[A]dvocates failed to get legislation passed this year to address online dating scams, but that hasn’t stopped them from informing Vermonters about the multimillion-dollar industry.
AARP Vermont says scammers disproportionately target senior citizens on legitimate dating sites like Match.com, develop online relationships with them and then claim they are in emergencies in order to be sent money.
“These romance scams take a little more time for the criminal to nurture … and then what happens is the criminal finds himself in a purported difficulty and says, ‘I need $5,000,’” said Greg Marchildon, executive director of AARP Vermont.
The scammers are often from places in Eastern Europe or Africa, especially Nigeria, according to the Attorney General’s Office, and victims rarely report the incidents because they feel too embarrassed to come forward.
“It’s just one of those crimes where when you lose your money, whether it’s a couple hundred dollars or a couple thousand dollars, you’re never going to get it back,” Marchildon said.
“Seven in 10 senior citizens [in Vermont] are living only on Social Security and nothing more,” Marchildon said. “The organization [has 140,000 members and] is uniquely set up to do something about this problem.”
The Vermont House passed preliminary, first-of-its-kind legislation this year to require online dating companies to disclose to Vermont users which profiles or usernames have been banned for participating in the so-called “catfishing” scams.
But the online dating provision of S.73, the consumer protection bill that Gov. Peter Shumlin signed into law Tuesday, did not make it through negotiations between the House and the Senate. Lawmakers say they ran out of time and will revisit the issue in January.
Seven people in Vermont have reported scams totaling $47,000 so far this year, said Janet Murnane, a deputy attorney general for the Consumer Assistance Program. Another 18 people reported scams in 2014, totaling about $65,000.
“We think that’s a very small report,” Murnane said. “People have already been scammed, so they’re calling us to tell us they’ve already sent this money. And it’s gone. They’ve done it typically through a wire transfer mechanism.”
Murnane said one red flag is communicating with someone who is living in another country but claims to be from the United States. Marchildon said to be wary of communicating with people who are dictating the entire online conversation, and not to pick up the phone for an unrecognizable phone number.
The national AARP suggests that people who are approached for money online save the image and then use the “search by image” option on Google to see if it’s a picture of a real person or a stock photo used for scamming.
Users can also copy and paste the text from a person asking for money into a search engine, according to a suggestion from the national AARP, which calls online dating scams an $82 million industry.
