If there’s something we understand, it is that fraudulence is available in numerous flavors that are unsavory. From acquisitions made out of taken bank cards to phishing schemes, fraudsters will always shopping for brand new and unique approaches to scamming victims.

Back October, we did a deep plunge into transactional fraudulence, sifting through Sift data to learn which U.S. states had the greatest fraudulence prices , along with making a profile associated with fraudiest individual in the us . Now, with Valentine’s Day approaching, we thought focus that is we’d a various (but in addition painful) sort of fraud: fake pages on internet dating sites.

The high price of relationship frauds

There are a number of reasons some body might produce a fake profile on a dating internet site, through the wondering (“I wonder if anybody would react to some body such as this?”) towards the insecure (“let’s say we appeared to be this instead?”) to your criminal that is downright. Often, fake pages are create by planned crime bands whom utilize bots to deliver phony communications and coax victims into parting with regards to money.

Romance frauds are an enormous, high priced, and problem that is disturbing. Based on the FBI , romance scams cost victims significantly more than $82 million within the last few 6 months of 2014 alone, utilizing the victim that is average a lot more than $100,000. Yes, that is five zeros. Ouch.

For the internet dating sites that host these fake pages, the situation also can include damaging effects . Read more