The FBI released the below
report:
They met online. He said he
was a friend of a friend. The woman, in her 50s and struggling in her marriage,
was happy to find someone to chat with. “He was saying all the right things,”
she remembered. “He was interested in me. He was interested in getting to know
me better. He was very positive, and I felt like there was a real connection
there.”
That connection would end up
costing the woman $2 million and an untold amount of heartache after the man
she fell in love with—whom she never met in person—took her for every cent she
had.
It’s called a romance scam,
and this devastating Internet crime is on the rise. Victims—predominantly older
widowed or divorced women targeted by criminal groups usually from Nigeria—are,
for the most part, computer literate and educated. But they are also
emotionally vulnerable. And con artists know exactly how to exploit that
vulnerability because potential victims freely post details about their lives
and personalities on dating and social media sites.
Trolling for victims online
“is like throwing a fishing line,” said Special Agent Christine Beining, a
veteran financial fraud investigator in the FBI’s Houston Division who has seen
a substantial increase in the number of romance scam cases. “The Internet makes
this type of crime easy because you can pretend to be anybody you want to be.
You can be anywhere in the world and victimize people,” she said. “The
perpetrators will reach out to a lot of people on various networking sites to
find somebody who may be a good target. Then they use what the victims have on
their profile pages and try to work those relationships and see which ones
develop.”
“The Internet makes this type
of crime easy because you can pretend to be anybody you want to be.”
Christine Beining, special
agent, FBI Houston
In the case of the Texas
woman who lost everything, it was her strong Christian faith—which she happily
publicized on her Facebook profile—that gave “Charlie” an incredible advantage
when he began courting her.
“I’m very active on
Facebook,” said the woman, who agreed to share her story in the hopes that
others might avoid becoming victims. “I thought it was safe.” After she
friended Charlie—without verifying his bogus claim that they had a mutual
friend—“he would read my wall, I would read his wall. We would post things, he
would like things. Then it got to where we would share e-mails. We started
sharing pictures.”
According to Beining, this is
standard operating procedure for romance scammers, who assume other people’s
identities to trick their victims. “They make themselves out to be
average-looking people,” she said. “They are generally not trying to build
themselves up too high.”
The scammer’s intention is to
establish a relationship as quickly as possible, endear himself to the victim,
gain trust, and propose marriage. He will make plans to meet in person, but
that will never happen. Eventually, he will ask for money.
According to the FBI’s
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), which provides the public with a means
of reporting Internet-facilitated crimes, romance scams—also called confidence
fraud—result in the highest amount of financial losses to victims when compared
to other online crimes.
In 2016, almost 15,000
complaints categorized as romance scams or confidence fraud were reported to
IC3 (nearly 2,500 more than the previous year), and the losses associated with
those complaints exceeded $230 million. The states with the highest numbers of
victims were California, Texas, Florida, New York, and Pennsylvania. In Texas
last year, the IC3 received more than 1,000 complaints from victims reporting
more than $16 million in losses related to romance scams.
‘I was Looking for Happiness’
When she first encountered
Charlie in 2014, the Texas woman recalled, “I was in an emotionally abusive
marriage, and things had not been good for probably at least 10 years.” Her new
online friend seemed to come along at just the right time. “I was looking for happiness,”
she said. “I thought I could find that with Charlie.”
Romance scammers often say
they are in the building and construction industry and are engaged in projects
outside the U.S. That makes it easier to avoid meeting in person—and more
plausible when they ask their victims for help. They will suddenly need money
for a medical emergency or unexpected legal fee. “They promise to repay the
loan immediately,” Beining said, “but the victims never get their money back.”
Charlie claimed to be in the
construction field. “He was trying to finish up a job in California,” the woman
said, “and he needed some money to help finish the job. I thought about it long
and hard. I prayed about it. I’ve always been a very giving person, and I
figured if I had money … I could send him some [money]. And he promised to have
it back within 24 to 48 hours. I thought, ‘I could do that.’ It was kind of a
statement of faith, too.”
She wired him $30,000. A day
passed and then another, and she didn’t get her money back. “I still thought
everything was okay,” she said, “just that he was the victim of some bad luck.”
