as well.”