With the prevalence of online dating today, thieves now find their way how to dupe people their money on the internet. The online romance scam is now happening, and there are a lot of victims out there that didn't notice they are already victimized. Thinking their virtual lovers love them, they easily become their prey and fall to their trap.
Australian Cybercrime Online Reporting Network ambassador and "Romance Scam Survivor: The Whole Sordid Story" author Jan Marshall said it is not easy to make people realize that their so-called online lover is a scammer. Working with scam victims and their friends for four years showed that it is hard to talk about reality to these victims when they are already caught in a scam.
Online scammers coached and hypnotized their victims not to listen to any advice given by friends or relatives. Marshall said these scammers are all expert at "psychological manipulation." "They lie without compunction and deliberately set out to part people from their money," she added, per the South China Morning Post.
Hong Kong psychologist Tony Dickinson said that to help victims, friends or relatives should tell them a story about real online romance scam cases reported by the media. He said some victims are left in denial, so he started talking to his patients about the "Nigerian prince money-transfer" email scam. Often, the victims would say their online lovers would never do that to them because they were "so much in love."
There is a bad case of online romance scam problem in Hong Kong. The police statistics noted that this issue had defrauded a total of HK$398 million from 463 Hongkongers in the first nine months of 2018. It was an evident increase from the HK$78.1 million from 142 victims for the same period in 2017.
According to The Star, one in every 10 online romance scam victims was an educated professional. About 30 percent were white-collar workers while others were businesswomen, retirees, and blue-collar employees. Approximately, 90 percent of victims were women, and they had never met their "virtual lovers" in person.
Scammers are often pretending as entrepreneurs, professionals, or military veterans. They are looking for possible victims online, and they try to develop close friendships with them. They will then use different alleged reasons to ask money from their poor preys.
If the victims turn suspicious, other scammers will get involved. They will act up as Hong Kong police officers and ask the victim to pay them for alleged handling fees to get their cash back. Hong Kong police set up the Anti-Deception Coordination Centre to unite all the forces' sources to fight this problem and create public awareness about the issue.
