Beware of romance scammers ahead of Valentines Day

The FBI’s internet fraud complaint center estimates romance scams result in the greatest dollar loss of any fraud of scam with the exception of investment fraud.

In romance scams, scam artists lure people in, grooming them and eventually taking their money.

“It’s just like a business, where a business has a sales script. They have a scam script how to lure you in,” Shannon Nelson the director of investigations for the Better Business Bureau of Northeast Florida and Southeast Atlantic, says.

The BBB says at any one time 25,000 fraudsters are online. Scammers create profiles using other people’s pictures on dating sites and apps and then catfishing unsuspecting lovers.

According to FBI data Florida is the third-most catfished state in the United States.

Creating a fake profile is relatively easy. Action News Jax reporter Bridgette Matter found someone by the name of Katelyn is using her photo on a dating app, posing as a 22-year-old graduate student.

Fake profiles can be used to catfish others and scam them out of thousands of dollars.

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Nelson says there are ways to protect yourself “Really scrutinize the image and the information they are putting out there.”

Nelson says reverse image search the photo and see if it belongs to someone else. If the person you meet online doesn’t want to meet in person, you are probably being catfished.

The BBB says romance scams in the U.S. resulted in close to nearly $1 billion in losses the last three years.

Cox Media Group