Dating Fraud is costing over 70 million a year, is it the desperate price to pay for getting affection or plain stupidity?

Picture of Chris Large
couple on a date

It’s costing a fortune and scammers are laughing all the way to the bank

Dating online without meeting in person has become the new normal throughout the coronavirus pandemic. But losses to romance fraud reached £73.9m during this period, with Action Fraud receiving 7,754 reports. The true figure is likely to be much higher, as many victims of romance fraud are too embarrassed or upset to tell the authorities.

Why is it happening

It is humans capitalising on other humans’ weaknesses. For what ever reasons most victims let their heart rule their heads and parted with their hard-earned savings. It’s not always cash. It can be precious metals or commitments to guarantors.

We all want attention, loving and care. Many people are lonely and need friendship. Many people are not strong and are absolutely trusting at face value everyone they meet. How many times do we hear people say; I see the good in everyone. Well, those are the ones who are likely to fall victims.

A simple fact is most humans are not trustworthy and, in this instance, it is better to be negative than positive until it proved otherwise.

Online dating fraud has a sliding scale

Extreme Scammers

Scammers fit on a scale and everyone needs to always have this scale in the back of their mind. The extreme scammers are those organised crime groups who are out to get your money. You are targeted and worked. The criminals are often overseas and are very good at creating the deception.

Overseas scammers are easier to spot and there are tell tale signs how they do it. The scammers are interested in quick work typically over a month period and are targeted on results. They will ask for money for tickets very quickly or that they are in trouble and need cash. They will often come up with plausible stories on why they need to be trusted and to give them cash.

These are some of the tactics they use;

  • Scammers may take several months to build what may feel like the romance of a lifetime and can even pretend to book travel to visit you
  • Once they have gained your trust and your defences are down, they will ask you, either subtly or directly, for money, gifts, or your banking or credit card details.
  • Often, scammers will pretend that they need the money for some sort of personal emergency or insist they need the money to travel to visit you.
  • They want to communicate with you through instant messaging and texts rather than through the dating website where you met.
  • The new love of your life has supermodel good looks in the pictures they send you.
  • They express strong emotions for you in a very short space of time.
  • They ask you lots of questions about yourself but don’t tell you much about themselves.
  • They start asking you to send them money. They’ll pretend they need money from you for some sort of personal emergency or insist they need the money so they can travel to visit you.
  • It’s common for romance scammers to pose as a soldier serving in the military as this gives them a good excuse as to why they can’t meet you in person. It’s also a good way to try and win your sympathy.

How to avoid getting scammed

Firstly, your money is your money – never give it up to someone you don’t know no matter how sorry you feel for them.

Never give money impulsively; Make sure your head rules your heart.

If you are thinking of giving someone money be it someone you have met on the internet or even face to face after a year or two. Always consult others. A fraudster will want to keep it between you both and not discuss with others. On the contrary its in your best interest to not only consult family and friends but professionals who are experts in money lending.

If someone asks you to do something that involves a large sum of money or ask them to guarantor or take out finance, always seek professional advice first.

Tricksters and romance fraudsters

The opposite end of the scale is the lone individual who is looking for romance and at the same time capitalising on emptying the victims bank account. These scammers are much harder to identify because they think in their own mind, they are just borrowing money from you and will pay it back. Tricksters and romance fraudsters have been around for generations and are nothing new.

These tricksters often meet face to face and may groom you over many months if not years. They are patient and wait for their opportunity.

Smart tricksters are often chancers, gamblers, risk takers. Watch out for this in their behaviour. It might be buying a new car or house together then re-mortgaging to draw cash out. Perhaps investing and buying property abroad or tax advantageous schemes.

How to avoid Romance Fraudsters

  • Firstly, same as extreme scammers. It is your money, you earned it, worked for it and only a fool is parted from their money easily.
  • Parting with money of any size or description needs to be a HEAD thing not a heart thing.
  • Signing or committing to credit, loans, guarantor is a HEAD thing and nothing to do with he heart.
  • Don’t rely on gut feel, just have it as a principle, say no.
  • Consult with your friends and family. Consult with professionals especially if it’s a large sum of money. Never make the decision quickly and without consultation.
  • Let your head do the thinking not your heart.

