Online Dating Scams Money Laundering
“Life was stable, I was looking to date and a friend suggested a dating website,” says Melinda, 44. “Pretty quickly I was flooded with responses. I had no experience with online dating — and I will never do it again.” One man — Charles — captured Melinda’s interest. He said he was a 48-year-old vet from Sydney and for the next six weeks they emailed and began chatting on the telephone. “We were supposed to meet up but Charles was suddenly offered a contract in Dubai,” she says.
“It was good money and he said we’d catch up when he got back. “We talked a lot over the next few weeks and when his number came up on my phone it was the international code for Dubai because I checked. He’d send me love poems, tell me he couldn’t wait to see me and I thought we’d start a life together.” A few weeks after Charles supposedly arrived in Dubai, the first of a string of mishaps occurred — and he asked Melinda for financial help.
He said he had to pay a customs bill in Dubai but couldn’t access his bank in Australia. “He kept ringing me and telling me he’d be locked up if he didn’t pay the money. I was worried so I sent him $700 via Western Union. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission deputy chair Delia Rickard. Picture: Supplied Source:Supplied “There were moments when I wondered if he was a scammer but you live in hope and the hope takes over. “Towards the end of those two years I nearly lost my house. And then one morning I got 20 calls from Charles asking for more money and that was the point when I woke up.
Feb 14, 2017. Online dating scam victim issues warning in police awareness video. Media captionHampshire Constabulary romance scam warning video tells 'Jenny's' story. A woman who was convicted of money laundering, after falling for an online romance fraud, has warned about the dangers of such scams. 4 days ago - online dating scams money laundering How to Get Your Ex Girlfriend Back, online dating scams money laundering Make her your girlfriend. (-- Safety 👍 --). Older people are especially vulnerable to online dating scams yet in Australia there is little support for victims, reports Julia May.
“After that I got a series of abusive phone calls from him. I told him I wanted to see who he really was and we Skyped, and I found out ‘Charles’ was a 33-year-old Nigerian man who said he and his friends did this kind of thing for a joke. “The hardest part was knowing I’d been deceived.
“I went through depression, wondering what I could have been thinking. But these creeps and predators see vulnerability. I’m very wary of any man now.” Melinda is one of a significant number of Australians tricked by online romance scams and frauds.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s Targeting Scams Report, released in May, revealed 91,637 Australians made scam reports in 2014. Online dating scams cost victims the most money — almost $28 million was lost, with some victims losing more than $100,000. But ACCC deputy chair Delia Rickard says this is the tip of the iceberg. Arteria Carotis Blockade Bei Jungen Erwachsenen Spiele. “Many people are too embarrassed to admit they’ve been scammed,” Rickard says. “People have mortgaged their house and borrowed from friends and family so it breaks down family relationships.
It can ruin them financially and the emotional toll is enormous, with attempted suicides in some cases. “It is a hideous crime.” ACCC research suggests many online dating frauds operate from West Africa, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the UK and Eastern Europe.
While illegal, the anonymity of the internet and the sophistication of these operations makes catching the perpetrators almost impossible. “It’s organised crime,” Rickard says. “There are call centres with people running multiple relationships. Some scammers are individuals, but most we know of involve syndicates.” She says cons tend to follow a pattern — the scammer stalks their victim on social media and dating sites to get a sense of their likes, dislikes and values.
“So when this person pops up, they have all these things in common with you,” Rickard says. “Then they quickly move the person off the dating site to reduce their chances of being detected. They spend weeks or months grooming, contacting the person every day, sending gifts, gaining the person’s love and trust.
Once the person is emotionally enmeshed in the relationship, they ask for money — usually so they can come and visit or to pay for an emergency of some kind.” When funds are cut off, Rickard says a scammer may threaten to share intimate photos and videos of their victim to get more money. The ACCC is carrying out “disruption work”, using financial intelligence data to identify people who may be sending money to scammers. A trial in NSW and ACT is being rolled out to other states, including Victoria, this year.
“We’re sending letters to people sending money overseas who we think may be a victim,” Rickard says. “We’re also working with banks and remittance agencies to see what more they can do to stop money going overseas in this way.”. Jan Marshall founded Melbourne Romance Scam Survivors to help other victims. Picture: Andrew Tauber Source:News Limited Jan Marshall, 61, from Lalor, founded Melbourne Romance Scam Survivors after losing $260,000 to a man she met on the Plenty of Fish dating site in August, 2012. Soon after joining the site, she was contacted by a man called Eamon who told Jan, a change manager, that he was a civil engineer from England.
At the time he said he was working in the US and was divorced with one daughter. “We emailed and during that time he returned to England because his contract in the US finished,” Marshall says. “We talked on the phone and very quickly he said he thought I was a very special person. By the end of the month he’d romanced me so much, so when he put out feelers about whether I’d marry him, I said ‘yes’.” They continued talking after Eamon took a six-week contract in Dubai.
But then the requests for money started and they whittled away the nest egg Marshall had saved to buy an investment property. Eamon said he had to pay taxes in Dubai and couldn’t get hold of his money in England. So Marshall wired him $40,000. But on the way to pay those taxes, Eamon was robbed. Then there were problems paying contractors and Eamon was involved in a car accident.
Marshall continued to send money to the man. She believed he was her soulmate. Marshall ate into her self-managed super fund and ran up a $30,000 credit card debt. Only 72 days after she met Eamon, Marshall received his final message. “He was due to fly out of Dubai to England and his last text was ‘finally, I’m on my way, thank you for everything’,” she says.
