Reference no: EM133497323

Case: In February 2019, Anna, a finance professional in her 50s, joined the dating website Zoosk. She had been single for four years, recovering from an incredibly difficult, abusive marriage. "I was finally ready to meet someone," she says. So, when she met Andrew, a handsome Bulgarian food importer living in London, she was thrilled. The pair were soon spending hours talking on the phone each day. Anna was smitten. "He showered me with love and affection," she says. "If you imagine candy floss, I was the stick and he was the sugar wrapped around me. I felt as though I was floating." They made plans to meet up, but Andrew told her he had to go to France for an urgent business trip. They continued to speak on the phone and also, occasionally, on video chat. About five weeks after they first made contact, Andrew asked to borrow money; just a small amount. "He told me he'd had a work crisis and needed help with port charges for delivery. He was so distressed by the unexpected charge. I felt sorry for him." Anna thought Andrew was her perfect man. Now, she believes he was a character invented by a criminal gang to extort her. So-called "romance fraud" - where unsuspecting victims are scammed by someone with whom they have formed a relationship - is nothing new. But online dating makes such fraud easier; experts say these scams have increased in sophistication and frequency.

Then came the pandemic - when online dating was the only kind that was allowed. According to Action Fraud, the UK's reporting center for fraud and cybercrime, 8,863 cases were reported to the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) between November 2020 and October 2021, up from 6,968 the previous year, with total losses for the past year amounting to almost £92m. Daters who started online relationships between Christmas and Valentine's Day were the most susceptible, with 901 reports recorded in March 2021. It's impossible to explain how all-consuming and addictive this love for Andrew was Anna. These figures are likely to be the tip of the iceberg - Action Fraud says the shame and stigma around romance fraud mean many people don't report it. Things soon got worse for Anna - Andrew's requests began to snowball. He told her his daughter was unwell, then that she had died, and that he desperately needed money for repatriation and funeral costs. Anna checked the charges were legitimate, before sending money directly to a funeral services company in France. Whenever she became suspicious, Andrew assuaged her fears. "I'd be sucked back into his all-powerful love bubble. I was also getting receipts for many things and he constantly had an explanation for me." The following year, Andrew had more unpaid charges on his shipping containers. Then, in March 2021, everything got more serious - he told her he had been taken hostage by loan sharks and was being tortured. "I was absolutely distraught. He said he was being stripped and beaten and sent me pictures of his broken arm. He was locked in a room with no windows." In the summer of 2021, when Andrew claimed he was still being held hostage, Anna asked a French Facebook group if anyone had seen him. One reply astonished her. "A woman contacted me and told me the man I'd posted a picture of was Juan Soler, an Argentinian-Mexican actor. She tried to explain I'd been scammed, but I couldn't believe it." Anna confronted Andrew, but he said he could explain and "made me question how I could doubt him". Anna's new Facebook friend, meanwhile, spent months trying to convince Anna to call Action Fraud. "I pointed out that we'd had video calls, but she told me he'd been using technology to superimpose a moving image."

Despite the mounting evidence against Andrew, Anna didn't want to be responsible for his death at the hands of loan sharks if he was telling the truth. By the time she had been convinced to sever ties with him, in October this year, she had lost £350,000. "I had spent the year completely unstable, trapped in this abusive cycle. I'd become obsessed with preventing his pain." After ending the relationship, she cried for weeks. "It felt like losing a husband that I loved with every inch of my heart and soul. I was never going to get any closure or say goodbye." Anna has now reported Andrew to Action Fraud; the situation is under investigation. Olivia James, a trauma therapist, explains why romance fraud is uniquely seductive. "Many of us have wounds around our age, appearance, and past relationships that make us susceptible to someone promising love. It's tempting to ignore doubts and see what we want to see," she says. This cognitive process is known as "betrayal blindness". "Sometimes people have an inkling, but the fear of abandonment is too much." It is not uncommon for people to ignore signs of cheating or accept crumbs of affection in place of real commitment. "Romance fraud is just a more extreme version of something that lots of us have experienced," says James. "For some people, there's an element of rescue fantasy, too. If they can help this person, they'll be able to live out their happily-ever-after romance." It is a particularly cruel crime, says James. The hurt it causes, alongside the loss of financial stability, can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder and other long-term mental health conditions. "People feel completely destabilized. They stop trusting themselves or anyone else. As humans, we need connections with others, so being betrayed by someone you thought was your soulmate is incredibly hard."

The love-bombing tactic used by such scammers can be hard to resist. "These online romances can make people feel as if they have found a knight or woman in shining armor, because they're getting showered with the affection they may not have previously received," she says. "But this form of attention can be a form of emotional abuse used to control people." Societal pressure to find "the One" increases victims' susceptibility, too. "Not having found that can make people feel like a failure and leaves them even more vulnerable to betrayal." Samantha Cooper, who runs Rogue Daters, an investigation company specializing in romance fraud, agrees it is becoming increasingly common. "The most targeted age groups seem to be people over the age of 45 - especially women. By this age, they may own a house or a successful business, or have received an inheritance." As with Anna, many of Cooper's clients struggle to accept that their partner isn't who they thought they were - even after being presented with evidence. "Scammers are manipulative and use grooming techniques," she says. "Once a person has been scammed, in most cases it is impossible to get the money sent back, so our biggest challenge is preventing this from happening in the first place." Lisa Mills is a senior fraud manager at Victim Support, which offers guidance for people affected by scams. She says that romance fraud makes up about one-fifth of the cases in her area of Sussex, mostly targeted through online dating platforms or social media. "A lot of dating websites are trying to clamp down on fake profiles, so criminals are changing tactics and using other platforms, like Facebook. They trawl through profiles to build up a profile of themselves that a victim might be interested in," she says. "We advise people to privatize all their settings, as people with lots of information online can be more easily duped - scammers can create a more 'suitable' partner for them to trust." Although it might not seem romantic, she also suggests people do some research when they meet someone new. "You can use Google to do a reverse image search and check the person's name," she says. "Look out for red flags. Anyone who can't meet up is constantly away or can't phone or video call properly is potentially a scammer."

Adapted from the Guardian online version 10 January 2022

REQUIRED:

Analyze the case above and include the following in your discussion

1. The fraud scheme committed

2. Why such fraud happened

3. How society was able to detect such fraud

4. The difficult position of the society's red flags