Kathryn Tuggle, chief content officer at HerMoney, joined Cheddar News to discuss romance scams and how to identify them on dating apps.

Protecting Yourself and Your Money from Online Romance Scams

I'm joined now by Catherine tuggle chief content officer, her money Kathryn, it's always good to see you and what, what are some red flags that dating app users should look out for to make sure that they are not getting scammed right? I mean first and foremost is the L word, the L word is going to be flying fast and furious. They're going to profess their love immediately and I think everybody wants to be loved and it's not that you're not awesome, it's just that you need to take it a little slowly because having someone fall in love with them is the quickest way to get into your bank account. Um Oftentimes they're also going to work out of state or overseas. Maybe they're gonna say they work on an oil rig or in the military, but this is going to be the perfect excuse for them to never have to come and visit. You never get on a plane, never be able to face time and never be able to prove to you that they are actually who they say they are okay. Uh These are really good things to know about Catherine, especially this day and age. If you are asked to provide money and one of these romance scams, what should you do in that case? You know, the most common request is going to be money for an emergency, maybe a medical emergency or an emergency with their child or a parent and very often it's going to be a request for a large sum. Uh you know, and the best advice is to just say no, just say no, you know, it's, it's going to talk about your heartstrings, particularly if there are feelings involved but you know, as you said, we saw $1 billion in losses for the very first time in 2022 with 72,800 people falling victim in the United States alone. So these people are very, very good, they're very, very clever. They might even have a fake bill from a hospital, right? But it's, it could all be fake and you were never see that money again. I like that advice, I just say no, right, keep it simple. I think simple and safe is a good recommendation there. I think for some people though there is a stigma, maybe even an embarrassment about reporting that they themselves have been scammed. Why is it important to report one of these scams? If you think you might be subject to one? Well, you know, first and foremost you have to be able to protect other people, you can report it to the Federal Trade Commission, it's very easy to do so at FTC dot gov backslash complaint and the more complaints that are received, the more likely the government agencies are to look into this and block these people forever. You know, make sure that they do go to jail and in some cases you might be able to get some of your money back if the person is caught and prosecuted and there are assets still available, interesting. So, I'm in the intro, we have discussed how match group is now basically warning users providing an in app tool to educate people on some of these scams with its millions of users across its variety of apps. What do you think is the onus for some of these dating app companies, whether it's a match or a bumble, for instance, to protect their users from some of these growing scams, it's a really tough question because I don't think anyone likes to feel like their conversations are being monitored, right? So one possible flag would be that these companies um you know, an alarm is raised if money or wire transfer or I need alone if those phrases are used in the chat, but you know in most cases those requests for money are gonna come long after you're already off the apps once you're already texting with someone or talk to someone on the phone. So really rather than the apps doing more up front to protect people, I would love to see them doing more to prosecute the scammers later on with a dedicated division that can work with the FTC and with the FBI and other agencies that would hopefully deter scammers from ever joining these apps in the first place. Such good advice. Catherine tuggle chief content officer, her money Catherine, thank you so much