Let’s look at the profile of who is typical victim according to research;

70% are women

Most scammed are middle aged = over 40

They are likely to be cooperative, gullible/uncritical, careless, susceptible to flattery, easily intimidated, generous and are good citizens.

They are likely to be individuals with a higher tendency toward idealization of romantic partners.

They are likely to be less worldly and lower educated people

They know little about cybersecurity

They are likely to have standard or uninteresting lives. victims are often asked to urgently send money in an unexpected crisis this is likely to be sensation seeking, a form of impulsivity, excitement in their lives.

It is hypothesized that individuals who score high on external locus of control are more likely to be victims of romance scams compared with those who have not become victims of romance scams.

research on romance scam, victims described themselves as naïve and trusting.

survey measuring kindness are more likely to be victims.

Conclusion

IT’S A SIMPLE FACT; Romance scamming or any form of money scamming involves someone convincing you to part with your money. Some of the reason sound amazing and real. BUT they scammers want you to act quickly and impulsively and alone.

TO stop any money scamming; TAKE YOUR TIME, DON’T RUSH, CONSULT OTHER PEOPLE AND FAMILY. TALK TO A PROFESSIONAL

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Telegram
WhatsApp

Leave a Reply

All areas of health are interlinked

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

Find your initial focus

You might think that physical, financial and mental health are quite separate, and for some people they are. However, often a problem in one area has a knock-on effect on others. Losing your job can lead to anxiety and depression, which can turn you to drink and impact your health.

You might have a severe issue in one area but that can lead to problems in other areas, and the people treating you for the first problem won’t be equipped to deal with these linked issues.

For example, doctors and nurses can treat you for a physical problem but can’t advise you about your job or finances.  Nor for the anxiety that comes with it, apart from prescribing some drugs, which might or might not be the best solution.

We encourage you to take a holistic view – we look at all areas and offer support across the whole spectrum.

health areas interlinked

Even this view of health is simplistic, as you’ll discover later if you go down that route.  You might want to consider overall health, or wellness or wellbeing, which include additional types of health, such as occupational health (how you are in your job).   Then there’s happiness and quality of life – how do these fit?

If you’re interested in that, click the link here to see more information.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Health Areas in Domains

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

Domains

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains. 

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area. You can create your own Action Plan to address this area, and see

Emotional: Anxiety, Compassion Fatigue, Depression, Gambling, Laughter, Narcissistic, Personality Disorder, Sleep, Stress

Environmental: Environmental Issues, Greenness

Financial: Debt, Family Finance, Financial Planning, Financial Wellness

Intellectual: IQ, Personality, Procrastination

Occupational: Jobs for Different Personality Types, Retirement Income, Work Life Balance

Physical: Alcohol, Disabilities, Dizziness, Drugs, Fitness, Food Preferences, General Health, Healthy Ageing, Illness, Nutrition, Sleep Apnea, Smoking

Social: Communication Skills, Communication Styles, Domestic Abuse, Emotional Abuse, Love Partnerships, Mental Abuse, Parenting Styles, Sexual Addiction

Spiritual: Are You Sensitive, Mystical Guidance, Spirituality

Each health area has supporting information and its own questionnaire.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Understand Health

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

Physical, financial and mental health

One definition of health is:

Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. 

The NHS define health as: ‘We use a broad definition of health that encompasses both physical and mental health, as well as wellbeing. This means we are not only interested in whether or not people are ill or have a health condition, but also in how healthy and well they are.’

We believe we also have to consider financial health, as this can easily impact physical and mental health. Click the button to see an example of how these are connected.

 It gets more complicated…

running physical health
See linkages between physical, financial and mental health

What is Health? How about Wellness, Wellbeing or Happiness?

The Active Wellbeing Society (TAWS) define Health as a state of the overall mental and physical state of a person; the absence of disease. They define Wellbeing or wellness as a way of life that aims to enhance well-being and refers to a more holistic whole-of-life experience which also includes emotional and spiritual aspects of life.  We expand on this definition of health to include financial health and mental health, to make it synonymous with wellbeing or wellness.  

