Are you dating or talking online to someone who says they are a military member? Have they asked you for funds or documents? Officials and websites like Military. Victims of these online military scams often think they are doing a good deed by helping a military member. Instead, they have given their money to a scammer, sometimes losing thousands of dollars, with very low possibility of recovery. The U. Unfortunately, the people committing these scams are often overseas — using untraceable email addresses, routing accounts through numerous locations around the world and utilizing pay-per-hour Internet cyber cafes. See examples of fake documents used by scammers.
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A growing epidemic in the world today is the online romance scam. Generally, a victim is contacted by someone online through various social media or a legitimate dating website. The victim and the scammer create an online relationship. While the victim may become suspicious over time, the scammer lures them in with pictures, hardships, promises, excitement, and claims of love.
This kind of scam is prevalent enough that the United States Army official site Imagine if you randomly discovered an online dating profile of someone you.
Be on the lookout for some of these operations that have fooled more than one person into giving money, personal information, and worse. Below in the following section you will find descriptions of scams that have been used on military members and their families in the past. But no matter what kind of con artist you encounter, there are some similar things you should watch out for that can alert you to a scam.
Pay close attention anytime someone you do not know does any of the following online or in person:. The Spanish Prisoner scam is a very old confidence trick that has been updated for the 21 st Century. The old-school version of this con trick was done face-to-face in many cases, but today the scam is run by people using social media. Then, the scammer contacts these people who assume their Facebook or Twitter friend simply opened up a new account.
And that is because once you DO think about it, you may start to realize that there is something not quite right about the entire situation. Always ask the scammer for a contact phone number so that you can call back in a few minutes with payment information. Do not call this phone number if it is unfamiliar to you; contact your friends on social media who have reached out to you in this way on their ORIGINAL ACCOUNTS or via a different means of communication which is the safest way in circumstances like these that is not linked to the social media account.
Always report these incidents to the social media platform and to your friends list. The key to not getting scammed in this instance is not to give any money or data to the person reaching out to you UNLESS you have positively identified that the need actually exists it likely does not or that a third party that is personally known to you can verify the information you have been given. This kind of scam is prevalent enough that the United States Army official site issues a warning to military members, family, and friends.
Soldier in cases where there are requests for money involved.
Top Scams That Hurt Military Families
Since the large adoption of the internet, the online dating industry moved to set a new standard in the way we find our soulmates. And it worked. According to a study from the University of Chicago, compared to marriages between couples who meet in real life, marriages between couples whose relationships are formed through an online dating site are more likely to last. Unfortunately, with the rise of online dating services came the birth of romance scams.
Romance scams target wealthy women, sometimes widows, who are looking for a new relationship and men who are looking for extra-marital relationships.
In many cases, military scams drag on for months or even years before victims finally get suspicious. Intimate Activity Scams. Here, victims are contacted by.
On Facebook and Instagram, there are lottery scams , celebrity impostors and even fake Mark Zuckerbergs. There is also a scheme where scammers pose as American service members to cheat vulnerable women out of their savings. To find victims, they search Facebook groups for targets — often single women and widows — and then message hundreds, hoping to hook a few. Once they have a potential mark, the scammers shift the conversations with their victims to Google Hangouts or WhatsApp, messaging services owned by Google and Facebook, in case Facebook deletes their accounts.
For months or weeks, they try to seduce the women with sweet talk and promises of a future together. Eventually, they ask for money. When victims send funds, they often do so via wire transfers or iTunes and Amazon gift cards, which the scammers sell at a discount on the black market. Internet scammers arrived with the dial-up modem years ago, conning people in chat rooms and email inboxes. Now Facebook and Instagram provide fraudsters with greater reach and resources, enabling them to more convincingly impersonate others and more precisely target victims.
Officials from the United States military and the F. When The Times followed the trail of one scam, it led to Nigeria, where six men said in interviews that they swindled Westerners over the internet because it paid far more than honest work, which they said was hard to find.
5 Warning Signs that Your Online Romance is Really a Scam
Military combat isn’t the only battle service members are fighting. Those were the findings of a recent data analysis by Comparitech. The consumer technology website analyzed scam data through the Federal Trade Commission and the Better Business Bureau.
Romance scams, where fraudsters target deployed military personnel or money, are the most commonly reported complaints, according to the U.S. Army. according to data from the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.
Each week, I get letters by email, on my website, by Twitter and on Facebook from women who are sending money to Africa and Afghanistan to help service members come home. This is a scam!! These are not men who are in the United States military. They are scam artists preying on desperate women. I met a sergeant in the Army on Facebook from the Zoosk dating site. We have been texting since May.
