Romance scams play off isolation
Mich. man’s photo stolen for use in fraud schemes
Tom Ernsting radiates the kind of handsome silver-fox good looks of a character right off the Hallmark Channel, just the sort of guy that plenty of women would love to meet.
Unfortunately, Ernsting has heard from way too many scorned women.
“They scream at me and they yell at me for ruining their lives,” said Ernsting, 60.
“The stories I’ve heard are insane.” One woman claims she handed over her credit card information to him and then he racked up $30,000 in charges.
Others were upset that they sent him $500 to help him get across the border into the United States so that he could travel to see them, but he never showed up. Some claim they lost money after they put cash on Apple iTunes gift cards to send to him.
“It’s just crazy,” Ernsting said. “It definitely took off during COVID because I think people were even more desperate and more lonely.
“It’s sad because they fall in love with me.”
Ernsting, who has worked as a professional model, says he did not reach out to these women via social media or apps, and he doesn’t have their money.
Ernsting does have a significant social media presence that scammers have impersonated in order to steal money from women who are desperately looking for love.
Sometimes, he’s heard from a dozen upset women in a day who say they’ve been scammed by crooks using his pictures.
And sexy shots online only make some copycat accounts more intriguing.
Sorry to be blunt, but is a guy whose buff photos are highlighted on social media going to be looking for love on Facebook? Really?
Ernsting retired early from a job as a sales executive in the hotel industry, but then went to work as a model and freelance event manager.
The pandemic hurt the event business, he says, but modeling is picking up some.
He has built up more than 150,000 Instagram followers.
“There aren’t a lot of people my age who are that active on Instagram,” Ernsting said, attributing some of his success to his demographic.
“I’m attractive enough to draw people in, but I’m not threatening, so people use my image to draw people in the door.”
Scammers have been stealing his image to create a variety of social media accounts to use in romance frauds.
“I can’t believe my image is a business for these people,” he said. “They’re making a living off my image. They’re probably making more than I ever have.”
The need to be physically distant to avoid contracting COVID-19 during the 2020 has led to a spike in social media scams, including romance scams. Someone who is nice looking, maybe a doctor, suddenly wants to be your friend on Facebook.
Like any potential scam, it doesn’t hurt to do more research on this socalled profile. Google a person’s name, just like you would a business, and the word “scammer.”
You’d see that SocialCatfish.com, for example, notes that Tom Ernsting has one of the most catfished profiles in the world.
“We estimated that millions of dollars were stolen from fake profiles using Tom’s images since there were so many of them,” SocialCatfish.com said.
Scammers increasingly have been stealing the photos of social media influencers to use in romance scams, according to SocialCatfish.com.
The Federal Trade Commission notes that you can also “do a reverse image search of the person’s profile picture to see if it’s associated with another name or with details that don’t match up – those are signs of a scam.”
And if someone is suddenly sending you overly complimentary emails or messages, be cautious.
“Paste the text into a search engine and see whether the same words show up on websites devoted to exposing romance scams,” according to an AARP tip sheet on romance scams.
According to the FTC, $201 million was lost due to romance scams in 2019, which was a 40% increase from $143 million in 2018. And the numbers are likely to be higher in 2020.
Retirees and older victims tend to lose the most money – the median individual loss associated with romance scams for people age 70 and older was about $10,000, compared with $2,600 for all victims based on 2018 data.
Love interests who are scammed may be asked to send money repeatedly to cover one emergency after another.
You never want to give money – or gift cards – for any reason, no matter how sincere the person may seem. Block someone who keeps needing you to help them out by sending them money.
The FTC has launched a website – ReportFraud.ftc.gov – where consumers can report a romance scam or other scam whether they have lost money or not.
As part of this new service, the consumer also receives some advice on what to do next when it comes to a particular problem.
Over the years, one sure sign of a romance scam is the inability of the new love of your life to meet for drinks or dinner. Maybe the guy is working a construction job overseas. Or he’s in the military and cannot visit you.
During 2020, though, the pandemic has given scammers a new excuse.
Your newfound online boyfriend or girlfriend now can’t meet you because they don’t want to get you sick or there is limited travel where they are from due to the pandemic, according to a report by SocialCatfish.com.
And no, they can’t video chat either because they reportedly have limited access to a Wi-Fi network during the coronavirus pandemic.
When the romantic rip-off artist promises to meet you in person, be prepared, because an excuse to cancel always comes up, according to an AARP tip sheet on romance scams.
The real reason you’ll never meet is because the scammers don’t look anything like the picture online.
The scammers could be sitting in a room overseas trying to pretend to be the friendly guy or girl next door.
Ernsting says he believes romance scams could be more common than official reports indicate, based on what he’s hearing from the women who contact him and the stories they’re telling him privately about how much money they’ve lost.
Many do not want to admit publicly, he said, exactly how much they gave away or lost to romance scammers.
“They’re embarrassed – and their husbands could find out,” he said.