FBI: Romance scammers swindle vulnerable Florida residents out of millions

A devastating internet crime is on the rise in Florida, and it already has claimed close to 1,200 victims who have lost more than $20 million — $1.2 million in Sarasota County.

And it’s grossly under-reported.

Romance scams are just one trick fraudsters use to victimize people — predominantly older widowed or divorced — who are targeted by criminal groups from under-developed countries such as Nigeria. The victims, for the most part, are computer literate and educated but emotionally vulnerable, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which says educating the public is its best defense.

Sarasota County is a prime target because of its wealth and residents whose median age is 56.5.

The scammers look deeply through your personal information, sometimes on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, and study your activities. Flipping through pictures of your favorite animals, dinner and friends, they learn what triggers your emotions and how you spend your money.

And then, “You have a friend request.”

IRS spokesman and criminal investigator Ryan Thompson says many times a scammer is just going down the phone book making cold calls.

“The elderly are heavily victimized because they’re lonely,” says Thompson, who works in Sarasota and Manatee counties. “A lot of cases, they’re looking for companionship. They’re not as tech-savvy, so to speak, and so I think they’re more susceptible to crime.

Con artists know exactly what to say to sway people and get them to stick around.

Thompson says there are red flags.

Weird or bad grammar, misspelled words, pixelated photos of glamorous men and women, and efforts to move conversations from Facebook — where data and site IP are tracked — to secure messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, Kik and Snapchat are signs new friends aren’t fishing for love.

Some scammers pretend to be soldiers stationed overseas who befriend people with heartbreaking tales of how they haven’t been home in years.

Suddenly, they need your help.

“Somebody will have a sick daughter or sick family member and I need you to move this money,” says FBI Special Agent Joseph Stone describing a common scam. “The next thing you know, after they’ve been groomed, it looks benign, so they’re opening a bank account to help someone and transmitting money through that bank account.”

Stone says in some cases, victims are unwittingly participating in money-laundering.

“It’ll be a small favor normally,” he said. “Can you please just do this for me or send a little bit of money — very rarely is it a large amount. They want to make sure it works.

“After that, they are ingratiated. There’s a perceived love interest. Maybe the person in the U.S. is a person looking for companionship and someone that cares about them. Their gut might go against it, but they feel like, ’I’m helping somebody who really cares about me.’”

The scam could involve receiving a package, repackaging it and mailing it forward. That package could contain the money used in another fraud scheme, or a cashier’s check that needs to be cashed and transferred.

The middle man — often victims — are the hardest to prosecute, and following the money back to fraud operations in other countries is difficult to track down. There could be up to seven layers of money movement, Stone said.

Scammers ask for money in the form of gift cards and cryptocurrency, which is hard to trace, and before they can be caught, the money is gone.

The IRS and FBI have legal attaches in foreign countries but very little power to prosecute criminals.

“We are there in a liaison capacity,” Stone said. “There are treaties that are in place that we must adhere to if we want to gain information that exists in a foreign country. Legal attaches need to engage with a host country in order to tie theirs to further investigations.”

Stone notes that the Department of Justice has successfully prosecuted scammers. A Ghana national was charged in a $5 million romance scheme, a Kansas City man was charged in a $900,000 romance fraud scheme, and nine defendants were charged in Chicago in an international investigation targeting romances schemes.

In 2019, in Sarasota County, there were 26 reported cases of confidence fraud or romance scams.

FBI Special Agent Ric Volp, often the bearer of bad news for victims, says trusted friends are usually the first to report that their loved or friends are being taken by con artists.

Delivering the news can be “unbelievable” to the victims.

“Your heart sinks the moment you knock on the door and you say, do you know John Doe, and they say, ‘Yes, that’s my fiancee, he’s overseas,’” Volp says. “Your heart just drops. You know right then and there that they are absolutely a victim of what’s going on.”

The FBI agents, who hold fraud presentations in Sarasota, say many of the victims are too embarrassed to ask for help.

“Their world came crashing down all of a sudden,” Volp says.

They keep an eye on the victims they believe are most susceptible to trust scams.

Thompson said the worst case he was involved in cost a local victim $18 million. He was in court with the victim the day the female defendant was sentenced.

Thompson says before her sentence was imposed, the judge stopped the proceedings to ask the victim a question.

“What do you consider your relationship today?” the judge queried.

The man raised his finger to show a wedding band.

“So, even faced with the mountain of evidence to convict, and the payout and the sentence of one of the fraudsters, the victim still felt like, ’I don’t care, this is an emotional relationship I have,’” Thompson said. “The financial loss didn’t matter to him. He was in that deep with the relationship.”

This story originally published to heraldtribune.com, and was shared to other Florida newspapers in the new Gannett Media network.

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 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.

Source: Federal Bureau of Investigation

Don’t become a victim