TAMPA, Fla. – Some say love is blind, but for the tens of thousands that fall into romance scams each year, it’s love that blinds them into getting swindled out of some serious cash.
Last year alone, scammers made more than a billion dollars off unsuspecting victims, according to the FBI.
Romance scams typically start on online dating or social media apps and tend to follow a pattern. The scammer will usually come on strong with vows of love, and maybe even the promise of marriage early on. In exchanges, the scammer is charming and kind but plans to meet up in person always seem to fall through.
Eventually, the online wooer ends up in a sudden crisis that only cash can solve. The victim is all too often willing to do anything to help, including draining their bank account.
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“I was in such a fog of emotional and financial abuse because it is an emotional and financial rape that happens to you and of course, you blame yourself for a lot of it,” said scam victim Rebecca D’Antonio.
D’Antonio says her scammer did his homework. Using things she’d revealed on her online dating profile to pinpoint her weaknesses.
“I thought I was being smart in the way I was filling it out because I had been through a couple of bad relationships and so I basically filled out my profile from the point of view of this is the package I come in, this is what I will put up within a relationship, this…
