The pandemic has made people feel isolated, lonely, and vulnerable and scammers are taking advantage of that.
Romance scams are on the rise here across the country and right here in Connecticut.
A Naugatuck woman says she lost about $25,000 to someone she fell for online.
“I was going through a really hard time and I was feeling like really, really lonely, very vulnerable.”
The woman is in her 70s. She asked us to not include her name or show her face on television, but she hopes sharing what she says happened to her will help someone else from experiencing the financial and emotional pain that she did.
This Naugatuck woman met a man on Facebook Dating in March of 2021. He said he worked on an oil rig.
“Morning, noon, and night, we were in constant communication.”
He asked to move their chat to Google Hangouts and their relationship grew. She said he had answers to every one of her pressing questions. “They’re very, very convincing. They charm you. They send you a picture of a guy who is very handsome. In hindsight, I thought the picture was a little too perfect,” she said.
Google says, “Our policies prohibit using Chat or Hangouts to trick, mislead, or deceive other users into sharing information under false pretenses.” The company continues to say if you receive a suspicious message, it recommends you block and report the sender.
We reached out to Facebook. On their site it says one common warning sign of a scam is when someone wants to leave Facebook Dating immediately and use a personal email or instant messanger to chat. Facebook says report anyone you think is suspicious.
“That’s the first sign and I didn’t recognize it. That’s the first sign. And then when they ask for money, clearly I never ever should have sent any money,” she said.
The woman tells us, “He exhausted all I had and it was about $25,000 and that includes a loan I took out for him.”
Adding, “They really know what they’re doing. I’m a smart woman, I’m a professional, I’ve had really good jobs, educated. It doesn’t matter.”
The Federal Trade Commission says romance scams are costing innocent folks millions of dollars. Victims reported losing almost $550-million in 2021. That’s up 80 percent more from the previous year. And those numbers only include people who report what happened to them, “This is for most people, very private, very personal, often, potentially embarrassing thing to talk about and I expect the numbers to be much higher than that,” said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong.
His office has received reports of several heartbreaking romance scams the past two years, as the isolation of the pandemic has left people really vulnerable, “But be careful when suddenly they say, ‘I need money,’ right? Because of ‘this emergency,’ ‘I’m sick, a parent is sick, or I got a problem with my business’…Those high pressure tactics are what get people in trouble.”
And that’s exactly this Naugatuck woman experienced. She says every plea for cash came with a traumatic story, like a fire on the boat and coworkers killed. She wanted to be there for her boyfriend.
But this January, he claimed to be at a hospital. And when she called to talk to him, there was no one under his name admitted and that’s when it all clicked for her that it was a scam, “It’s hard to wrap my mind around how people can be so evil. How they could just sit there and just consciously do something like this? Rip people off, women, vulnerable women and it happens to men too.”
She doubts she’ll ever get her money back, but she’s doing what she can to report her story and help educate others.
Investigators say it’s hard to track these bad actors down, because many times they’re working overseas. Tong hopes people learn these telltale signs, so they can look out for themselves.
The Office of the Attorney General sent along these tips for people:
- Never send money or gifts to a love interest you haven’t met in person. Scammers will contact you on dating apps and request money, sometimes in the form of cryptocurrency or gift cards.
- Be wary of someone you’ve never met professing their love quickly.
- Scammers will often claim to be overseas or in the military and have emergencies in which they need cash immediately. Don’t fall for their high-pressure tactics.
- If you suspect you might be scammed, stop communicating with the person immediately.
- Seek advice from someone you trust, like a friend or family member. Are they concerned about your new love interest?
- Take time to verify: If you’ve been contacted by someone you don’t know online, take time to verify the person’s identity and think through what is being asked of you to determine whether it makes sense. Search to see if other people have reported similar stories as scams.
- Reverse image search of the person’s dating profile picture to see if belongs to a different person or account. If you find the picture and it’s associated with another person or the details don’t add up, it’s likely a scam.
If you believe you’re a victim of a romance or dating app scam, the attorney general’s office says,
“…report it to your local police department and the Federal Bureau of Investigations Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. You can also report it to our office at 860-808-5420 or file a complaint with the office at https://www.dir.ct.gov/ag/complaint/. You can also report any scams to the Federal Trade Commissioner by calling the FTC at 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357), or go online to file a complaint at ftc.gov/complaint. If you are an elderly victim, please call the Elder Justice Hotline at 1-860-808-5555.”
AARP CT says if you or a loved one were targeted by this scam or others you can get help by calling AARP FRAUD WATCH NETWORK HELPLINE 877-908-3360 or go to our website at www.aarp.org/fraudwatchnetwork. Its community research director tells us AARP CT has been getting more and more calls about romance scams impacting locals every week, so the organization has created this informational story about romance scams.
