Online dating: Fraud prevention

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, Halifax Regional Police and Halifax District RCMP — your Partners in Policing — want potential lovebirds to be sure it’s love, not fraud, that’s in the air.

Each year the Financial Crime Unit of the Integrated Criminal Investigation Division investigates a wide range of fraud-related complaints, including victims who have been defrauded thousands of dollars from people they met through online dating websites and social media sites.

These romance scammers are looking for one thing and one thing only — money — and they play on their victim’s emotions to get it.

They develop a relationship with their victim, sometimes over an extended period of time, and wait until they’ve gained the victim’s trust before making their move. They use a number of different approaches but the most common include asking the victim to cash a cheque for them, requesting the victim’s financial assistance with an ‘emergency,’ or promising to meet the victim in person if they provide money for travel expenses.

For some scammers, once is never enough; they keep coming back with more and more requests for money. Once the cash dries up, the scammer mysteriously disappears and the victim is left with a broken heart, a deep sense of betrayal and a depleted bank account.

The best defence against a romance scammer is to trust your instincts. If you meet someone online and it seems too good to be true, it probably is. Following are red flags that your new love connection may be after something other than your heart:

• Wants to immediately leave the dating site where you met to use instant messaging or email.

• Is moving a bit too fast and claims to have fallen in love with you quickly without having met you face-to-face.

• Makes plans to meet in person but something always comes up to prevent the meeting.

• Looks like a supermodel in the photos but doesn’t want to chat with you via webcam.

• Claims to be from the United States or Canada but is currently working overseas.

• Asks for your financial assistance for a variety of reasons (travel, medical emergencies, hotel bills, hospitals bills for a child or other relative, visas or other official documents, losses from a financial setback or crime victimization). May request to have money wired because wire transfers can be done internationally and are more difficult to track than bank transactions.

If you do decide to meet your online valentine in person, take steps to make your personal safety a priority. Ensure your first date is in a public place. Tell a trusted friend where and with whom you are meeting, and be sure to check in with that friend after the date. During the date, stay sober and never leave your drink unattended.

Finally, if you have been victimized, don’t let embarrassment stop you from reporting an incident to police. You have nothing to be ashamed of and secrecy only works to the scammer’s benefit.