📰 Romance Baiting: Westpac Reveals How Dating App Scammers Are Stealing Millions Through Fake Investments

Author

Miko Santos
February 08, 2025

Westpac also warns that a different wave of investment fraud has emerged, described as "romance baiting," where the scammer combines romantic manipulation with fraudulent schemes. The technique, with feelings of emotional vulnerability from online dating, has become so sophisticated that many victims end up transferring large sums of money, thinking they are taking part in legitimate investment opportunities presented by their trusted romantic interests.

Romance baiting operations are also among the leading causes of financial loss among fraudsters. According to the Head of Fraud Prevention at Westpac, Ben Young, they take a lion's share in scam cases. These are highly sophisticated investment-focused schemes that cause the most damage financially.

The Key Points:

  • Investment scams represent almost 20% of all scam cases, yet account for approximately 50% of the total financial losses, showing how increasingly effective and dangerous they are.

  • Scammers invest quite a lot in relationship building. In fact, fraudsters usually spend months building trust before even bringing up anything about investments.

  • Fraudsters are increasingly resorting to using private chat platforms and sophisticated manipulative techniques that avoid detection.

  • These schemes usually boast unrealistic investment platforms, which promise high returns that significantly surpass the average market returns.

Why It Matters: This is an emerging trend, which is particularly significant because it means social manipulation is integrated with investment scamming, hence making this factor more convincing and dangerous. Equally worrisome in these operations is the capacity for exploitation in respect of both emotional and financial susceptibilities, rendering this scam to stand out in resistance and difficult detection by the persons targeted, as well as creating the possibility for heavy losses with potential traumatic feelings.

Bottomline:

This trend portends a critical need, from the financial markets perspective, to enhance due diligence in private investment opportunities, especially those introduced through personal connections or social media.

The prevalence of these scams may lead to increased regulatory scrutiny of digital investment platforms and potentially impact the growth strategies of legitimate fintech companies. Consequently, investors must be skeptical about any offer in excess of a market return for their investments through personal networks and relationships. One must always focus on investing via conventional investment routes and platforms provided by mainstream authorized financial institutions.


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