Sue, a 72-year-old woman from Staffordshire, was scammed by a romance scammer who tricked her into sending them money, leading to a typical example of dating scam, one of the fraud categories behind an 11% rise in reports to Action Fraud. Her experience occurred shortly after she tragically lost her husband of 40 years. In the wake of these events and her desire to move on through socialization, Sue joined an online dating group, whereupon she received messages from someone named John, who was posing as a 71-year-old widower and a civil engineer, based in Dubai.
Within the first week, John started messaging Sue every day, and within the second week, he had claimed to be mugged and shot in the leg, leading to treatment in a hospital for two days. This manipulation was the basis for his request for £100 in gift cards to purchase food. However, when Sue checked the validity of the hospital he had claimed to stayed during those two days, John’s ongoing scam was exposed. It transpired that the hospital did indeed exist, but John had lied about his hospital stay. Sue suspects she was targeted with a dating scam, a category of fraud, where John used the typical approach of gaining her trust through a fake emotional connection and then exploiting it to defraud her out of her money.
Sue’s experience is part of a larger issue of dating scam victims being befriended online and manipulated into sending money to people who they believe they are in a relationship with. Since 2019, there has been a 56% increase in reports of 4,109 cases of dating scam fraud from the first six months of 2024 to the same six months in 2019, according to Action Fraud. The police have advised victims of these scams to report them to both the bank and Action Fraud as soon as possible.
Action Fraud has received 11% more reports of fraud in the first six months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2023. A Freedom of Information request from the City of London police shows that Action Fraud received 190,030 reports of fraud in the first half of 2024. Of these, the largest increase was in hacking, dating scams, and online shopping and auction fraud, with the category of hacking using social media and email being the most significant contributor to the 89% increase from the same period in 2023.
The increase in victims of these scams caused a joint investigation by the BBC’s Morning Live and England Data Unit as part of Scam Safe, a week-long program focusing on the people’s protection against scams. Several tips on how to protect oneself against fraud, such as checking unexpected messages, calling others for a second opinion, and reporting suspicious texts and emails, were presented in the program’s resources. The police have advised against giving money or personal information to people you have not met in person and highlighted the importance of reporting any suspicions of scam activity
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