Oak Bay police say a resident has lost more than $150,000 after being scammed by someone with whom he believed he was having a relationship.
The man reported meeting a woman online in December who claimed to live in the southern United States.
Over several months, she asked for money to buy plane tickets, pay medical bills and cover other expenses, police said.
The woman said she was expecting a large payment but needed money to secure it, and that once the funds arrived, she would move to Canada to live with the man.
When he refused to share his banking information, the woman stopped all communication, police said.
It’s not an uncommon story. Victims in Canada reported losing $64.6 million in 2021 in romance scams, more than double the $28 million lost in 2020, according to the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre.
Romance scams, in which a fraudster pretends to establish a romantic relationship in order to gain a victim’s trust before making requests for money, became more prevalent during the pandemic, as people were increasingly isolated and online.
“It’s a devastating thing to have happen to you,” said Suzanne Edmundson, a private investigator based in Vancouver who tracks down scammers. Many victims feel shame and embarrassment, which serves scammers, as victims might not report the situation to police, she said.
It’s difficult to lay charges against a person who pretends to have a relationship with someone in order to get money, said Edmundson, president of Axiom Investigations.
“If you voluntarily send money, where’s the crime? The police, their hands are pretty much tied if a victim has voluntarily sent money to someone,” she said.
To lay fraud charges, police need to establish the person had an intent to deceive a victim for their own personal financial gain, said Oak Bay Police Chief Mark Fisher.
Fisher said the cases are particularly challenging because suspects often live outside the country, making it difficult to track them down or pursue any enforcement.
Romance scams are also underreported, because of stigma and shame, and because some victims have shared intimate details that can be used as blackmail, he said.
Edmundson, who receives a call every few weeks from someone seeking help figuring out whether they have become the victim of a romance scam, said she can’t recall a case that led to a conviction in the 18 years she has been doing this work.
A Greater Victoria man currently facing fraud charges related to swindling nearly $200,000 from 16 victims is an anomaly among those who engage in romance scams, most of whom never face charges, Edmundson said.
The man faces charges of fraud both over and under $5,000, false pretence and personating a peace officer related to offences that stretch from September 2019 to June 2022 in Langford, Victoria and Saanich.
In the rare instances in which Edmundson has seen charges, it’s generally because the person has committed other crimes, such as wire fraud or bank fraud, in the course of manipulating a victim to give them money, she said.
Edmundson estimates the average amount of money lost by victims she has worked with who had purely online relationships is about $50,000. Those who had in-person relationships tend to lose more, because they’ve established greater trust, and Edmundson has worked a case where someone lost more than $5 million, she said.
Sometimes, even when confronted with evidence that the person they’ve been having a relationship with is not who they say they are, victims refuse to believe it, Edmundson said. “They’re just so invested. They just can’t bring themselves or just don’t want to face the reality that this all along has been a scam because they feel that they’re in love. And they also feel loved because these scammers are really good.”
Edmundson was recently hired by a family concerned that their loved one was being scammed by a woman he was having a relationship with. Even after Edmundson tracked the scammer down, proving it was a group of men in another country who had other victims across Canada, the victim refused to believe it and continued to send money, she said.
Scammers outside the country conducting fake online romances sometimes go as far as to have “ringers” in Canada who meet victims if they demand an in-person meeting after communicating online for months or years, she said.
Romance scammers often treat their cons like a full-time job and live off the money they swindle from people.
“They go to a computer every day — like other people go to a job, too — they go to a computer, they do their research. They are so good at picking out potential victims and finding the ones that they know they have a really high chance of being able to do this with,” she said.
The scammers cast a wide net to find potential victims and then spend considerable time researching those people, diving deep into their social media accounts to find out what a person likes in order to build trust and rapport.
“They’ll do little tests along the way. And along the way their potential group of victims whittles down, down, down because people start catching on or thinking that something sounds shady and blocking them,” she said.
Fisher recommends being careful about what information you post on social media, researching people you develop relationships with online and avoiding giving financial information to anyone online or over the phone.
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