Losses To Romance Scams Reached a Record $304 Million in 2020 (zdnet.com) 95
The current COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent stay-at-home and social distancing directives might have played a major role in romance scams losses reaching record levels in 2020, the US Federal Trade Commission said in a report last week. From a report: Total losses were estimated at a record $304 million, up about 50% from 2019, with the average loss last year being estimated at $2,500 per individual. "From 2016 to 2020, reported total dollar losses increased more than fourfold, and the number of reports nearly tripled," the agency said. The FTC believes that the 50% spike in extra losses recorded in 2020 can be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has limited people's ability to meet in person and has forced more users towards using online long-distance and impersonal communications, such as dating apps. In most cases, the ruse of these scams is that the targets of a romance scam have to send money back to the crooks.
Re:Scams = Buyers remorse with "sugar babies" (Score:4)
It's a bit more than that (Score:2)
Everyone wants to be liked, and wanted. It's an easy scam path because people are predisposed to think that they are interesting to others.
I know so many people who cannot ignore a ringing phone, even if they know it's not from someone they know... weird.
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So it's just 10k people? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: So it's just 10k people? (Score:4, Informative)
$304m / $2500 is about 120k people
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Looking at this number, the people are not reporting the smaller scams. The classic scam in this area is "pay me the tickets and the visa fee". This is 2-4K at a time and there is LOTS of those being done. That number is too low to bother dealing with the police. People who have been fleeced just write it off.
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Aren't you several times more likely to die in a car crash?
Far more are maimed than die.
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where to get advice ? (Score:1)
Perhaps our ex-presidunce could point us to some good deals in Russian brides!
But really this is a sad situation. Kind of puts the limp in your hopes for valentine romance. I looked at the 'personals' on Craigslist and none of the interesting options of the past could be found.
Re:where to get advice ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ukraine: GDP per head: 3,659.03, Youth Unemployment: 20% after a peak of 25% two years back (which is all in the West now - it is not natural reduction, it is people fleeing).
Moldova: GDP per head: 4,503.52, Youth Unemployment: 12.5% (official, real is > 20%). Similar to above - their age distribution in country is such that there is very little "youth" left.
Belarus: GDP per head: 6,663, Youth Unemployment: 10%
Russia: GDP per head: 11.582, Youth Unemployment: 15% (official, real is interestingly enough likely to be lower - they still have huge grey economy).
Nothing new here. In the heyday of Slashdot 17 years ago the Ukrainians were ADVERTISING THEM ON SLASHDOT as "Russian Brides" (you can check - Anastasia dating agency is Ukraine). Additionally, the amount of spanners in the works in getting a visa make "getting goods through customs" a bit difficult. The number of applications has now fallen down to such low levels that USA has closed the traditional "bride visa consular services" offices this year (Ekaterinburg, Siberia and the Far East). So if you are ordering "Russian Brides" and especially "ex-presidente rated extra silicon DD size" ones, the price is likely to be a bit steep nowadays - their living standard is higher than in some Eu countries. You are most likely to be getting a cheaper clone from an impoverished ex-USSR state.
In any case - the article is about scams. The scams are generally run from countries where getting a visa to US and Europe is easier and requires just a fee and a minimal background check. Lat Am, Africa, Asia, etc.
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Current "import a wife" thing is indeed Ukraine/Moldova/Belarus for white women, but there's now a significant competition from South Asians for men with a case of yellow fever. Thai are the classic mail order brides, but Philippines, Vietnam and several others are catching up fast.
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I stand corrected.
It's sad that people fall for this stuff (Score:5, Funny)
I thank God every day that I have found the real thing in Natalia.
Oh, Natalia... I only need to send you eight more of the $2000 temporary loans (which I know you're going to pay back as soon as you can), and pretty soon we'll have paid for your sick grandmother's surgery, bribe the warden to get your political prisoner father released from jail, and also have the airfare saved up so we can finally be together!
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Here's a creepy fact. You can get a young wife for as cheap as $500. You just have to know the right people. Oh and keep her passport well hidden. I'm not saying you should, I'm merely pointing out it's way cheaper. Those dating sites and apps will suck your bank account dry with no guarantee of success. The cheap alternative is 100% success rate.
Yes, I'm trying to make a joke but it's actually true. Just took a guess of the price.
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$500 seems really low.
That person trapped without a passport is a capital asset (to the type of terrible that would sell them).
$500 would be nothing compared to what could be made otherwise. Sure there's ongoing risk by keeping them around, but there's also pretty huge upfront risk for to get merely $500.
