GASO consists of many highly educated professionals in their 20s and 30s, some of whom are attorneys, software developers and physicians, who were looking forward to dating but were instead driven into debt, according to and the majority of its members fell for romance scams. The Global Anti-Scam Organization, a Singapore-based nonprofit formed by victims of online scams that often involve cryptocurrency, said more than 400 of its 1,200 group members are in the U.S. The FTC saw an increase in the frequency of romance-scam reporting across all age groups in 2021, but the most significant increase was among 18-29 year olds, Ms. In comparison, about $121 million was lost through bank transfers or payments and another $93 million through wire transfers in 2021, FTC data shows.
That is nearly five times the cryptocurrency amount reported in 2020 and more than 25 times that in 2019, the FTC said. After romancing a potential target, the scammers often make a victim believe they are successful investors and casually offer investment advice for fake opportunities that often involve foreign-exchange trading or cryptocurrency.Ĭryptocurrency was the top method by dollar amount that victims used to make such payments in 2021, at about $139 million. Last year also saw scammers increasingly using romance as a hook to lure people into bogus investments, particularly those involving cryptocurrency, she said.
