OPW – Mar 28 – Monica T. Whitty, Ph.D and Tom Buchanan, Ph.D shared with us their study about online romance scam. This paper presents some descriptive statistics about knowledge and victimization of the online dating romance scam in Great Britain. An estimated 230K Brits may have fallen victim to this crime in 2011 according to this study. These figures are much higher than SOCA or Action Fraud estimated and confirms Action Fraud’s suspicions that this is an under-reported crime, and thus more serious than first thought. In 2011 the UK National Fraud Authority estimated that fraud costs in the UK equate to over £38 billion a year, up from $3.5 billion in 2006.
