If you don’t read any of my other posts, make sure you read this one. Are you familiar with the term “Catfishing”? If not, you should be. Catfishing is one of the most destructive threats to your psyche and wallet that you’ll find on the Internet today. It’s a cyber crime that has infiltrated every state in the United States, and has cost victims thousands of dollars. Think it can’t happen to you? One of my clients thought so too.
Catfishing is defined as “setting up a fake online profile to target people through dating apps/social media in the hopes of eventually gaining their trust and asking for money” (thanks Arizona Daily Star). Since most everyone is on some form of social media, it’s easier than ever for these predators to gain access to us. Just think of the information you put out there that the public can view. On Facebook, for instance, if personal information is set to be open to the public, anyone can see your name, age, location, who your family and friends are, your interests, marital status, and on and on. With so much information at a criminal’s fingertips, it becomes easy for them to identify an “easy target”.
The client I referenced at the beginning of this piece is an older gentleman who is single and isn’t exactly the most technologically savvy individual, but he gets by. His catfishing story fit the profile to a T: a beautiful, young woman from Nevada sent him a message on Instagram totally out of the blue. They began sending text messages back and forth, revealing information about each other, and a “relationship” was formed. He confided in me about his new-found flame, and I warned him from the very beginning to end it and that she (if she’s even a “she” at all) would eventually ask him for money. He promised me that he wouldn’t give her any, and was just having fun. Well, over the course of the month he did give her several thousand dollars in gift cards that she would use to fix her car, pay for a flight to go to North Carolina for a relative’s funeral, and even pay for her flight to visit him. As things progressed, I began to worry about him, and asked for specific information about her – her name, hometown, phone number, and whether they had ever spoken on the phone or video chat for starters. They had never actually spoken, but I got that information, plus the name of her cousin who is the deputy sheriff of a town in California, the name and location of her accountant, and even the name of her business with the documents from when she purchased the business. I’ll give you a second to think about what I found. Give up? Well, no one with her name lived in the town she told him, her phone number was a number in Ohio, there was no one with her cousin’s name as the deputy sheriff in the town in California, the accountant was dead, and her “real” accountant’s picture looked like a guy who was on “Jersey Shore”, and he spelled financial advisor “adviser”. As far as the business (a beauty salon) is concerned: the paperwork was bogus, but a business by that name did exist in the town it was supposed to…it just closed for good in the year she supposedly bought it. After some convincing, the relationship ended, and the money that was to be paid back on a certain date, not surprisingly, wasn’t.
As you can see, these scams can be pretty elaborate. From the outside, this screams scam, but if you’re lonely and want it to be the real thing, you might see how it plays out. Not only is it painful to lose hard earned money, it can be heartbreaking as well, as people often believe that they truly love this fictitious person. The woman in my story gave very specific information. None of it happened to be true, but unless you’re willing and able to do the research, catfishing can happen. HighSpeedInternet.com conducted a study about catfishing. They concluded that there are victims of this deceit in every state of the union, with the five states most likely to be scammed being Alaska, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and Oregon. The state with the highest cost per catfishing scam is Arkansas at a staggering $37,268! If you’re wondering, the lowest state is Vermont at $626. In a single year, victims of catfishing in the United States lost a combined $187 million. If you’d like to read the story, click here.
Catfishing can affect anyone. Always use good judgement to avoid falling victim to this scam. Here are a few things to look out for: don’t accept a “friend” who only has a few “friends” with none of them in common; consider if a picture of a person looks too good to be true (it probably is); if you do begin a “relationship”, insist that you meet this person on a video chat. Always be sure to check your privacy settings on any website so you don’t give away more information than you need to. It can happen to you. Don’t let it.