Online dating scams cause emotional and financial hardship
By Liz Lockhart
Many people with mental health problems feel isolated and turn to internet dating sites to find romance and 
companionship. Mental Healthy has had several inquiries from readers who have queries about this method of finding love.
Research which was conducted jointly by the University of Leicester and the University of Westminster has some surprising findings when it comes to online dating. Online romance scams are a new form of cyber-crime and, the study suggests, is under-reported perhaps because of the embarrassment of having been duped. This type of crime is said to have affected 230,000 people in England alone and has cost the victims billions of pounds.
The online research found that 52% of people surveyed online had heard of an online romance scam and that one in every 50 online adults knows someone personally who has fallen foul of this sort of scam.
In America the FBI is reported to have found that scammers use poetry, flowers and other gifts to hook their victims whilst declaring their ‘undying love’. The perpetrators use stories of severe life circumstances, tragedies, deaths in the family, personal injury and other hardship stories to involve their victims and subsequently to ask for money to help them.
Romance scamming is especially unkind as the criminals spend long periods of time to groom their victims and to find their vulnerabilities.
Professor Monica Whitty of the University of Leicester and Dr. Tom Buchanan of the University of Westminster, the authors of the study said ‘It is our view that the trauma caused by this scam is worse than any other because of the ‘double hit’ experienced by the victims – loss of monies and of a romantic relationship. It may well be that the shame and upset experienced by the victims deters them from reporting the crime. We thus believe new methods of reporting the crime are needed.’
This sort of crime is very serious and all too often overlooked. The cost is both emotional and monetary. Whitty and Buchanan have documented a rapid growth in these serious crimes and describe the devastating financial and emotional losses suffered by their victims. Large sums of money can be defrauded from the victims over a period of months or even longer.