Loose math: cheap cleaning service charges $200 for 2 people 4 hours. 3 cleaning jobs/day. That's $300/person/day, take out the cost of a cot and rice and beans (cheapest protein and calories I can think of
Truth be told, there are entire ... (Score:2)
... continents where "a woman" is less "worth" than a very used car. Rural india has 16-year olds getting hung for "seducing" their uncles or sulfuric acid dumped over them by some whiny asshole who couldn't score or some evil stepmom who needs a slave maid for the rest of her life and would rather have her stepdaughter in perpetual pain and uglier than her for that to happen.
If you have your wits about you and are a half-decent useful western man, you can go to those places, save an entire village and/our
Re: Truth be told, there are entire ... (Score:1)
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Note, for the record, that "hang" as in "to hang by the neck till dead" uses "hanged", not "hung" for its past tense....
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Is it really right to be pedantic over grammar when we're talking about women being maimed and murdered by their own families?
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Why not? We're not going to go to war over this.
Or did I miss where someone advocated conquering India so we could fix this problem (semi-)legally? If, in fact, there is a call to go to war over this, then, trust me, I won't be pedantic about grammar (except for the grammar in the declaration of war) on the subject again....
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I'm afraid that ou will be arrested, possibly shot, and definitely robbed.
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Kinda cool that you figured out how to fly to India, save a village, and live your life out for $500
I like to travel and bargain hunt for flights, but I can't seem to do it.
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Here's a creepy fact. You can get a young wife for as cheap as $500. You just have to know the right people. Oh and keep her passport well hidden. I'm not saying you should, I'm merely pointing out it's way cheaper. Those dating sites and apps will suck your bank account dry with no guarantee of success. The cheap alternative is 100% success rate.
Yes, I'm trying to make a joke but it's actually true. Just took a guess of the price.
WTF!?!? I was charged nearly 4 times this much. Now I feel like I was taken advantage of.
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Maybe I can lend him money that he can send to her.
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That's nothing, there is a Nigerian Princess who is interested in me!
How does this compare to other scams (Score:2)
This is why other types of scams also thrive so much. Get rich quickly and effortlessly, weight loss, etc
Remember, if it's too good to be true...
$304 mil? That’s nothing! (Score:2)
Just wait until the current Bitcoin bubble finally pops. Red ink is gonna flow like a river of blood, and people are gonna lose their shit over losing their shit.
You know that scene at the end of Real Genius? That’s how much popcorn I’m gonna need when the drama starts.
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If I were as confident. as you about the demise of Bitcoin, I would be right now preparing to make a lot of money when it drops.
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If I were as confident. as you about the demise of Bitcoin, I would be right now preparing to make a lot of money when it drops.
Indeed. "If you want to solve a problem, add to it until somebody else solves it." - Too Much Coffee Man
Time is time (Score:2)
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Making money on Bitcoin's next crash requires accurately predicting when it will happen. I can't do that any more than I could tell you when Florida is going to have its next major hurricane. Just because I can't predict when it will happen, doesn't mean it's not going to happen..
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You're probably wrong. Bitcoin is here to stay. It has value.
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Who said anything about it going away completely? I'm referring to the 80%ish losses in value it is prone to experience, when a bubble finally pops. People who bought in at the wrong time aren't going to be happy campers.
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If you don't think it will go away completely, then you admit it has value. How are you calculating the correct value, and recognizing this as a bubble (instead of rather more people moving into the market and buying Bitcoin).
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How? By shorting it?
That's worked out nicely recently, hasn't it?
I'd love to see the demographics (Score:1)
I'd bet 80% of the victims are ultra-conservative old men trying to get teenage mail order brides.
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I wonder why they have so much trouble. You don't need to be technically savvy to find such sites. Unfortunately.
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Yup. Men with a cynical attitude towards sex and money probably aren't going to fall for romance scams, which rely on getting the victim to fall in love with the scammer. Romance scams target women impressively much, considering how small share women make up of people dating online (it still comes out to around 50-50, afaik).
Re: I'd love to see the demographics (Score:2)
Men with cynical attitudes about romance and money are usually pretty lonely, because they tend to scare away women in general. They usually end up biting one way or another, mostly due to their self imposed loneliness . If you starve yourself long enough, even dirt starts to look good to eat, no matter how rational you are.
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Heartfelt apologies to you and your "bride".
Snicker
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A good chunk of these scams are lonely women in late 30s to late 50s. People who are generally passed on the dating market, but tend to be much more agreeable than men on average. And there's a lot of such women today with significant amounts of wealth, as "be a career woman" was a rallying cry for gen x and millenial women. Which results in a lot of women passing their fertile age and ending up wealthy, alone and utterly unmarriable.
