London: More than 200,000 people in Britain may have been conned by fraudsters posing as would-be romantic partners on internet dating sites, according to the first study examining the potential scale of the problem.
Anti-fraud groups have warned for some time about scams, in which criminals create a false identity — often an army officer on active service, and develop a close online intimacy with a victim, who is then asked for cash to help their presumed suitor out of a crisis.
It had long been suspected official figures for such crimes greatly under-represented their prevalence, largely because many victims feel too embarrassed or hurt to go to the police, or never realise they have been conned. The study by the universities of Leicester and Westminster, working with the Serious Organised Crime Agency (Soca), found two per cent of people surveyed personally knew someone who had experienced the crime.
Extrapolating this to the online UK population means more than 200,000 potential victims.
Monica Whitty, a psychologist and professor of contemporary media at Leicester University, said the pool of those targeted was likely to be greater still as it did not include those who realised what was happening before they lost cash and those who still did not realise they had been conned. The researchers had been "shocked" at the numbers involved, she said.
Veggiedates site rapped
It sounded like the ideal destination for single vegetarians hungry for romance. Dating website veggiedates.co.uk promised to help people "find your veggie dates" and "meet single vegetarian men and women looking for love in the UK".
But the site has been forced to turn over a new leaf by the advertising watchdog after it admitted that the majority of the people on its database were meat eaters. Veggiedates.co.uk admitted that its database of users was shared by several dating sites, and acknowledged that the majority of its members were non-vegetarian and non-vegan.
