ONLINE DATING SCAM

The fear of the unknown which characterizes Internet transactions since inception has crept into the romantic world of online dating. From every indication, this is a variant of the “419” Advanced Fee fraud email from Nigeria, West Africa. This latest scam relies heavily on leading gullible relationship seekers to believe the claim by the scammer of being sole beneficiary to huge inheritance from deceased parents.
How does it work?
The criminals obtain pictures and names of beautiful ladies possibly from international magazines and upload the pictures, into different online dating sites. These beautiful ladies are supposedly from France, Italy, Belgium, The UK, the Netherlands, Ghana, and the Middle East. Therefore, when a potential male victim creates a profile seeking women for genuine causal dating or long term relationship, he is accosted with tons of messages from these “ladies”, claiming their heart melted upon viewing his profile.
The first sign of trouble however, is the generic nature of these messages. Every one of the scammers claims to be new to online dating. She is therefore quick to provide the potential victim with an e-mail address for direct contact because “I do not go online very often”. There is also a sense of urgency embedded in the messages. In her profile, the criminal drops the hint that ‘she’ is an only child.
Now the Scam
After the initial banters, the criminal opens up with how successful her family had been; how the family traveled the world following father’s lucrative diplomatic services and oil contracts/investments. She narrates a tearful story how both parents died in a ghastly auto accident leaving her millions of dollars in inheritance. Subsequently, she weaves a web of overlapping stories of ex-boyfriends swindling her of millions of dollars through bogus love and business proposals. There is always a deliberate wait on the part of the scammer for some days to elapse in-between correspondences to create a sustained suspense.
At this point, the criminal would concoct yet another story of how she escaped with her millions intact from an ex-boyfriend in one of the exotic Islands, when it was apparent to her the purported investment was a hoax. After fleeing from her ex’s apartment with her money, she lodged in a hotel where she had the time and composure to parcel the millions of dollars in a diplomatic bag and deposited same with a professional company.
The criminal would go ahead and provide the potential victim with an international telephone number to call instructing that he describes himself as her fiancé. Now salivating about the possibility of a brighter future, the potential victim places a call to that number, and with a professional and friendly tone, the guy at the other acknowledges the existence of such a luggage. Here comes the catch: The luggage has accrued some fees as demurrage (amount payable for delay in loading or delivery). The victim is expected to remit the amount running into several thousand dollars. If he pays the sum, all forms of communications, would cease, and the international phone line goes dead.
Online crimes have been on the rise since the advent of the ubiquitous Internet. In 2008 The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C), received a total of 336,655 complaints, which represented a 22.3 percent increase from the previous year. The total loss connected to online fraud in 2009 was $559.7 million; a significant rise from $265 million in 2008 (IC3 2009 Annual Report on Internet Crime).


YEAR COMPLAINTS RECEIVED DOLLAR LOSS
2009 336,655 $559.7 million
2008 275,284 $265 million
2007 206,884 $239.09 million
2006 207,492 $198.44 million
2005 231,493 $183.12 million
(IC3 2009 Annual Report)