The Better Business Bureau says it’s that time of year many of us may go looking for love in some of the wrong places. Although Valentine’s Day only comes once a year, there are scammers in cyberspace that are using the desire for a relationship to separate people from their money 365 days a year.
BBB Investigator Don O’Brien says romance scammers use dating websites, apps, Facebook, and other social media. They meet victims, interact with them, and quickly try to get them to move to a different form communication such as email or texting.
“So that way they can kinda cut out the middle man and just have a direct conversation with the person. There’s probably a limited number of communications you can have with that person on those sites, that’s why they move them off those sites as soon as they can.”
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.
