Although Valentine’s Day only comes once a year, there are scammers in cyberspace that are using the desire for a relationship to scam people 365 days a year. The Better Business Bureau warns that romance scammers use dating websites, apps, Facebook, and other social media.
BBB Investigator Don O’Brien says they meet victims, interact with them, and quickly try to get them to move to a different form communication such as email or texting.
“We did our first romance scam study in 2018 and we had a person in St Louis region who lost a couple million dollars in one of these. They can move very fast. If you think you’ve found love on the internet at least get face to face at least through FaceTime or something to that person because if you are just exchanging text messages or emails, that person probably isn’t real.”
Criminals posing as potential romantic “matches” may lead victims on for a while, then suddenly claim they’ve got big medical bills, or some other emergency need for money.
