Insight: Apr 1

This week, Insight speaks to the victims of romance scams who discuss how they were duped.

“He seemed attractive, professional, legitimate, clean cut …” –Jenny

“If you are on a dating website you will be approached by a fraudster. There’s no ‘if’, ‘maybe’, ‘but’. It will happen.” –Det Supt Brian Hay, Queensland Police.

Jenny met ‘Gary Reid’ on RSVP when she was going through a divorce. Gary soon asked Jenny to take her online profile down, because they were meant for each other.

It wasn’t long before he started asking for money to help cover some of his business costs. The requests escalated quickly and Jenny says she ended up transferring Gary a six figure sum over six weeks before realising she had been duped.

Romance fraud is on the rise and police say Australians are losing millions of dollars a month.

The frauds are elaborate and sophisticated. Scammers spend months building relationships, sending photos, calling and emailing. When family or the police intervene, many victims refuse to believe it’s all a lie.

This week, Insight speaks to the victims of romance scams.

Women and men discuss how they were duped, revealing both the emotional and financial fallout, and the impact on their families.

The program also hears from police about the difficulty of catching the crooks, and asks whether dating websites and international money transfer organisations are doing enough to protect their clients.

Guests include:

Jenny is a victim of online romance fraud, losing a six figure sum in six weeks. She met someone on RSVP who said he was an American businessman and lived near her in Perth. They emailed and spoke on the phone, but when she asked to meet in person he said he had to return to the U.K. for work. He started asking her for money to help pay some of his business costs. She wants dating websites to take more responsibility to stop scammers.

Tracee believed she was in a relationship with a U.S. soldier. It turned out to be a scammer from Nigeria. He spun a web of lies over five months, culminating in the supposed removal of gold bars from Afghanistan. Tracee poured tens of thousands into fees and taxes for the ‘gold’. She now runs online victim support groups.

Gordon Hannett is a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S Army. His photo has been used in hundreds of online dating scams. He finds about one fake account a week using his image and alerts Facebook to them. LTC Hannett believes people have an inherent trust in the army personnel but don’t know much about the military, so are easily scammed.

Bill had Queensland police knock on his door to alert him he was being defrauded. He thought he had been talking to a U.S Army Sergeant online, who then supposedly passed away, leaving him a box of money and gold. Bill has spent tens of thousands trying to gain access to the box.

Brian Hay is Detective Superintendent with the Fraud and Cyber Crime Group in the Queensland Police. His squad actively disrupts scammers by identifying and contacting potential victims who are sending huge sums of money overseas. He says often the victims they contact are shocked and don’t believe that they are being scammed.

Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS ONE.