BBB Warns of New Valentine’s Day Scam that Could Get You Arrested

With Valentine’s Day looming, romance is in the air.

If you seek love via a dating app, watch for scammers who only love your money. Scammers are using people to funnel stolen money out of the country.

This con may look like a classic romance scam, but victims are tricked into illegal activity and can be arrested and prosecuted.

Here’s how the scam works.

You join a dating app and start messaging someone who looks amazing.

After chatting for a little while, your new love interest suggests that you chat by text or email rather than through the app.

Everything seems great, but soon, your new beau has some unusual – but seemingly harmless – requests.

They want you to receive money for them and wire it overseas. They may claim to be helping a loved one battling COVID-19, doing a business deal, or representing a charitable organization. If you refuse, your amorous new beau may become hostile, threaten you, or become distant.

It turns out that the money they want you to receive is stolen.

After stealing it, scammers send the money through someone in the United States or Canada, making it harder for authorities to trace.

Money laundering and wire fraud are illegal and although you may be a victim, you may also face prosecution.

You can protect yourself by:

1. Doing your research – Do your research. Many scammers steal photos from the internet to use in their dating profiles. You can do a reverse image lookup using a website like Google Images to see if the photos on a profile have been stolen from somewhere else.

2. Ask specific questions about details given in a profile. A scammer may stumble over remembering details or making a story fit.

3. Never send money or sensitive personal information to someone you’ve never met in person. Cut off contact if someone starts asking you for financial or personally identifiable information (PII), like your credit card number or government ID number.

4. Be very suspicious of requests to wire money or use a pre-paid debit card. These are scammers’ favorite ways to send payments because, like cash, it can’t be recovered once the money is gone.