Apr 5, 2019
The Latest Federal Trade Commission Report on Scamming and Catfishing Romantic scams are becoming big business in America. Romantic scamming expert Rev. Winn Henderson, M.D. was catfished and scammed while he was investigating criminal international romantic scammers and catfishers. Federal Trade Commission data shows how ordinary Americans have been scammed. The Federal Trade Commission has been protecting America's consumers for more than 100 years and now they have a warning about these scammers. They say that romantic-related scams have surged and generated more losses than any other consumer fraud last year. The median individual loss to a romantic scam in 2018 was $2600. This was about seven times higher than the median loss across all other fraud types. Looking at romantic scams over time, they more than quadrupled in number and in dollar amounts between 2015 and 2018. The number of reported romantic scams reported jumped from 8,520 in 2015 to more than 21,000 in 2018. The amount of dollar loss by victims has quadrupled during that period, reaching 143 million dollars last year. International criminals typically find their victims online. They create phony profiles on dating or social media sites and continue to interact with the victim building trust until they see an opportunity to ask for money or items of value. Anyone can be a victim, but romantic scams occurred most often to those between 40 and 69 years of age. Individuals 70 years old and older paid out the most with median losses of $10,000. Rev. Winn Henderson, M.D. went undercover for six months as the an investigating reporter to discover the scammers names, addresses, and types of romantic scams previously identified in this report. As a result of his research he has just released a book which is available on Amazon.com., “The Definitive Guide to Recognizing and Avoiding Romantic Relationship Scammers and Catfishers.”