Summary
The cruel multi-million-dollar business of scamming lonely hearts out of their money by posing online as the perfect lover.
Vishala Sri-Pathma speaks to victim David in the UK, who gave almost $20,000 to a woman he met online and hoped to marry and start a family with, before discovering "she" was actually a fraudster. Meanwhile Australian Eliza tells of her amazement at the amount of homework the con artist she encountered must have done researching her background before attempting to swindle her.
Such cases are becoming ever more common thanks to the internet, which enables scammers to mine would-be victims' social media sites for valuable information, while concealing their own identity on dating apps. David Clarke, chair of the UK fraud advisory panel, says it has made romantic fraud a valuable international criminal enterprise.
(Picture: Woman looks at smartphone while biting lip; Credit: DeanDrobot/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Business Daily with me, Vishala Sri Putma. |
| 0:16.6 | Meet David. He fell in love on the internet. |
| 0:20.9 | I was very happy. She was becoming the love of my life. |
| 0:26.1 | It was so lovely to know we wanted a family. |
| 0:31.2 | But David's dream of true love turned sour. |
| 0:34.5 | When it transpired, his online lover was a fraudster, conning him out of |
| 0:39.7 | $20,000. I remember when I first noticed that she looked me back. On today's program, we take a look |
| 0:51.7 | at the multi-million pound world of romantic fraud. |
| 0:55.6 | You know, these frauds, they may look great. Of course, they've got lots of money. |
| 0:58.9 | Some of them, because they're earning so much from their crime. |
| 1:01.5 | They have the gift of the gab. |
| 1:03.6 | They learn their art over years. |
| 1:06.4 | And they are actually some of the most cruel criminals we've got. |
| 1:10.1 | That's coming up on Business Daily on the BBC World Service. |
| 1:12.9 | I could tell there something that changed how you looked at me there. |
| 1:21.2 | I contacted her on the dating site and we got talking. |
| 1:27.4 | She seemed to know that we met in London and she said |
| 1:34.0 | that they were good times and that's why I kept on talking to her. David Hazel is in his 50s |
| 1:41.8 | and was hoping to find love online. |
| 1:46.8 | So he joined a couple of dating sites. |
| 1:49.5 | One afternoon he was searching potential matches and he spotted a familiar face, someone he had met before on a trip to London. |
| 1:55.1 | She said that she missed me and it was nice that I hadn't found anybody yet and you know she'd like to meet up and um |
... |
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