Ahead of Valentine's Day, the FBI is warning about online scams involving romance.
The agency says hundreds of victims have been conned out of millions of dollars in the Bay Area, and the scams often start with what seems like a harmless online love connection.
"These people are professionals," FBI San Francisco Special Agent in Charge Robert Tripp said. "They’re very good at what they do. They practice and they have scripts that they use on their victims."
Agents say scammers make a connection with someone on social media. After gaining their trust over weeks and months, they ask them to send money for an investment. Then they disappear.
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The bad actors will sometimes ask for cryptocurrency because it's largely untraceable or ask for the money to be sent internationally.
"We have relationships through our legal attachés with overseas law enforcement so we can recover records that help us make our cases, and in some cases, we can actually recover funds," Tripp said.
In the FBI's San Francisco region, there is some good news: fewer people are falling victim than before.
In 2021 in the Bay Area, the number of victims was 720. Last year, there 490 victims.
Two years ago, victims lost $64 million. In 2022, the amount lost was $46 million.
"Granted that’s a very significant decline, but it’s a very high number nevertheless," Tripp said.
Agents aren't sure why that number is going down. Perhaps people emerging from lockdowns are looking for love in safer places or they're catching on to the scam.
In the Bay Area, Santa Clara had the most victims with 132, but Alameda County victims lost the most money: $9.6 million. The most targeted group was people over 60.
"Specifically older women," Tripp said. "It’s roughly a two-to-one ratio of female victims to male victims. However, I do want to state that we do see victims in every age group and in every demographic."
If you think you're being scammed, contact your bank to let them know you may be a victim of fraud and file a report through the Internet Crime Complaint Center and on the FBI website.
