They deceive their intended victims by making plausible-sounding excuses about their unwillingness to show their faces, such as by saying that they cannot meet yet because they are temporarily traveling or have a broken web camera. US military members are also impersonated, as pretending to serve in the military explains why the scammer is not available for an in-person meeting.īecause the scammers often look nothing like the photos they send to the victims, the scammers rarely meet the victims face to face or even in a video call. Often photos of unknown actresses or models will be used to lure the victim into believing they are talking to that person. Romance scammers create personal profiles using stolen photographs of attractive people for the purpose of asking others to contact them. More money is lost each year to romance scams than to similar internet scams, such as technical support scams. These scams are often perpetrated by organized criminal gangs, who work together to take money from multiple victims at a time. Fraudulent acts may involve access to the victim's money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, e-mail accounts, or national identification numbers or forcing the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf. Ī romance scam is a confidence trick involving feigning romantic intentions towards a victim, gaining the victim's affection, and then using that goodwill to get the victim to send money to the scammer under false pretenses or to commit fraud against the victim. The deception can be obvious to observers - for example, the photo on this passport does not comply with regulations for size or pose - but victims often overlook these signs. This falsified passport was used in an actual Internet romance scam.
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