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Health domains

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

We break down the overall concept of health or wellness into ‘bite-sized chunks’ that we can actually do something about.  The first level we call health domains.

We like the Life of Wellness site and we have chosen the following domains.

1. Emotional Wellness: Awareness and acceptance of feelings
2. Spiritual Wellness: A search for meaning and purpose
3. Intellectual Wellness: Recognition of your creativity, knowledge and skills
4. Physical Wellness: Need for physical activity and balanced nutrition
5. Environmental Wellness: Positive awareness and impact on your environment
6. Financial Wellness: Debt reduction, cash flow balance or financial future planning
7. Occupational Wellness: Personal achievement and enrichment from your career
8. Social Wellness: Contribution to your community

wellness wheel

Health Areas

Within each domain, we have included a number of health areas. These are specific issues that you can tackle.  Within each health area, e.g. Depression, once you have subscribed we have built additional information and exercises which you can do to help in the area.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

See which domains you should address

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

Having established that we use 8 domains, you need to understand which you should concentrate on.

The 8 are:

  • Emotional
  • Environmental
  • Financial
  • Intellectual
  • Occupational
  • Physical
  • Social
  • Spiritual

 

You can take a questionnaire, which scores you in each domain.  You can decide which domains you are strong in, and which you need to improve.

Another analysis shows which domains you should look at, but also which domains you want to look at.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Locus of Control

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

  • We want to help people in all aspects of their health  – physical, financial and mental. We also provide detailed explanations of how overall health (or well-being) is measured.
  • We believe these things are often linked, so we try and address health holistically. We are building templates, questionnaires and exercises to help you identify what’s important to you.
  • We think people should try and take responsibility for  of their own health as much as they can.  See below for what that means.

People look at things differently.  Some people believe things happen to them, while others believe they can influence what happens to them. Technically this is called the ‘locus of control’.  People can have an Internal or external Locus of Control

So how do you see things?

Psychology Today have a 15 minute test which gives you a summary of your position you can buy the detailed results if you want to.

My Personality Test have a 10 minute test which gives you a summary.

People tend to take more responsibility (locus gets more internal) as they get older.  However, external isn’t always bad – for example if you are physically unable to do some things you can accept it and focus on the things you can do.  This American video explains the concept and gives examples of how this can affect relationships.

locus of control

Internal

  • More likely to take responsibility for actions
  • Tend to be less influenced by others

External

  • Blame outside forces for what happens
  • Don’t believe they can change their situation themselves

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Add your attitude to change - see how you view changes in your life

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

Do you need to change?

No matter how healthy you are at the moment, the chances are that there are some areas you could improve. It may be that you have a real problem in one or more areas, and you would like to make some improvements.

At YouDrive we accept that there are many different degrees of ‘not wellness’ in a large number of different health areas, ranging from physical illness such as covid-19 through mental illness such as anxiety through to financial problems like debt.  We try and help where the problem ranges from ‘slight’ to quite bad’ – after this expert help and intervention may be needed.

However, especially in these times, we have to try and make these changes ourselves, possibly with some help from others, whether remotely or face to face.

The thing is, to make an improvement we have to change some things.

This involves changing our behaviour in some respects, and that’s not always easy.

Henry Ford, the creator of the assembly line, is quoted as saying “if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got”.  

henry ford

Another way of looking at this: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” – attributed to Albert Einstein.

Consequently we need to make some changes.  The problem is that we have already developed a lot of habits, some of which we need to break and replace by better ones.  Some of our bad habits have become entrenched, and the bad results they create in turn engender further bad habits to develop – in effect the bad habits can feed on themselves.

We need to understand how we can make changes and stick to them, and that’s what this part of your health profile is about.

It will involve some learning, through reading, some videos and some additional information and also seeing how you react to change currently.

