By Colin McGregor
When we’re blinded by love all sorts of bad things can happen. Isabelle Rivest, founder of the dating site Effet Tandem, tells us that dating site scams cost Canadians a bundle.
According to the RCMP, such sites saw $64.7 million worth of frauds in 2021, with 1,365 victims. “And it’s only 1 to 5% of victims who dare to denounce their frauds,” she observes. “The rest would rather cover it up. It’s a plague!”
Based on fraud reports to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC), romance scams were responsible for the second highest amount of fraud-related dollar loss in 2021 (the first being investment scams). “These scammers are using advanced methods to appear legitimate and trick people into trusting them,” says the CAFC.
Canada is also seeing an increase in the number of cryptocurrency investment scams linked to romance scams. These occur when the person you are in a virtual relationship with tries to get you to invest in cryptocurrency and will end up stealing your money or personal information.
Indeed, it’s a “myth,” says Rivest, that only uneducated or desperately lonely people get scammed. “The fraud artist is a specialist. They’re better organized, better equipped than ever. No one is beyond their reach.” Rivest says that according to statistics, everyone is defrauded at least once in their life – and some unlucky people get frauded from 5 to 10 times!
Fully 54% of Quebecers are single. So there’s a big demand for dating sites. But how can you use them without getting scammed?
First of all, distance is a factor. “There are people who invent a personality. One piece of advice I give is to meet the other person as soon as possible. The longer you wait before meeting them, the more you risk idealizing the other person. If you idealize someone you’re more susceptible to scams. You have to meet them, to not be disappointed, to protect yourself emotionally.”
The CAFC’s advice? Always avoid sending money or personal information to someone you haven’t met in person.
Rivest says that romance scammers often come from other countries. For one country she will not name, she says “their greatest source of foreign exchange is romance scams. The government pays for their internet cafés and pays to give lessons on how to run a romance scam. They’re specialists. They’re extremely good.”
Having herself been scammed by charmers – “I’ve gone through pretty much every horror story you could imagine” – Rivest spent four years developing a dating website that put the emphasis on security. For example, Effet Tandem users have to furnish a date of birth and other personal information, as well as their own photo with three of their fingers on one hand up in the air. It’s a “witness photo – you can’t get those out of image banks,” she says.
The witness photos don’t appear on the website, but they serve to verify the other photos on the site. “If your other photos show someone who’s got all their hair and you don’t have any air on your witness photo, we’ll write you to give us some more recent pictures.”
Nonetheless, Effet Tandem, which boasts about its security features – some of which Rivest says are unique in the world – is obliged to block 31% of the profiles submitted: “30% of those because of their age,” Rivest explains. Their photos don’t gel with their age, and the site writes them to say, “Oops! That doesn’t work, try again. We give them a second chance. The number of frauds on sites without any verification must be staggering.”
One anecdote Rivest recounts concerns a man in charge of a factory who went out with a woman he met on a dating site. The woman convinced him to perform a strip tease in front of a camera (she stripped too, but didn’t film it). The next day, the poor man received a text message with all his contacts, work colleagues and family, with a threat that if he didn’t pay $25,000 his strip tease would be sent to his contacts. “If he didn’t pay his reputation, his career, his job would be done… Once someone’s been lured into this game are they going to go to the police? No. They won’t go.” The man quietly paid up and never went to the police.
Moreover, says Rivest, “4% of men on these sites get 80% of the traffic.” She says it’s because “it’s not natural for men to find the right words to sell themselves, to put their best foot forward on photos. I want to help the 96% of men who go unniticed.”
Everyone on her site gets one virtual flower to send each day to someone who interests them, without writing anything. “There are no words. The flower means I’m not capable of opening up any other way.”
There are also video clips of social workers, sexologists and psychologists talking about aspects of love relationships, “so we don’t repeat our mistakes.”
According to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre:
Look out for these red flags and be suspicious:
- when someone you haven’t met in person professes their love to you
- if the person wants to quickly move to a private or different mode of communication (email, text, Whatsapp, Google Hangouts etc.)
- if they always have an excuse not to meet in person
- if you receive poorly/oddly written messages, sometimes even addressing you by the wrong name
- if the individual claims to live close to you but is working overseas
- if they act distressed or angry to guilt you into sending money
- if the individual discourages you from discussing them or their situation with your friends and family (attempting to isolate you from those who may be suspicious of the relationship)
Also seen on the Reflet de Société website February 3rd 2023
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