As compared to most men in similar situation, who tend to be far less weal
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The other piece is, if you're gullible enough, you don't have to actually have money to be a useful tool. https://www.wired.com/2015/10/... [wired.com] was a long-form article on one female victim. She never had money, and certainly didn't have any for long after getting tied in to the Nigerian/Ghanaian scams. But, the scammers still found her useful as a conduit for money from other scams (other romance scams, Craigslist scams, advance-fee frauds, etc). People who wouldn't send money to Nigeria, but would to Kentu
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Some people are just outliers in this regard, and as usual men are going to have far more outliers from median than women as a population group. I hope it didn't totally ruin his life.
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That was a rallying cry for generation before that. Today that is far less relevant as prenuptial agreements are a cultural norm due to such rules, and as marriage rates are plummeting.
Essentially people are adapting to the novel rules of "woman can just grab the money from the man".
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I thought that was pretty much the definition of religion: a scam to persuade parents they can buy their way into heaven by letting filthy old men molest their children.
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It would be like if Gates, Zuckerberg or Trump all claimed god chose them. WHat kind of idiot would believe that ?
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Quite a lot of idiots, evidently. There never seems to be a shortage of people willing to line up for the opportunity to give their money to grifters.
No Duh! (Score:4, Interesting)
I manage endpoint security where I work for all the deployed laptops. It blows my mind the number of our highly paid engineers who use company issued work laptops on mail order bride website. I've DNS blocked at least 15 of them over the year since the pandemic started.
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So which websites have they been using? Can you send me the full list?
Any asian?
Just asking out of curiosity.
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It blows my mind in general what people do on a work computer that they don't own or control. Especially people that really should know better.
Losses to ex-wives are even worse (Score:5, Funny)
One bald guy even lost $38billion in a divorce settlement last year.
And she started giving it all away to charity.
So what are we talking about?
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Was he bald before the divorce, or did he loose his hair afterwards?
No tears (Score:5, Interesting)
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk]
This woman gave ten thousand pounds to a man she never met because she's was thirsty for dick. No other reason.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
This woman gave FORTY thousand pounds because "His voice was so lovely, so soft". That's not even the worst part of it, she was a married woman. How much you betting she would balk at the idea of spending £100 on her husband's birthday present? I don't know about you guys but if I found my wife sending huge piles of money to a complete stranger while selling jewelry and maxing out cards I would think she was part of a criminal ring.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-... [bbc.co.uk]
Here's one putting on a scowly lemon-biting face on for the BBC after losing SIXTY thousand pounds to her own stupidity, this is more than two years of my pay without bills and taxes. This cunt in particular caused her PARENTS to lose their home falling for this obvious scam. Despite her doing all this through her own free will she refuses to look in the mirror at the one who allowed it to happen.
Despite it being reported regularly on one of the biggest news sites in the UK, it [bbc.co.uk] keeps [bbc.co.uk] fucking [bbc.co.uk] happening [bbc.co.uk] on [bbc.co.uk] a [bbc.co.uk] regular [bbc.co.uk] basis [bbc.co.uk] because people are absolute idiots.
Why should I show them any sympathy?
Re:No tears (Score:5, Interesting)
As much as I too struggle to show sympathy, writing some of these scams off as just being stupid is quite an egregious case of victim blaming. Sure the married woman can go get fucked (or maybe she can't which could be the problem), but the reality is loneliness is a considerable drain on mental health and people who are getting scammed attempting to get out of this rut really shouldn't be blamed.
The overwhelming majority of idiots falling for these scams are desperate and vulnerable. Maybe if you (and I) understood how they ended up in their situation we may find some sympathy for them. These scams are far more sophisticated than some stupid spam email from a Nigerian prince.
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As much as I too struggle to show sympathy, writing some of these scams off as just being stupid is quite an egregious case of victim blaming. Sure the married woman can go get fucked (or maybe she can't which could be the problem), but the reality is loneliness is a considerable drain on mental health and people who are getting scammed attempting to get out of this rut really shouldn't be blamed.
Or, in many cases where they have caused irreparable harm to others, maybe they should (like married people). If you fail to call out stupidity and force people to become smarter people, it will ultimately consume society. YOU will be shamed for condemning Stupid, and people will start listening more to Stupid. Sadly, we're already seeing that idiocy a bit.
The overwhelming majority of idiots falling for these scams are desperate and vulnerable. Maybe if you (and I) understood how they ended up in their situation we may find some sympathy for them. These scams are far more sophisticated than some stupid spam email from a Nigerian prince.
