According to the FTC, romance scams have skyrocketed over the past five years:
Do you believe this? Do you believe that the number of romance scams has increased 230% and the money amount has increased 500%—in just the past five years? I don't. Come on.
In fact, even the FTC doesn't. Way down in footnote 2, they tell us that the vast majority of frauds aren't reported and refer us to a paper on the subject:
Less than 3 percent of victims complained to a government entity....Less than 1 percent complained to a state Attorney General or other state authority or to a federal agency.
This is such a tiny number that it means the number of fraud complaints is all but useless as a guide to the actual number of frauds committed. If the number of people who were scammed stayed exactly the same, but the share of people who complained about romance frauds rose by just a tiny bit, from 0.5% to 1.5%, it would account for the entire increase reported by the FTC. So the real answer could plausibly range from 0% to 230%. Who knows where the truth really lies?
Data is data, and I'm always happy to see more. But meaningless stuff like this is what produces misleading factoids that bounce around the country forever. The FTC should know better.
Is there anything to indicate the reporting rate has actually changed over time?
This is how I feel about those sexual assault on college campus statistics people throw around. 80% of college women are sexually assaulted? Really? Come on.
I know that the plural of anecdote is not data, but as someone who has been divorced for the last 5 years and has been on and off the dating apps, this does not surprise me in the slightest. The number of scammers of various types out here are legion. Wading through them has become, on one hand, a chore, in that there are so many. On the other hand I’ve gotten better at recognizing them, which is helpful.
But that just means I can move past the potential scammers faster. The reality is that the amount seems to have exploded in the last 5 years since I discovered online dating. The sheer simplicity of setting up a fake account, and stringing someone along to try and pry information or money out of them, makes the barriers to entry very low, while the potential benefits are really high. I frequently have no clue if I’m speaking online with the person who appears in the app or a scammer in another country, possibly even a guy. I’ve come up with techniques to try and bust through that uncertainty, but it’s been a process.
So I have little doubt that the number has exploded like it’s said here.
I lost my heart to that terrible prince in Nigeria. He never texts me back anymore. Is it my fault?
Data *are* data. Data is plural.
Moving from 0.5% to 1.5% isn't meaningless, when there are tens of thousands of cases, and when the behavior persists and increases across multiple years.
Why would victims suddenly 3 times more likely to report? Why is it inconceivable that criminals came up with a new scam, but completely likely that there was a sudden, dramatic change in the behavior of victims?
From Kevin: "Do you believe this? Do you believe that the number of romance scams has increased 230% and the money amount has increased 500%—in just the past five years? I don't. Come on."
Irrespective of the factors mentioned in contraposition, I absolutely believe the conclusion. There is one overriding reason for the rapid expansion of this particular type of scamming--Social isolation. In case Kevin hasn't noticed, there's been a lot of that going around in the past two years.