From Facebook to Tinder, older Americans increasingly targeted in love scams amid Covid-19 pandemic
- Adults aged 60 and up were swindled of over US$139 million during 2020 – 65 per cent more than in 2019, the US FTC says
- Those aged 70 and older reported the highest median losses from romance scams: US$9,475
Do you know the cost of love? True love’s cost may be immeasurable, but the cost of romance scams totalled at least US$304 million in 2020.
And that is just the tip of the iceberg, says the Federal Trade Commission, because many victims of romance scams are embarrassed to come forward.
One woman who did, Kate Kleinert, a widower in Pennsylvania, told the Senate Special Committee on Ageing last month how she got caught up in a romance scam that cost her about US$39,000 – and her pride.
After getting a friend request on Facebook in August 2020 from a man, Kleinert began corresponding with him on another app. “Tony” said he was working in Iraq on a contract with the United Nations and after he asked, she sent gift cards to him and his children.
He planned to meet her in Philadelphia in December but did not show up. Then someone purporting to be Tony’s lawyer called saying he needed US$20,000 for Tony’s bail. “The lawyer told me to do whatever I could – put a mortgage on my house, borrow it from someone in my family,” she testified. “I couldn’t do it.”
Eventually, “I was living off my credit cards and he was getting what I took from Social Security and my pension”, she said.
Scammers are very sophisticated. And no one should be embarrassed that this happened
Kleinert, who eventually learned the pictures sent by Tony were of a doctor in Spain, said she testified over frustration at an inability to get justice and “it’s so devastating and many people have been through this but not spoken about it”.