Romance scam fraud on the rise
A Liverpool law firm is still concerned that the crime is under-reported
Valentines Day is on the horizon, but experts in Liverpool are warning those looking for love to be extra vigilant of fraudsters.
Romance fraud is where a person sends money to somebody they think they're in love with, or in a relationship with, but it's actually a fraudster taking that money.
CEL Solicitors in Liverpool receive more than 1,000 enquiries a week when it comes to scams.
139 reports of dating scams have been made to Merseyside Police over the last 13 months - resulting in losses of £2million.
Over £18.5million was lost to romance fraud across the UK last year, up 26% on the year before.
Jessica Hampson, owner of CEL Solicitors, said:
"It has a double-impact. It's sad anyway when any of our clients fall for any of these scams, but in particular for romance scams not only do they lose the love of their live, they also lose a lot of money.
"The fraudsters are pulling on the heart-strings as well as the purse strings as well.
"We see that our clients lose the most money to the romance scams and that's because they drip the payment. It will be £10 here, £100 there and it will slowly build up. Something might happen in the storyline so it might be an operation or a visa issue and all of a sudden it's £5,000.
"It lasts so long that in the end, they don't realise a lot of the time how much money they've actually lost. We have clients that come to us and think they've lost £10,000 and when we've gone through all the evidence they've actually lost double that.
"We've had people lose millions"
"We've had people lose millions. In romance scams, it does tend to be quite high.
"These scammers are extremely sophisticated and they'll go to all sorts of depths. We've seen where the person has built up a relationship with their child and they actually have either an AI or a child on the other line and all of a sudden the child gets cancer, or they have to go to prison, or there's visa issues and they'll make sure that it's something that really pulls on your heart-strings and they usually target really kind, nice people as well and build up that rapport.
"Sometimes they can go months, sometimes years without even asking for any money so they're heavily groomed.
"If anybody feels like there's anything suspicious, the best thing to do is to sit down with someone that you trust and just talk about it and see if you can get a second opinion, someone that is not as close to the issue, and see if they think there are any red flags.
"You should act on it because if the person is genuine then you've got nothing to lose, but if they're not genuine, then this could save you a lot of money.
"Do as much investigation as possible"
"Always be suspicious if it's a celebrity. If it is a celebrity, then please always think twice whether or not you're getting into a romantic relationship with this person. The second thing is not being able to see them.
"It's hard because a lot of the romance scams take place abroad so physically it will be very difficult, however can you Facetime them, can you call them, can you do a reverse image search on Google to see if it really is them?
"Do as much investigation as possible into the person, just for yourself, to satisfy that it is the person you think you're speaking to and then a red flag would be any time that they ask for money - particularly if a tragedy has happened.
"We get a lot of people that are pretending they're in the army, or the doctors abroad and they get arrested, or there's a visa issue, or there's some sort of ill health in which all of a sudden, they need quite a lot of money.
"They (the scammers) thrive on pressure and making sure that you don't think things through and that you make emotional decisions. If this really is the person that you love, then you can sleep on this, you can take time, you can go and speak to somebody. Even if it feels like it's a dire emergency - their card has been cut off, they've been arrested - 24 hours can save lives."
One example of romance fraud came before the courts last week, where a man who swindled hundreds of thousands of pounds from four women was jailed for seven years.
Cieren McNamara, who used different names, created fake crises like claiming he was having issues with his banking and needed to borrow money, which he insisted he would repay as soon as possible.
If any of the women questioned his motives, he would turn it on them and blame them for doubting him.
In total, between 1 September 2022 and 25 September 2023, McNamara managed to manipulate his four victims to hand over more than £300,000.
His downfall came after one of his victims realised what he was doing and reported her concerns to police.
Ms Hampson added:
"What's really heart-breaking is the scammers actually read through the obituaries sometimes. They'll prey on anyone who is maybe recently divorced, who has lost somebody, and they will absolutely prey on you so be really careful about any dating sites that you're on, about sharing any information that's very personal to you early on in the relationship.
"Please speak up"
"You've got to appreciate that fraud is the number one crime. It makes up 40% of all crimes in this country so you are not alone and when you know that you're not alone, please speak up. There will be professionals that can help you every step of the way and deal with this and it's actually a great thing because if you can share your story and you can speak up, you will encoruage other people to do that.
"What we absolutely believe is that is very under-reported still. Even though it's the number one crime in the country, we still do not think that people are reporting this because of that stigma. There are a lot of reasons to speak up - one to obviously get your money, two to report it and three to help others as well."
There's more information on romance fraud here.