Romance Scams are Influencing A Spike in Dating cams

May 25, 2022

ExcerptThis new generation of Netflix TV shows is helpful to raise awareness about a growing crime type and the significance of digital technologies in new sorts of fraud.

Romance Scam

A new era of romance fraud has arrived. TV shows have recently taken over our screens, exposing us to yet more scandals in which victims lose large sums of money to con artists, much to the surprise of the audience. 

But, as society’s new favorite true crime fascination produces more content for people to binge-watch and more people say they’d never be taken in by such schemes, are we in danger of overlooking exactly how complicated they are? Documentaries on Netflix like The Tinder Swindler, Bad Vegan, and The Puppet Master show middle- and successful upper-class women being duped into lending significant sums to fraudsters, never to be recovered, through complicated schemes combining opulent lifestyles and sophisticated phony identities.

These Documentaries May Be Based on Real Life But People Should Not Be Getting Inspired

Online Dating

While these documentaries depict real-life situations, they are by no means exhaustive or typical of all romantic frauds that affect hundreds of thousands of people around the world. 

Viewers may easily conclude that this is something that only wealthy ladies with large bank accounts experience, a common criticism leveled at fans of The Tinder Swindler and, more lately, Bad Vegan. Despite the fact that the amounts involved appear to be out of reach for the typical individual, criminal records reveal that romance fraudsters target persons of various ages, genders, social classes, and single and married statuses. As described in our study paper published in the Journal of Financial Crime, its data clearly reveals that the characteristics of victims are truly diversified, with people of all ages and genders reporting an increase in fraud during the Covid-19 outbreak.

Romance Fraud Occurs When a Person Believes They are in a Romantic Connection with Someone

In layman’s terms, romance fraud occurs when a person believes they are in a romantic connection with someone who deceives them for financial advantage. It is frequently referred to as “relationship fraud” or “dating fraud” in official and governmental documents. 

When someone is looking for a mate (typically through a dating app, website, or social media), they are often provided with an ideal profile of a physically appealing person. The individual in most bogus male profiles has a high-paying job. The person in many female profiles has insecure or low-paying work. After the victim has been befriended, the grooming process begins, in which the fraudster earns the victim’s trust over the course of weeks, if not months.

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They Will Always Be Demanding One Thing or The Other

The fraudster makes the first demands for money, which are usually small amounts and may occur over a long period of time. 

In other circumstances, the offender may fabricate a sexual relationship by requesting the victim to strip naked in front of a camera or transmit nude photos, which will then be used to blackmail the victim into paying large ransoms. This entire process, also known as Monica T. Whitty’s “Scammer Persuasive Technique Model,” takes place entirely online and does not often entail the complicated narratives seen in Netflix documentaries. Victims from all demographic categories are susceptible, and they do so frequently. In certain circumstances, the perpetrator may try to persuade the victim that he or she was truly in love, imitate a new identity to target the same person, or even impersonate a law enforcement agency and ask for money to fund the investigation.

Netflix TV Shows are Helpful to Raise Awareness, But There’s a Very Thin Line Between Awareness & Influence

Netflix Online Dating

This new generation of Netflix TV shows is helpful to raise awareness about a growing crime type and the significance of digital technologies in new sorts of fraud, but they don’t reflect the wide range of romance fraud cases and, more significantly, the wide range of victims who fall  victim to it. 

The UK fraud and cybercrime reporting center, Action Fraud, is in charge of dealing with this type of fraud and keeping track of vast amounts of data. Its data clearly demonstrates that victims have a wide range of characteristics, with people of all ages and genders reporting a surge in fraud during the Covid-19 outbreak. The police registered 2,695 cases of romantic fraud in 2015, 6,758 cases in 2020, and 8,989 cases in 2021. And these figures are likely underestimated, as the Office for National Statistics estimates that only about 15% of scams are ever reported to the authorities.

According to police-recorded crime data, there is no single profile of a victim of romantic fraud, ranging from youth to those in their nineties and all genders. Although females aged 50 to 59 are the population group most frequently victimized in terms of romance fraud, they only accounted for 11.7 percent of all victims in 2021, demonstrating that individuals from all demographic categories are equally highly victimized. Financial losses also differ significantly from victim to victim, ranging from those who suffered no serious economic impact to those who lost tens of thousands of pounds. While some sufferers appear to be lonely due to a lack of strong social relationships, many others do not.

The full image of how these frauds normally play out is skewed by Netflix docuseries showing very sophisticated situations that exclusively target affluent upper-class women. Remember this when the next huge smash romantic scam show airs: we’re all more vulnerable to online fraud than we realize. 

Key Takeaways!

More series on con artists are on the way; Hollywood appears to think our taste is unquenchable. The Dropout, a Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Theranos fraudster Elizabeth Holmes that aired earlier this month, is the most recent. 

Delvey spent almost four years in prison and is now in United States immigration custody for overstaying her visa. Holmes was convicted of criminal fraud in January and is awaiting punishment. But Leviev is free, and he wants to tell his side of the tale. He was even on Tinder until The Tinder Swindler came out, and the dating service ultimately threw him off. Someone in Hollywood will undoubtedly be interested in hearing it. Perhaps we will as well.

You can visit ezchargeback to know and learn how to protect yourself from dating scams

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