January is the busiest month for both divorce lawyers and dating. For those looking for the latter, a word of caution. According to Action Fraud — the national fraud and cyber crime reporting centre — daters who strike up online relationships between Christmas and Valentine’s Day tend to be the most susceptible to romance fraud.
One of the worst types of this is catfishing. This is when someone poses as someone they are not in order to gain their victim’s trust. Of course, when dating we all give a carefully curated, edited version of ourselves. How many of us have said we love poetry when in fact the last poem we read was at school?
Catfishing, however, is something entirely different. The fraudsters create a fake profile and an entirely fictitious world to reel the victim in, gain their trust, form an emotional bond — and then manipulate them.
Research conducted in 2020 found over a quarter of dating website users had been scammed by fake persona (file image)
Research conducted in 2020 by the banking industry found over a quarter of dating website users had been scammed by fake personas over the past year. Much of this involved sending money. The average amount was £321, although in total £7.9 million was lost in the first half of 2019, a horrifying increase of 50 per cent on the previous year.
But the motives of catfishers aren’t always financial. For some, it’s psychological. They aren’t out to scam people of their money but rather to form an…