And then Charlie needed another $30,000.
Empty Promises
For the next two years, the
woman believed Charlie’s stories after each new request for funds. Everything
he said made sense, and, after all, they were in love. Eventually, the woman’s
financial adviser became alarmed about her steadily dwindling accounts and,
suspecting fraud, urged her to contact the FBI.
The subsequent investigation
led by Beining resulted in the arrest of two Nigerians posing as South African
diplomats who had come to the U.S. to collect money from the woman on behalf of
Charlie, who claimed he was paid $42 million for a construction project he
completed in South Africa. The woman believed she would be paying to have the
money—including the repayment of her $2 million—transferred to the U.S. from
South Africa, where Charlie was still supposedly working.
In July 2016, the two
Nigerian co-conspirators pleaded guilty in connection with their roles in the
scam, and a federal judge sentenced them each to 36 months in prison last
December. But Charlie is still at large, presumably in Nigeria, and there may
be little hope of bringing him to justice.
“This is a very difficult
crime to prove,” Beining said. “When someone is using a computer to hide
behind, the hardest thing to find out is who they are. We can find out where in
the world their computer is being used. It’s identifying who they actually are
that’s the hard part. That is why this individual remains a fugitive.”
It also explains why romance
scams are on the rise: It’s a lucrative and easy crime to commit, and easier
still to remain anonymous and beyond the reach of authorities. “It’s not like
going in a bank and holding a gun to the teller,” Beining explained, “because
there are so many leads that you provide law enforcement when you do that. Even
if you are able to get out of the bank, we can probably find out who you are
and track you down. But with an Internet crime like this, it’s much more
difficult.”
As for the Texas woman, she
came forward “because I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I not only
invested money in this man but there is a big, huge piece of my heart that I
invested in him,” she said. “It’s not just the finances, it’s the emotional
part, too—being embarrassed, being ashamed, being humiliated.”
“I don’t want this to happen
to anybody else. I not only invested money in this man but there is a big, huge
piece of my heart that I invested in him.”
Romance scam victim
Even now, though, she remains
conflicted. A part of her still wants to believe that Charlie is real and that
their relationship was real—that the e-mail exchanges about church and the
phone calls when they sang together and prayed together meant as much to him as
they did to her. She even holds out hope that one day Charlie will repay her,
as he promised to do so many times.
Otherwise, there is no doubt
that he is a heartless criminal who robbed her and broke her heart—and who is
almost certainly continuing to victimize other women in the same way.
“I can’t even imagine a man,
a person, that could be this bad,” she said. “I can’t think of him that way. …
There can’t be a man in this world that could be this horrible to have
purposefully done what he’s done to me.”
Don’t Become a Victim
The criminals who carry out
romance scams are experts at what they do. They spend hours honing their skills
and sometimes keep journals on their victims to better understand how to
manipulate and exploit them.
“Behind the veil of romance,
it’s a criminal enterprise like any other,” said Special Agent Christine
Beining. “And once a victim becomes a victim, in that they send money, they
will often be placed on what’s called a ‘sucker list,’ ” she said. “Their names
and identities are shared with other criminals, and they may be targeted in the
future.”
To stay safe online, be
careful what you post, because scammers can use that information against you.
Always use reputable websites, but assume that con artists are trolling even
the most reputable dating and social media sites. If you develop a romantic
relationship with someone you meet online, consider the following:
Research the person’s photo
and profile using online searches to see if the material has been used
elsewhere.
Go slow and ask lots of
questions.
Beware if the individual
seems too perfect or quickly asks you to leave a dating service or Facebook to
go “offline.”
Beware if the individual
attempts to isolate you from friends and family or requests inappropriate
photos or financial information that could later be used to extort you.
Beware if the individual
promises to meet in person but then always comes up with an excuse why he or
she can’t. If you haven’t met the person after a few months, for whatever
reason, you have good reason to be suspicious.
Never send money to anyone
you don’t know personally. “If you don’t know them, don’t send money,” Beining
said. “You will see what their true intentions are after that.”
If you suspect an online
relationship is a scam, stop all contact immediately. And if you are the victim
of a romance scam, file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint
Center.