How to spot online romance scams
Your military friend or family member serves our country with integrity and honor. Unfortunately, there are scammers out there who try to take advantage of that service to cheat them and you. You can help protect your service member against military scams by learning the warning signs of schemes that target those in the military community. Unfortunately, these scams prey on fears about the coronavirus disease, trying to trick service members and family members into revealing sensitive information or donating money to a fraudulent cause.
Bogus emails that look legitimate can offer fake alerts or information about the outbreak, fake workplace policy updates, or fake medical advice. By clicking on links in these emails, you could download malware or have your identity stolen.
U.S. Army CID Warns Against Romance Scams (PDF /2 pages). If you believe that you have been the victim of Internet fraud, please follow the advice presented.
CNN Online romance scams are growing at a dizzying pace, raking in millions of dollars from unsuspecting victims across the United States. All the tips discussed here came from the Federal Trade Commission’s website, which monitors reports of fraud in the US. For more on romance scams and how to report them, click here. Chat with us in Facebook Messenger. Find out what’s happening in the world as it unfolds. More Videos
Scammers take advantage of people looking for romantic partners, often via dating websites, apps or social media by pretending to be prospective companions. They play on emotional triggers to get you to provide money, gifts or personal details. How this scam works Warning signs Protect yourself Have you been scammed? More information. Dating and romance scams often take place through online dating websites, but scammers may also use social media or email to make contact.
Romance scammers are clever, well organised and have a number of tried Partners and funders · Republishing guidelines · Contact us · Donate becoming a drug mule from a fraudulent online relationship. Could the handsome military officer’s picture actually come from a stock image website?
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. At years-old, Exposto had fallen for a widowed special forces soldier doing his bit for his country. They have never met, which was easily explained — he was deployed in Afghanistan.
Exposto recently walked free after facing a death sentence in Malaysia for attempting to smuggle a kilogram of ice five years ago. Since she was caught, she has maintained she was a victim of a romance scam. Read more: From catfish to romance fraud, how to avoid getting caught in any online scam. Like Exposto, victims of romance scams tend to be between 45 to years-old, impulsive, respond to elaborate stories and are well-educated.
Clover Medical
The U. Armed Forces and they have been asked to send this service member money. In many cases, the money has already been sent and the inquirer is seeking to verify if this is standard practice in the U. Armed Forces. Unfortunately, in every situation presented to the DAO thus far, it has turned out to be an internet fraud.
It is recommended that you read both of these documents:.
4-signs-online-romance-scamjpg more than 30 victims in romance fraud schemes using fake online profiles of U.S. military personnel.
While many of us are trained to see the red flags for serial killers, catfishes and ghosts in that order , these are not the only villains lurking online for would-be matches. Scam artists are thinking of ways to woo you into sending them thousands—or millions of dollars. This is becoming such a problem in the U. In fact, romance scams continue to rise every year as more victims report financial losses.
Romance scams rely on meeting people online and wooing them with lofty promises and by saying all the right things. They prey on the basic human need for romantic connections. For this reason, romance scams can be some of the most difficult scams to rebound from. Romance scams are, arguably, the worst scam that a victim can endure.
Not only do victims endure financial losses, but they are often left heartbroken and unsure of themselves. The first step in a romance scam is a scammer creating a fake identity through social media profiles. Often, they find their victims through social media or dating apps and websites. They get to know their victims personally through private messaging or texting.
To further their mission, the scammer will begin expressing a closeness they feel to their victim. Eventually, those feelings will turn into declarations of love.
How romance scammers break your heart – and your bank account
If you thought online dating websites are on the rise, than you would be right. However, not everyone who creates a profile on these sites has honorable intentions. Most dating scams start innocently enough. Scammers contact victims via social media sites or through email, claiming common interests or a distant, mutual connection—such as an introduction at a wedding or other large gathering. Other scam artists make their fake profiles look as appealing as possible and wait from victims to reach out and begin the conversation.
U.S. military officials have warned those involved in online dating to proceed with caution when corresponding with someone claiming to be a U.S. military.
AARP Rewards is here to make your next steps easy, rewarding and fun! Learn more. Hundreds of times a day, women here and overseas complain about being scammed by con artists posing as U. Army Criminal Investigation Command. Grey has made it a personal crusade to warn the public about the online scams that are using men in uniform as bait to reel in women who hand over cash in the name of love.
Most of the victims are women in the U. The 2,person command Grey serves is in Quantico, Va. Thus it lacks jurisdiction to probe the barrage of incoming calls, since the service personnel are not victimized beyond having their names and photos misappropriated. Still, what Grey likens to a game of whack-a-mole has become a priority for him as he battles the problem through public education and media outreach.
It will end not in. As an infantryman who later became a combat correspondent and served in the first Gulf War, Grey knows better. Grey has been battling military-romance scams for about six years. Sometimes those who call the command are relatives alarmed by an online entanglement involving their mother or sister.
