I relative reached out to me because she had a friend who committed suicide after have been victim of such a scam. I want to repeat a post, I just found in my searched. All credits go to the author.
Romance scams — the worst kind and none cares
Working in Denmark monitoring group homes for vulnerable and disabled persons has become a challenge in a world where people are standing in line to prey on those who has limited abilities to differ what is real or what you can achieve using modern methods involving use of AI and manipulations of photos and video.
When I talk to the daily staff at various facilities, I see the challenge living in Denmark where you cannot even use a bus or train without greater difficulties unless you own a smartphone. Gone are the days of dedicated smart card solutions for certain purposes like entering an area, using the bank or even using public transport.
The effect is terrible. Not only a lot of people risk loose money, if feelings become involved, the shame by being held fooled for months can in some cases lead to suicide.
We have all heard of classic cases of bullying. Laws are made against them. The problem is that romance scams are just as hurtful. Having attended at least one funeral, I was wondering what can be done against it.
Legal protection
The fact is that there is not much the police can do. They set up false accounts. Some social media have a child-like protection against making false accounts. Take a random example. The actor Gerard James Butler. How many “accounts” does he have on Facebook? A proper ID-check for customers could ease 99 percent of all his accounts in seconds leaving some for his fan groups, his agency for marketing and perhaps even a private one, which then he can guard with help from his agency.
There have already been known cases where people have been fooled with huge consequences. Still if you look on Facebook, you can find tons of posts telling a story about many criminals working towards the same goals. Looking into public registers, hacked databases, Facebook background stories with one aim: Find the next target!
If you call the police, they often give up when the crime is done on the Internet because various hosting services allow them to use a hub in Malaysia or Nigeria because these two countries do next to nothing fighting crime on the Internet.
The private firms like Meta do not case. Worse, the criminal knows that the entire scam cannot take place on Meta. As long as they use Facebook or other traditional social media to lure their victims on to other applications like Whatsapp, Threads, Signal or Zangi, then they can keep their fake accounts on mainstream social media for a long time.
So legal protection? Not possible!
How do they then work?
Establishing trust
People are often saying that the victims should have lured the criminals long ago. But they are good at targeting the victims. They look into alternative medicine groups, spiritism groups. Vicar and spiritism are approved religions in Denmark, so there is nothing wrong with them but they live isolated from each other and they have almost always been treated badly in the past. The trust issue is the first obstacle. Sadly for the criminals you can be trained in this work. In Denmark it is basically the same courses, firms used to sell electrical power or heating solutions. It is a market where there are few laws and people are cheated all the time by bankruptcies where they have been fooled to pay in advance or have a subscription for their contract.
So if ordinary consumers can be cheated, why do we not accept that the victims of romance scams can be cheated?
A quick crisis
When the initial trust issue has been fixed then they start the scam.
Suddenly the actor working on a film abroad cannot use his bank card in a remote country. That is not odd. Try to use a Mastercard or Visa card in The Netherlands. Most shops do not accept them. If you then change your currency into Euros and choose a 200 Euro bill so you don't have to carry a suitcase on holiday, most shops will not accept them. The victims who are good people will of course borrow a small amount.
Or unbeknown to most of the world, a girlfriend, wife or a partner has decided to pull a Swat or cut their credit cards, so they have to borrow a small amount from the victims. Maybe send a gift card or simply transfer a small amount.
A special fan package with a limited period to buy it could be an excuse.
Everytime it is something which must happen fast to “save” the actor.
The victim can become a criminal
In some cases, the victim wired money to the secretary of the actor. Something then does not go wrong and oh, no - of course it is not cheating. The actor promises to send the money back minus a small exchange fee but the money comes from another account.
We have all heard how China ships chemicals to Mexico where smugglers then smuggle drugs to the United States. A lot of money can be earned in that process but how can they get the money back to the criminals in Mexico? One way is to abuse the victims by repeatedly borrowing money to one account in Mexico and then get the money back from another account in the United States. Then the victim starts to be part of something, they will never suspect and in a worse case scenario they can be listed as a criminal in the United States and risk getting convicted of crimes. At least they will be denied entry to a number of countries just because they led their guards down.
It is a losing war on crime.
We cannot prevent potential victims from getting a smart phone. It is their right. To prevent child abuse in residential facilites in Denmark, even children are mandated to have a phone so they can call the national child abuse hotline in cases where either other children or the employees abuse them as it had happened to freqvent in the past. At Danish boarding school, a blog like “Den kritiske Efterskoleblog” has reported several cases of teachers preying on students in recent years. So the phones are needed. Also many group homes for disabled adults have been ordered to close in the last 5 years because residents have been mistreated or in some cases even have died.
The standard in nursing homes also includes a number of sad cases. There have even been convictions of the employees. So phones are needed and at the same time they are now active tools used in international crimes of the worst kind.
I took the liberty of listing how many Zangi accounts Gerard Bulter should have.
This is a random pick just for today:
10-63866597 2605797223 8050113959
1285719201 3480069139 8250812665
9382039450 5317515390 3939103594
9952379370 2861424464 80-7078-3659
5007516100 2809309446 2970130712
8349808196 4778146769 1597841156
8250261250 2605797223 7156398142
3854409983 6969600539 6238747149
And there are many, many more. He even warns against it.
And it is not just only Gerard Bulter. Almost anyone known for anything in the public has their identity doubled and used to fool people. Employees working in the Danish Television industry presenting news has actively sued some of the social media for not putting a system in place that can take false posts down.
Nothing happens.
And the number of victims continue to pile up.
It is just so sad.
Sources:
- Cyberbullying legislation (Wikipedia)
- Romance scam (Wikipedia)
- Facebook oversvømmes af massiv kendis-svindel (Ekstra-Bladet — In Danish language)
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