‘Please add me as a friend’: romance scammers are targeting vulnerable people on charity Facebook pages
Romance scammers are targeting vulnerable people on charity Facebook pages for people discussing mental health, bereavement and ageing.
We’ve found multiple examples of dodgy profiles lurking on pages belonging to Age UK, Mind and The Good Grief Trust. Most commonly, the scammers pose as middle-aged widowed men from the US and attempt to befriend and groom potential victims.
Read on to learn about the tactics used and for advice on how to identify genuine posters from fraudsters.
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Contacting the recently bereaved
Bereavement charity The Good Grief Trust has around 55,000 followers on Facebook and its page is routinely targeted by romance scammers. In April, we found 15 fraudsters commenting on posts.
One scammer impersonated a US Army general – Paul LaCamera – whose name had been used in other scams to such an extent that the US Army put out a warning on its social media channels.
The other 14 accounts we identified all used fake profile pictures. The example below shows a profile in the name of ‘Jonn James’ discussing grief with another poster before asking them to add him as a friend. We identified that this profile was using a fake image and reported it to Facebook.
Starting a life together
We sent a friend request to another scammer who repeatedly responded to comments on posts about grief. When we looked more closely at their profile, it was full of posts about grief and bereavement.
Again, we found that the picture used on the account belonged to someone else. We traced it to a page on Instagram where the genuine owner had posted a warning about scammers impersonating them.
When we initiated a conversation with the scammer, they asked who we had recently lost and told us that they’d like to get to know us better. They then asked for a picture and eventually started talking about us starting a life together, which is a common grooming tactic.
The Good Grief Trust didn't respond to our request for comment.
'It has reached the point where I rarely comment on posts’
Sophia Brown (not her real name), 76, would regularly comment on posts celebrating 100th birthdays on Age UK’s Facebook page until she started to receive suspicious messages from profiles which claimed to be based in the US.
In the messages, the users asked her to become Facebook friends with them. ‘It was never-ending,’ she recalled. ‘If you scrolled through, you could see these scammers targeting other people.’
Initially, Sophia would block the profiles, but after hundreds of messages, she eventually decided to leave the Age UK Facebook page.
When she reported the profiles to Facebook, she was told that they didn’t go against its community standards.
Targeting older people
On Age UK’s Facebook page, we found several examples of the type of scammers that targeted Sophia. One of them even used an image that had been linked to previous romance scams and was published as a ‘popular face used by scammers’ by a Facebook group dedicated to battling romance fraud. We reported this to the charity.
Caroline Abrahams, from Age UK, told us: 'We take a number of actions to try and prevent scammers targeting people on our pages.
‘All comments are monitored and moderated hourly, any scammers are immediately banned and we contact any of our audience who we’ve seen engage with them to warn them they're potentially talking to a scammer.
‘We provide instructions on how to block the scammer and secure their account. We also publish regular posts about scammers, have keyword blockers in place and are in touch with Facebook about how we can fully attempt to shut down scammers in the future.’
Infiltrating mental health pages
The mental health charity Mind is also being targeted by romance fraudsters. Here, we saw a scammer use the same tactic on a post about depression.
When we added the user as a friend and opened dialogue with them, we traced a picture they sent of ‘themselves’ back to a famous Venezuelan singer.
Jen Walters, from Mind, told us: ‘We moderate almost every comment within eight hours, review all approved comments at the beginning of a moderation shift, and hide a sizable amount of spam, scams and safeguarding concerns.
‘Unfortunately, where there is a less obvious indication of risk, for example where a person’s profile is not easily identified as fake, or the comments are targeted and not spammed, bad actors can sometimes be difficult to identify, even with our robust processes.
‘To address these sorts of scammers effectively, organisations such as Mind need better support from social media platforms in tackling these people at sign-up, before they get a chance to prey on those we support.’
The tactics used by romance scammers
Romance scammers start the grooming process by befriending you, before trying to establish a romantic connection. Common tactics involve contacting you constantly, flattering you and making you feel special.
In our report on the psychology of scams, we found that scammers often built relationships with their victims by establishing similarities. This worked to eliminate the victims’ doubts about the person messaging them being genuine.
The end game is that romance scammers will eventually ask you to send them money for what sounds like a legitimate cause, such as to pay for hospital treatment or to cover debts because they have lost their job. We’ve also seen examples of people being asked to invest in fake cryptocurrency platforms – this is known as ‘pig butchering’.
Romance scams can have a huge financial and emotional toll on victims. In the 13 months leading up to May 2022, female victims reported losses of £63m and £32m for male victims. However, the true losses are likely to be much higher.
To protect yourself from romance scammers, you should avoid befriending strangers online or via social media. If you’re suspicious about an online profile, you can use TinEye to try to trace the source of its profile picture. It's also worth searching the name used on the profile, as it may have previously been used by a scammer.
Signs you’re talking to a scammer
Signs commonly include their profile being too good to be true, usually in terms of attractiveness, and them quickly asking you to move the conversation away from social media. This is to avoid being monitored.
You should also be wary if you’ve been talking to someone for a long time, but they don’t want to video chat or meet face-to-face.
It’s also important to remember that romance fraud is a type of grooming and these scammers will try to emotionally manipulate you by making you feel guilty, asking you to keep secrets and telling you made up stories to persuade you into parting with your money.
How to report a profile on Facebook
To report a profile on Facebook, select the three dots in the top right-hand corner of the person’s profile page and click ‘Find support or report’. You can then select the reason for reporting the profile.
To block a profile, click on the same three dots and select ‘Block’.
We reported a series of dodgy profiles to Facebook as part of this research. Facebook said that it didn’t remove them as they didn’t go against its community standards.
Which? also contacted Meta (Facebook's parent company) to share our findings. Meta told us that it has taken action against the accounts we brought to its attention and said it's against Meta’s rules to impersonate someone else on its platforms.
It said it blocks millions of fake accounts every day and works closely with law enforcement to support investigations and keep scammers off its platforms.
Which? is campaigning to hold tech giants, including Facebook, to account for not doing enough to protect users. Sign our petition to help us demand stronger new laws from the government to protect consumers from online scammers.
