How can we protect ourselves and loved ones from romance scams?

Celebrate Valentine's Day by sharing these resources from the Federal Trade Commission on how to prevent and take action on fraud.

In Civics This Week: FTC reports $547 million sent to romance scammers in 2021

What do Facebook, dating apps, and cryptocurrency all have in common?

They’re all avenues that can result in romance scams. With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it’s a good time to educate yourself on this important topic.¹

You might be inclined to stop reading if you’re happily partnered off, not looking for love, or confident in your ability to protect yourself online. Not so fast! Romance scams can happen to anyone, even if you think you’d never fall for them. If you don’t worry for yourself, it is still very likely that you know someone who is vulnerable to this type of fraud and may need your help someday.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) blog published a post this week investigating significant increases in romance scams, the fraud category that has seen the highest losses in the past five years. Just in 2021, $547 million in losses was reported to the FTC. In the past five years, total losses reached $1.3 million. Many of these scams occur on dating platforms, but ⅓ of the reports said that the fraud was initiated on Facebook or Instagram. The most popular method of paying scammers was with gift cards.²

Romance scams in particular can be very convincing. Scammers often use real photos of other individuals to create fake identities for themselves on dating apps and other social platforms, which they use to reach out to individuals that they determine are a good target. This could be in the form of requesting money or even offering to pay you money (for the latter, the blog post gave the example of someone’s “sweetheart” who sends them a fake check and requests a portion of it be sent back to them or to someone else).

The scams are not necessarily evident from the first conversation, even from the first few conversations. Many romance scams can take weeks, months, or even years, to fully unfold, and the emotional manipulation they involve can trigger shame that may prevent victims from reporting the crime to the government, authorities, or friends and family. This 2021 AARP article includes a story about a devastating romance fraud that resulted in one woman, recently widowed, sending $300,000 over several months to a scammer pretending to be in a long-distance relationship with her. The article also delves into the financial and psychological elements that make romance scams so traumatic, explaining why many victims suffer in silence and encounter difficult barriers to recovery. 

The possibility of being scammed is terrifying, but there are resources you can use to protect yourself and your loved ones. First, let’s take a look at what resources the FTC provides to support consumers and victims of frauds and scams.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is a federal agency that works to protect consumers from illegitimate business activities and promote competition. The agency was established in 1914 by the Wilson administration.

In regard to scamming, the FTC offers several online resources that address preventative and reactionary measures to scamming. Here are some central ones:

• https://www.consumer.ftc.gov educates you on avoiding different types of scams. This includes alerts on romance scams as well as resources pages for unprecedented events that serve as new sources of fraudulence. See the page on COVID-19 related scams here. 

• You can register for the National Do Not Call Registry here.

• If you have been scammed, you need to take action immediately to protect your finances and personal data. You can follow these directions from the FTC here.

• https://reportfraud.ftc.gov helps you report if you or someone you know has experienced fraud to the FTC. This is the resource that we are going to focus on today. 

Reporting Fraud to the FTC 

If you or someone you know is scammed, reporting it to the FTC can help the agency build cases against scammers, pursue investigations, and educate the public to try and protect anyone else from falling victim to the same scheme. While the FTC cannot take individual cases to help you get your money back, you may be eligible for your money back if the agency gathers enough data to make a case against an illegitimate business (see a list of FTC cases that resulted in refunds here).³

To start a report, click the dark blue “report now” button on the homepage.⁴

From there, you will be prompted to provide information about your experience. Selecting certain answers may prompt a follow-up question. Here, I’ve demonstrated using the example of a romance scam.

You will then be asked to fill out several details about the scam along with your personal information. It is important to know that you do not have to reveal more information than you are comfortable with. You can submit reports anonymously. Note at the top of the about page that you can also select that you are filling out the report for someone else. Depending on the nature of your report, you may be directed to further resources after you submit it.

When you’re done filling out the report, you can submit it. Your data will be logged in the FTC Consumer Sentinel database, to which the agency’s law enforcement partners will have access for investigating fraud schemes. The data will also contribute to FTC data visualizations and trends that can help you understand the kind of scams that you, your loved ones, and your communities are most vulnerable to.

This video provides an introduction to navigating FTC consumer promotion data. Under this video on the “Explore Data'' page, you can also check out lists of interactive infographics.

Let’s look at the “State and Metro Area Maps” section.

Under the section for fraud infographics, you can explore useful data for your area. For example, here are the results I got when I selected Indiana on the map and used the dropdown bars on the top right to choose data across all four quarters in 2021.

According to this infographic, Indiana reported $3,966.9 million in total losses in 2021, nearly 800,000 of which were imposter scams.

In Conclusion

Anyone can become vulnerable to a scam under the right combination of circumstances. These FTC resources can help you approach seemingly innocent scenarios with a critical eye.

Did you discover any information about scams or fraud trends in the resources provided today that surprised you? Let me know in the comments!

See you next week.

All screenshots were taken on 2/12/22.

1. Please note that romance scams can take place at any time of year.

2. https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/data-spotlight/2022/02/reports-romance-scams-hit-record-highs-2021#_edn3.

3. Please note that this system is used to report illegitimate business practices such as frauds and scams that somehow cheat you out of money. Identity theft is another common phrase tossed around in these discussions, which is also a very serious occurrence - this is when someone assumes your identity without your permission and may use your personal information to commit fraud or scams. If you experience identity theft, you can report it here: https://www.identitytheft.gov.

4. Reports can also be filed by calling FTC's Consumer Response Center at 877-382-4357.