FBI Study Says Seeking Love Online Often Leads to Fraud
Posted on May 20, 2015
NBC NEWS – May 20 – In its annual online fraud report, the Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, said total financial losses to online fraud reported to the federal government last year topped $800M. But that's just a drop in the bucket of what's presumed to be the real cost of online fraud, much of which doesn't go reported. The National White Collar Crime Center, which coordinates IC3 with the FBI, said online fraud is actually estimated to cost U.S. residents and businesses ~$3.5B a year. The worst schemes involve scammers, often masquerading as members of the military, pretending to seek love online. Romance confidence scams were the most-reported kind of fraud last year, with victims swindled out of $14,214 on average. And women were by far more likely to be targeted than men.