Marshall reported the fraud to Victoria Police who said her money was collected in Nigeria. But none of the money has been recovered and Marshall still has no idea who Eamon really was. “A friend said if 10 people were lined up and he was asked which person had been caught in a scam, I was the last person he would choose,” Marshall says. “There’s shame and embarrassment but by speaking out about this I’ve regained my self-respect. I won’t let this one event define me. Anyone can be vulnerable.” Australian Idol winner Casey Donovan revealed in her biography that her six-year relationship with a man called Campbell, an IT expert from Sydney, was a fake. The couple conducted their relationship over the phone and via texts and emails but whenever they were due to meet, something always came up for Campbell.
Donovan has said she was deceived by a woman who later became a friend, who made up Campbell. Donovan realised her boyfriend didn’t exist when she found a SIM card that was supposed to belong to him in the woman’s home. “I spent six years of my life loving someone who never really existed I believed everything and I was hopeful and I was groomed very well,” Donovan has written. Casey Donovan has been through tough times and came out the other end. Source:Supplied Steve Ioannou, of Elite Investigations, has seen a sharp increase in the number of Victorians wanting to check out romantic partners they’ve met online. “I think stories in the media of people losing a lot of money are raising public awareness,” Ioannou says. “So we are seeing more people who have met someone online and suspect a scam.
“One client was pushed to come to us by her dad who suspected the guy planning to marry his daughter had some issues. We found out the guy didn’t work where he said he worked, the flash car he drove was a rental car and his million-dollar property portfolio was untraceable. Her family wanted a (prenuptial agreement) before the wedding and he disappeared. “Another woman met a guy online and he’d go out with her once or twice a week. He began asking her for a few hundred dollars here and there and she became suspicious because she could never go to the flat where he said he lived alone.
Although he worked, he never seemed to have much money. “He turned out to be married with five kids.” Grant Langston, of eHarmony, says online relationship scams are a concern, which is why eHarmony has a department dedicated to identifying potential scammers. “We put a lot of manpower into this but people who use dating sites have a tremendous capacity to protect themselves, and that’s simply to never send money to anyone you meet in an online dating setting,” Langston says. “Scammers have a well-defined process: they’re too good to be true, they spend a lot of time cultivating your interest and then they come to you with a story — someone has been in a car accident, they’ve got a big business deal going through this week but their money is tied up. There’s always a story with a sense of urgency and a tug at the heartstrings to justify the money they’re asking for.” Another woman, who wanted to be known only as Anne, was wooed by a man she met on Facebook in late 2012. She didn’t lose money but says the emotional fallout was “devastating”.
“He seemed really nice,” Anne says. “He said he was a widower working on an oil rig. His wife had died in a car crash and he had one daughter. “I’d been alone for five years and I didn’t really know where to meet people anymore.
These scammers know how to find vulnerable people. “I was an easy target.” Anne, 43, a former bank worker, says her “boyfriend” told her he was an American citizen of German and Nigerian parents.
He told her he wanted to move to Australia with his daughter to be with Anne. She was groomed for two months and then the emotional manipulation to send money began. “Something happened to his daughter, who was staying with her uncle in Nigeria.
He needed money for her but couldn’t get access to his funds because he was on the oil rig. I wouldn’t send money,” Anne says. “That’s when he began phoning and threatening to send people after me. I didn’t answer my phone and eventually they moved on to another victim. “I don’t really know who I was talking to because I discovered the photograph he used was stolen from an American clergyman who was happily married with six children. I didn’t lose money but the emotional abuse is devastating.” Like Marshall, Anne is warning other Australians about online dating scams. She created a Scamming Scammers Facebook page and says around 200 people a week contact her to share their stories.
“A lot of people think, ‘it won’t happen to me’, but I’ve heard from doctors and lawyers and the cases I hear about are the tip of the iceberg because people are embarrassed,” Anne says. “These people are experts at what they do — scamming is their profession — and nobody is immune.” * name changed WARNING SIGNS YOU meet someone on an internet dating website and their profile picture or photograph looks different to their description or as if it’s from a magazine. AFTER just a few contacts they profess strong feelings for you and suggest moving the conversation away from the website to email, instant messaging or telephone. AFTER gaining your trust, they tell you an elaborate story and ask for money, gifts or your bank account/credit card details.
THEY continue to ask you for money, but never actually visit you. IF you don’t send money straight away, their emails and calls will often become more desperate, persistent or direct. THE email is poorly written, vague or contains specific information taken directly from news articles, repeats itself, you are addressed by the wrong name or the email is not personally addressed at all. HOW TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM DATING AND ROMANCE SCAMS ALWAYS consider the possibility that the approach may be a scam, particularly if the warning signs listed above appear. TALK to an independent friend, relative or fair trading agency before you send any money. THINK twice before sending money to someone you have only recently met online or haven’t met in person.
NEVER give credit card or online account details to anyone by email. BE very careful about how much personal information you share on social network sites.
IF you agree to meet in person, tell family and friends where you are going. If this includes overseas travel, consider carefully the advice on smarttraveller.gov.au before making any plans. WHERE possible, avoid any arrangement with a stranger that asks for upfront payment via money order, wire transfer or international funds transfer. IF you think you have provided your account details to a scammer, contact your bank or financial institution immediately. MONEY laundering is a criminal offence: do not agree to transfer money for someone else.
REPORT SCAMS If you think you’ve spotted a scam, report a scam to SCAMwatch or contact the ACCC on 1300 795 995. SOURCE: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission SCAMwatch.