Whitty, M. T. & Buchanan, T. (2012). The Online Dating Romance Scam: A Serious Crime. CyberPsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 15(3), 181-183.
full text pdf
abstract
The Online Romance Scam is a relatively new form of fraud that became apparent in about 2008. In this crime, criminals pretend to initiate a relationship through online dating sites then defraud their victims of large sums of money. This paper presents some descriptive statistics about knowledge and victimization of the online dating romance scam in the Great Britain. Our study found that despite its newness, an estimated 230,000 British citizens may have fallen victim to this crime. We conclude that there needs to be some re-thinking about providing avenues for victims to report the crime or at least making them more comfortable when doing so.
this pdf reports initial findings: how many, who’s heard of it, where they’ve heard of it. Sets the baseline for future research.
i like the description of the scammer’s profile…
• 29% described the profile as physically attractive. • Fake male profile: often described as someone who was widowed, with a child, in a professional job or a businessman. • Fake female profile: often described as someone extremely attractive (looking like a model), a student or someone in a low-paying job (e.g., nurse, teacher).
