Money is gone, family has shut them out, money is owed"

Valentines Day is a day to celebrate love, and human kindness. But unfortunately, romance is a tactic used by scammers to make money by defrauding lonely and isolated people who would like a little bit of love themselves.

Romance scams are a problem every day, a litany of broken dreams,cleaned-out bank accounts and endless embarrassment.

It didnt even dawn on me that Id been manipulated, said Rebecca D'Antonio, who planned to end her life because of the shame and embarrassment she felt.

Her story is sad but not unusual. It was almost nine years ago that D'Antoniomade a suicide plan.

Over the course of a year, she was swindled out of $100,000 by her boyfriend, Matthew, a single father from Maine she met on OKCupid, but never met in-person or had a video call with. She thought the dating website was trustworthy and that people were vetted.

Instead, she was facing eviction, worried about becoming homeless in the Boston winter, where she lived at the time of the scam,and was ready to end her life.

She stockpiled sleeping pills, and made plans to see her friends and family one more time. But during a final dinner, she broke down in tears after her friend told the story about a bullied young girl who contemplated suicide, but ultimately reached out to her parents for help.

After DAntonio came clean, her friend held her hand and told her it wasnt her fault.

She had gone through a divorce, picked up her life and was ready to buy a home when she decided to sign up for dating with an open heart and open mind. But Matthew emotionally manipulated her into giving more money over time, stating he was having trouble with his credit cards, and needed money for his 5-year-old son.

During her last phone call, she told him about the sleeping pills. Was she ever going to see him? She said she didnt know what to do, and planned to end it all.

Well, you have to do what you have to do, she remembers him telling her.

She hung up the phone immediately.

She now realizes that scammers encourage suicide because it buys permanent silence.

With the help and guidance of her friend, DAntonio threw away the sleeping pills and declared bankruptcy. It was a step forward.

A downward trend, a mounting toll

Reported romance scams have been on a downward trend since 2021, with a little under 80,000 reports and a median loss of $1,873 reported that year, according to the Federal Trade Commission.

But while reports of losses have gone down since, median losses have ranged higher between $1,900 to $2,000 over the years.

Reporting a romance scam has its own challenges, as so many victims are embarrassed to report theyve fallen for an impostor.

Sadly, because the victims are embarrassed and ashamed to come forward, the numbers dont show nearly the extent of the problem, said Kathy Waters, co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit, Advocating Against Romance Scammers.

The nonprofit was formed in 2016 with the mission to raise awareness about romance scams, and since their founding, they have engaged lawmakers, spoken at the United Nations, and supported thousands of victims by encouraging them to share their stories.

The emotional damage on a victim can be severe as the romance scam process involves mental attachment, sexual abuse, and relationship breakdown, according to a 2022 study published in the Journal of Education Humanities and Social Sciences.While the victim experiences the entire fraud online, researchers found that victims experience the effects real relationship breakups involving depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and suicidal tendencies.

Waters hears many stories like D'Antonio's. But her most heartbreaking stories are the ones that come from families of victims who died by suicide after discovering they were being defrauded.

Money is gone, family has shut them out, money is owed, Waters said. They feel alone with the inability to recover. Its absolutely heartbreaking.

Confronting a romance scammer

Lara Miller, 53, a counselor who currently lives in Vale, North Carolina, didnt even know she was caught up in a romance scam until she reflected on it later. Her communication with her scammer lasted only four weeks, chock full of emotional manipulation.

In 2022, Miller was using LinkedIn to promote her business, thinking and hoping that is where people go to connect with others professionally.

I didnt understand that most people are not, she said.

A romance scam on LinkedIn, a social-media platform for professionals where people commonly search for jobs, may sound odd, but scammers use all forms of social media to pull personal information out of a person.

So when a 20-year-old man from Gambia contacted Miller on LinkedIn, she thought it was for her counseling services. The man said his father died, he had dropped out of nursing school, and was doing manual labor to support his mother and siblings.

I just believed everything he said, Miller said. I thought he was eventually going to seek counseling from me.

Over the course of the messages, he started love bombing her. Love bombing is a manipulative tactic to show overly affectionate behavior" such as showering the person with compliments and declaring their love early on, according to Psychology Today

He sent her a photo of himself without a shirt on and asked her for one too. Miller established boundaries with him, and relied on her past training on how to handle a client who begins flirting.

But after exchanging more messages with him, he pushed her to move off LinkedIn and on to WhatsApp, a messaging app used worldwide. She wouldnt talk to him everyday, and sometimes he would call in the middle of the night when she was fast asleep. She never picked up those calls.

I realized pretty quickly he was on Whatsapp 24/7, she said.

The man continued to talk about his poverty, and Miller decided she would start a GoFundMe to help him. But when he began to pressure her to donate, Miller became suspicious.

When she saw a video on Social Catfishs website, a company that verifies online identities using reverse search technology, she woke up, she said. She was being scammed and decided to test him.

So, she asked him for pictures of his fathers funeral, or burial, or a picture of himself doing his manual labor job. It was for the GoFundMe, she said. The pictures never came.

When her scammer realized the love bombing wasnt going to work, he tried another tactic he started calling her mom.

Miller took down the GoFundMe, causing her scammer to panic. Then he reached out again with a different story hed been bitten by a snake and didnt have money to afford treatment.

He sent her photos of a foot with a pus-filled wound and other photos of a foot wrapped in a bandage. Looking at those photos, Miller decided to send him $50 via Western Union.

I fall for it, she said.

During the one and only video call she had with him, she was surprised to find that the man was who he said he was in his photos. But he continued calling her all hours in the night, asking for more money to cover his rent and food. She refused, and confronted him in texts about scamming her.

Shockingly, he apologized to her, saying he was disappointed in himself. But then he turned it around and blamed her for sending him money he never even asked for.

She blocked his number.

Since then, Miller has received messages from a dozen different men on LinkedIn, asking her for money for their church or orphanage. She doesnt know for sure if they are real or scammers, but she hasnt replied to any of them.

I used to be a trusting person, she said. Not anymore.

Not enough justice for romance scams

Over time, the scams have gotten more elaborate.

In France, a woman sent her lifesavings of $850,000 to scammers after believing she was in a relationship with Hollywood actor Brad Pitt, which was an AI-generated version of him, BBC News reported. She was heavily mocked online.

Last year, FTC Chair Lina M. Khan vowed to crack down on these deceptive practices.

Using AI tools to trick, mislead, or defraud people is illegal, Khan said in a press release from September 2024. The FTCs enforcement actions make clear that there is no AI exemption from the laws on the books. By cracking down on unfair or deceptive practices in these markets, FTC is ensuring that honest businesses and innovators can get a fair shot and consumers are being protected.

But reporting and recourse are problems.

When DAntonio tried reporting Matthew to the authorities, she tried to file a report with her local police station, she was told the case needed to go to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. But they pointed her to go online to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, known as the IC3.

The process was impersonal, granular, and triggering, DAntonio said.

I was just scammed from being online, she said. What I needed was somebody to talk to.

And in terms of recourse, she doesnt ever expect to get her money back.

Once the moneys gone, the moneys gone, she said.

Waters said that cybercrime is growing, and that the number of law enforcement officers needed to tackle the issue surpasses any funding that is granted to such departments.

Scammers are being caught, and some even extradited back to the U.S. to stand trial, but unfortunately the numbers of apprehensions come nowhere close to the amount of victims needing justice, she said.

Email Amritpal Kaur Sandhu-Longoria at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..