Romance scams are growing in popularity in the United States, with a new report by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) claiming that victims have lost more than $1.3 billion in the past five years.
These types of scams became more prevalent in 2021, with reports increasing by 80 percent compared to 2020. Romance fraud schemes are also reported to lose more money from victims than any other type of fraud that the FTC tracks.
“Reported losses [in 2021] hit a record $547 million for the year,” the FTC wrote in its new report. “That’s more than six times the reported losses in 2017 and a nearly 80 [percent] increase compared to 2020. The median individual reported loss in 2021 was $2,400.”
One such case was that of Richard Dorpe, a Ghanian man who conned a woman in Chesapeake, Virginia, out of $300,000. He was able to pull this off by posing as a man named Jerry Linus on the senior dating website OurTime. The woman eventually ran out of cash and had to take out a home equity loan. Dorpe was later sentenced to more than three years in prison in 2021.
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“These fraudsters know exactly how to play on people’s emotions,” said U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Jessica Aber. “They use third parties to try to validate the stories that are being spun.”
Along with being able to pull their targets’ heartstrings, the FTC also warned that…