Promises, promises the world over. Doesn't matter how elaborate they are (or not), it's all empty promises of the same thing; companionship. The Nig
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Not directly related to scams, but this is definitely true of women on Ashley Madison. I created an account there for trolling purposes, but when you get talking to the sad women there, you just end up feeling sorry for them. The wannabe sugar babies are fun to troll, though. (Yeah, they got my e-mail address in the hack and threatened to tell my wife about my account. Joke's on them, my wife already knew. I don't
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As much as I too struggle to show sympathy, writing some of these scams off as just being stupid is quite an egregious case of victim blaming.
Stop it, you fool. There are no victims here. If you think there was some kind of safe zone in love, where you can be yourself, then you don't know what love is. There is no right or wrong, no political or logical correctness in love. Everything is allowed or you just don't truly love someone. A scam may even be the beginning of a true love story, but here you are, wanting to define the "terms of engagement" and declare people as victims. Frankly, I'd hate to be "loved" by you. I doubt you're even in a rela
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Why should I show them any sympathy?
Because they didn't just make some stupid life choices. Their mistakes were provoked. They were tricked. Confidence tricksters look for weakness and exploit it. Unless you have a strictly Darwinian world view, people who exploit weakness in others should enrage you and you should have sympathy for the victims.
Re:No tears (Score:5, Informative)
Here's some sympathy for you.
My brother suffered some brain damage due to complications during his birth. This resulted in slower learning in most things. He graduated high school in the special education program, and is able to work minimum wage jobs, but is barely self sufficient. He falls for all sort of things on the Internet like anti-vax craziness. He gets almond milk because he thinks it's better for him, and brushes his teeth with something called "dirt" that someone must have told him was better for him. And for the last several years has been the victim of these types of romance scams.
He still lives at home, so my parents deal with it a lot more than me. They have eventually resorted to taking any his credit cards and requiring him to pay cash for everything. Before this started, he was relatively responsible, with the exception of buying questionable expensive "health" food.
The scammers know how to coach him through sending money overseas, buying gift cards and sending them the numbers, opening new credit cards, etc. They don't really care that he doesn't have much money himself, or that he doesn't have the mental capacity to realize at the time that it's a scam again. He does usually figure it out after the fact, but the scammers are good at their job of being con men (or women, though I doubt they really are actually women, they just have sexy pictures of women they found on the Internet). They also seem to use cult like tactics, convincing their victims that the people in their lives in real life are against them. This makes it difficult to get the victims to stop being victims. It seems similar to an addiction.
In addition, my brother doesn't have a lot of romantic prospects in real life. To a starving man, anything can look like food, and people with limited or no potential romantic avenues can get desperate.
Without this personal experience, I agree it could be hard to sympathize with the victims. But some of them are mentally vulnerable and unable to repel the assaults. It's the same reason you hear about scammers preying on the elderly, because as they age many people decline mentally, at least enough to fall victim to the scams.
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This woman gave ten thousand pounds to a man she never met because she's was thirsty for dick. No other reason.
She is 67 and was promised marriage and life in a bungalow. Doesn't sound sexually motivated to me.
I see you chose women to use as examples, and called one a cunt. You see to have some anger towards women in general, but I won't speculate on the nature of it.
Re:No tears (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because the majority of victims are women [bbc.co.uk], and two of the articles I linked refer to men. I picked them from the related news, so blame the BBC for not reporting on men in a proportionate manner. If you do not count someone who literally caused her parents to lose their home over a scam as a "cunt" then I don't know what to tell you.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/bus... [bbc.co.uk] This woman gave ten thousand pounds to a man she never met because she's was thirsty for dick. No other reason.
Why did you characterize her story this way? Nowhere in the article does it say she did it purely for physical reasons. In fact, just like most of these scams, the reason she did it was the hope of an actual romance - you know, ROMANCE SCAMS.
Are you that much of a woman-hating incel loser cunt that you can't tell the difference between a woman being taken advantage of by a ROMANCE scam, and one that was just "thirsty for dick. No other reason"?
And look at that woman's photo (and her freaking name), it
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Old = Old enough to know better.
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When a man falls for it it's called "Thank you for your donation".
How ? (Score:2)
I find this news... (Score:2)
Romance is by definition a scam (Score:2)
That is all.
Re: Romance is by definition a scam (Score:1)
How many members of Congress were scammed? (Score:2)
The scams are sometimes quite sophisticated (Score:1)
I discovered an interesting scam a few weeks ago.
My romance from a dating-site advertised a broker where you could make a profit by hedging on the gold price. I could test the success by using a demo account with MT4.
The scam came to light when she asked me to give my personal data to her so her friend could open a broker account for me. Something I would never do. Also the broker-website I was asked as alternative to register was scam.
What amazed me was the amount of time my romance spent before trying to
Same old story (Score:1)
Once again, we're all in the wrong line of work.