What to know about the groups behind online romance scams and who is most at risk

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• Ali Rogin:

  It is Valentine's Day weekend, and love is in the air more and more these days. That first spark begins with connections we make on our phones and computers. But not all budding online romances are real. Scammers use texts and fake profiles to win the trust of people looking for love and fleece Americans of billions of dollars every year. I recently spoke to investigative reporter Cezary Podkul, who is writing a book about these scams to understand how they work and who they target.

• Cezary Podkul, Investigative Journalist:

  In the process of doing my reporting on this, I've spoken to multiple victims who've lost over a million dollars, many in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The losses are really staggering. Really anyone, old, rich, poor, young. This targets people of all nationalities, all genders, educational backgrounds. Really, it's a universal scam because of that psychological manipulation aspect.

  So I think all of us have to watch out for the red flags. They involve things like someone being just really friendly, coming out of nowhere and offering to teach you an investment opportunity, sometimes being pushy and forcing you to do things that you don't feel comfortable doing, like depositing more and more money into an investment opportunity that you start to suspect maybe not what you think thought it was.

  So watching out for those things and really just anyone online, contacting you out of the blue, offering things that you're not aware of and weren't expecting. You know, those are the things we should all be watching out for.

• Ali Rogin:

  And if you are caught up in one of these scams, what are the best ways that you have to get your money back?

• Cezary Podkul:

  So, first of all, if you are in the midst of this scam and you're still talking to someone, the best thing you can do, really, is to ask someone, like, show them, like, hey, I'm talking with this person. Do you think it's real? Because if you're still doubting it, getting a second opinion from a trusted friend can really help you kind of realize, oh, wait, no, I am wrong.

  Then once you realize that you have been scammed, the best thing you can do is just report, report the crime not only to your local police, but also to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center. Find your local field office, the U.S. Secret Service, and tell them about this crime. You're often not the only victim. You know these websites that are set up and they're active for many different weeks, sometimes months.

  And so if you report, you're not only helping yourself, but maybe also other victims, because law enforcement may then be able to cluster those cases together, amounts of funds do the investigation and you may find yourself year or two later, might end up finding out from law enforcement, hey, they were able to see some funds.

  And it looks like you may have been part of the same fraudulent website that defrauded a lot of other people. So you're only doing yourself a favor by reporting the crime. You're only doing yourself a disfavor by not reporting it.

• Ali Rogin:

  And what role does cryptocurrency play here?

• Cezary Podkul:

  It's central. It's really the main way that criminals engage with victims by convincing them to send their money using cryptocurrencies. Transfers are instant, they're borderless. The money can go worldwide very quickly and it's always on the move.

  So because of that, it's really important for fraud victims to not delay. As soon as they suspect that they may have been victims of cyber fraud, they should report that crime as quickly as possible so that law enforcement can get started tracing that flow of funds.

• Ali Rogin:

  The people who are reaching out to victims in many cases are often victims of human trafficking themselves, right?

• Cezary Podkul:

  Yeah, not always, but in many cases, yes, because this is part of the business model, unfortunately. And the people behind it, largely, they're Chinese cyber-criminal gangs that have been setting up shop in these countries and in many cases recruiting people through human smugglers into these scam centers to do the dirty work.

  What we're seeing is that people are often tricked online with promises of a well paying job. And so many young people from other countries where they can't get that kind of salary, they'll jump at that opportunity. They'll fly to Thailand thinking they're going to be somewhere around Bangkok. But instead they get smuggled from there into what really can only be described as scam compounds, like entire buildings built and dedicated for the purpose of online scamming right across the border from Thailand to Myanmar. And it's really nothing short of a crisis, human trafficking crisis what we're seeing there.

• Ali Rogin:

  The Trump administration is working to shut down USAID and also reevaluate all foreign assistance money that goes out the door. How do you think that might impact efforts to combat these fraudsters?

• Cezary Podkul:

  So USAID has a broad portfolio that includes anti human trafficking work in places like Cambodia. And that's really important because what we're seeing in places like Cambodia again are people who are forced into situations where they're being told to contact strangers abroad in countries like America to try to get them involved in these crypto scams.

  So any cuts in USAID staffing and funding are going to hurt the ability of local charities and nonprofits to help those survivors to make sure they don't go homeless and making sure they don't get trafficked into the scam centers again is really important. And through those cuts to that funding, it's really, you know, it's not good for the human trafficking victims, obviously. And it's certainly not good for the potential targets of this fraud, including people in America.

• Ali Rogin:

  Cezary Podkul, investigative journalist who's working on a book on this topic. Thank you so much for joining us.

• Cezary Podkul:

  Thanks for having me.