Scam Alert – Sweetheart

February may be the month of hearts and flowers, but it's also prime time for financial cons.  Today's focus: The "Sweetheart Scam." The reasons for the seasonal lift in these scams are simple enough. Many people, still keeping with their New Year's resolutions, are looking for love and are especially vulnerable to scammers. Others are stuck at home during the winter months and are more likely to answer calls from financial fraudsters. Like younger folks, older Americans are increasingly using online dating sites, and those sites can open a window for scammers. These scammers find an older woman on a dating site and establish a bond. Often, they persuade the victim to take the conversation off the site, thereby eluding any safeguards the dating site offers. Soon, the scammer proclaims "love" and then explains a predicament they say they are in: They have lost their passport and can't get home unless someone can give the embassy money to process their new one, or they're on a business trip and their briefcase was stolen, or something similar. Older Americans are especially at risk. Not only are older victims more likely to lose larger sums of money, there's evidence that our ability to detect deception declines with age. Indeed, those over 65 are 34 percent more likely to have lost money on a financial scam than people in their 40's, according to research by the Stanford Center on Longevity and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's Investor Education Foundation. The Internet Crime Complaint Center, or IC3, noted in it's 2012 report that more than 10 percent of all reported online financial losses last year — about $56 million out of $525 million overall — involved romance scams. The AARP network recommends that from the beginning, dating site members use Google’s “search by image” to see if the suitor’s picture appears on other sites with different names. If an email from “a potential suitor seems suspicious, cut and paste it into Google and see if the words pop up on any romance scam sites,” the network advised. You can learn more about Sweetheart Scams and how to protect yourself by visiting the FBI Scams & Safety pages at https://www.fbi.gov/scams-and-safety