The price of love: Pandemic fuels online romance scams

tech.hindustantimes.com:

For years, Debby Montgomery Johnson didn't tell anyone she'd been scammed out of more than $1 million by a man with whom she believed she was in a loving, though virtual, relationship. "It should not have happened to me," the business owner and former US Air Force officer told AFP from her home in Florida, a common refrain among those defrauded by someone they met online and grew to trust. But many tens of thousands of people are targeted by cons dubbed online romance scams every year, their numbers skyrocketing during the Covid-19 pandemic when lockdowns sent people flocking to the internet seeking a salve for isolation.

The US Federal Trade Commission, tracking scams reported to its Consumer Sentinel Network, said 2021 saw a record $547 million stolen in romance scams. This marked a nearly 80 percent increase compared to the year before.

Those figures cap an upward trend that leapt in the first year of the pandemic. People reported to the FTC losing $1.3 billion to the scams over the past five years, the most of any fraud category.

But it is just the tip of the iceberg, the FTC notes, as the vast majority of cons go unreported.

Tim McGuinness, founder of the non-profit Society of Citizens Against Relationship Scams (SCARS), said numbers soared because of "the isolation, the loneliness and the utilization of the web as virtually the exclusive communication tool" during the pandemic.

Cancelled dates over supposedly positive Covid-19 tests and disrupted travel plans due to lockdowns are ruses that feed into the well-worn script of romance scammers, the FTC warned.

One male victim told awareness-raising organization Silent Victim No More that Covid measures provided his supposed girlfriend with excuses to "bail out."

"Covid-19