Romance scam

A falsified passport used in an Internet romance scam. 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.[1]

A 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. Fraudulent acts may involve access to the victim's money, bank accounts, credit cards, passports, Cash App,[2] e-mail accounts, or national identification numbers; or forcing the victims to commit financial fraud on their behalf.[3][4]

These scams are often perpetrated by organized criminal gangs, who work together to take money from multiple victims at a time.[5]

More money is lost each year to romance scams than to similar internet scams, such as technical support scams.[5]

  1. ^ "Internet Dating and Romance Scams". Travel.state.gov. Archived from the original on 8 December 2010.
  2. ^ Lake, Rebecca (24 May 2024). "9 Cash App Scams You Should Know Of". time.com. Time Magazine. Retrieved 25 June 2024.
  3. ^ "Looking for Love? Beware of Online Dating Scams".
  4. ^ Hickey, Shane (14 August 2015). "Scammers target lonely hearts on dating sites". TheGuardian.com.
  5. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference :2 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).