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Just in time for Valentine's Day, the FBI is warning of online dating scams. The bureau received more than 15,000 reports linked to romance scams last year with more than half of those complaints ...
Report any activity to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) if you believe that you’re a victim of a romance scam. If you see suspicious transactions, contact your financial ...
The FBI says in 2022 more than 19,000 people across the United States fell victims to these scams and were duped out of more than $700M.
Scammers post profiles on dating websites, non-dating social media accounts, classified sites and even online forums to search for new victims. [10] [5] The scammer usually attempts to obtain a more private method of communication, such as an email or phone number, to build trust with the victim. [4] [11] [5]
The IC3 was founded in 2000 as the Internet Fraud Complaint Center (IFCC), and was tasked with gathering data on crimes committed online such as fraud, scams, and thefts. [1] Other crimes tracked by the center included intellectual property rights matters, computer intrusions , economic espionage , online extortion , international money ...
• Fake email addresses - Malicious actors sometimes send from email addresses made to look like an official email address but in fact is missing a letter(s), misspelled, replaces a letter with a lookalike number (e.g. “O” and “0”), or originates from free email services that would not be used for official communications.
A similar report from the FBI found an even higher number, with an estimated total of $1 billion lost to romance scams last year — and that just accounts for those who reported the crimes.
A scam, or a confidence trick, is an attempt to defraud a person or group after first gaining their trust. Confidence tricks exploit victims using a combination of the victim's credulity , naivety , compassion , vanity , confidence , irresponsibility , and greed .