It will also ask you to consider whether you feel you are in charge of your future, or whether you feel it’s all fate.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Assess your overall health using a health questionnaire

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

At YouDrive we try and help people improve their health. We use ‘health’ but we understand there are other terms such as wellbeing or even happiness that reflect how we are doing in our lives – if you’re interested in the different definitions and ideas see our page on the subject.

We want to help whether you have a particular problem – physical, financial or mental – or if you just want to improve some specific part of your life or just make some improvements overall.

You’d be surprised, but there has been a serious amount of scientific work done in this area over the last twenty years.

So first we allow you to assess your current health (or wellbeing, or happiness).  We do this by questionnaire.  Which one is determined by the type of person you are:

  1. You understand yourself well and want a quick overview of your health and wellness, and will drill down in any areas needing work
  2. You want to do a more detailed assessment and then focus on areas you’re already aware of
  3. You want to look at the whole situation in more detail across all the health domains.

By the way, we take your privacy seriously – we collect information that you choose to provide but we de-identify it as much as possible and will never share it with anyone without your explicit consent.

You can then drill down into some specific areas and there are more questionnaires to see your situation in these particular areas.  We provide you with specific information and refer you to other potential aspects of help. Our next step is to build a personalised action plan – for now we will make a suggestion for you to develop your own plan and then after a time you can see whether this has had a positive impact by retaking the test.

In future we will be engaging with medical and behavioural specialists to devise action plans for individual people with specific situations.

We have an overall questionnaire which you can complete which will assess your current state.

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

Values, Attitudes and Beliefs

You need to scroll down to see all the info in this popup – sorry for going on so much!

We all have our beliefs, attitudes and values – these have developed throughout our life based on who we are and what we have done. Let’s look at what these are.

The University of Reading explain: “People’s values, beliefs and attitudes are formed and bonded over time through the influences of family, friends, society and life experiences. So, by the time you’re an adult, you can hold very definite views on just about everything with a sense of “no one is going to change my mind”.

The combination of your personal values, beliefs and attitudes are your moral principles that guide you in life and affect your behaviour. However, your views can wildly differ to others and in an institution such as a school, these beliefs may be counter to the values of the school, child development or indeed the law.” 

Let’s look more closely at the differences between beliefs, attitudes and values.

Beliefs

These come from real experiences – we think our beliefs are based on reality, but in fact our beliefs colour our experiences; also, an original experience e.g. when we were a child is not the same as what’s happening now. Beliefs can be moral, religious or cultural and reflect who we are. They can be rational (‘it gets colder in winter’) or irrational (‘I am never going to make something of myself’).

Attitudes

This is an immediate belief or disposition about something specific. It is a recurring group of beliefs and behaviours aimed at specific groups, people, ideas or objects. They will normally be positive or negative and we will always behave that way to the target group. Examples of attitudes include confidence (I can or can’t do something), grateful (I an entitled to / grateful for XXX) and cheerful (I am generally happy / miserable).

Values

These are things (principles or qualities) that we hold in high regard or consider to be worthwhile or right / wrong. They are formed by a belief related to the worth of something – an idea or behaviour. Some values are common (e.g. family comes first, the value of friendship) or cultural (which the whole community have – see video at Study.com here)

The theory

Links to Wikipedia

Expectancy Value Theory suggests you balance your beliefs about something with the value you attach to it. The Theory of Reasoned Action suggests that beliefs and evaluation about behavioural outcomes determine attitudes, and intentions lead directly to behaviour.

Beliefs

Expressions of confidence – can change over time

Attitudes

Learned predispositions to something – are subject to change

Values

Ideals that guide our behaviour – Generally long lasting and often need life changing experience to change

Iceberg demonstrating implicit and explicit bias – from Owlcation

To close this box and go back click the X at the top or just click outside the box

A Butterfly Life: 4 Keys to More Happiness, Better Health and Letting Your True Self Shine

Times of change can be a challenge, no doubt! Whether it’s a relationship breakup, job loss, or being diagnosed with a serious health issue. Or you may WANT things to be different, but it feels a little scary or overwhelming. The butterfly reminds us change can be beautiful, even necessary, in order to realize our full potential and live our best life.

Go to Amazon