Two Birds + One Stone= Finding Justice for Victims of Romance Scams
Right now, you could be at the heart of an online crime. Yes, you. And there is almost nothing you can do about it. Your Facebook profile, Instagram pictures, LinkedIn information, Words With Friends account could either be exploited to make you the target of fraudsters, or your images and life story could be used to prey on someone else. Two birds, one stone.
Online fraud burgeoned in 2019, with the FBI estimating Americans lost $473 million to romance scammers alone. With most of the country in various stages of coronavirus isolation, people are spending more time using social media than ever — user numbers across Facebook properties have swelled to nearly three billion and its stock has hit record highs, no surprise when even the World Economic Forum recommends it as an antidote to lockdown loneliness. But as Americans #stayhome to #staysafe they are unwittingly leaving themselves more vulnerable to romance and other online scams.
Here’s how romance scams work: criminals set up fake profiles and reach out to people, pretending to have romantic interest in them. Over time, through romantic chat, emotional manipulation and promises of a golden future, they induce their victim into giving up money, often lots of it. The criminals don’t just steal money from the victims, they also steal actual identities.
Social media platforms — and Facebook in particular — are crammed with valuable data that romance scammers can exploit. It’s simple to search for people who have recently been widowed, or who have their relationship status set to single. Scammers can buy complete stolen identities on Facebook and Instagram, or take a more DIY approach and make their own by combing the platforms for profiles of people in trustworthy professions — members of the military, international businesspeople, the head of the NSA, and, most recently, COVID-19 first responders.
Colonel Bryan Denny (Ret.), co-founder of the advocacy group Advocating Against Romance Scammers (AARS), discovered that his identity had been used to create more than 3000 fake profiles on Facebook alone. Many people do not realize their photos can be taken and used to prey on someone else; when they do, it can seem nearly impossible to get the fake profiles taken down. A NATO report issued late last year found that 95% of inauthentic accounts were still up three weeks after they had been reported as fake. One nursing student described having to make hundreds of complaints to Facebook before the firm responded. Not on social media? You’re still not safe: Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, told Colonel Denny they couldn’t remove the fake profiles put up by his impersonators because he didn’t have an active account there. As long as fake profiles stay up, scammers can continue to scam.
We have collected hundreds of stories like this and invite anyone who has been or knows someone who has been the victim of scammers to share their experience. Many of the losses endured by Americans last year could have been avoided if social media platforms were adequately protecting their users. When confronted with their failures, social media companies respond with slick but largely unfulfilled promises of a better future, as though taking a page out of the scripts for romance scammers that are actively exchanged on their platforms. Indeed while legitimate users are at risk simply by logging on, romance scams are considered low risk and safe for criminals, because the broken-hearted are less likely to admit to being swindled, and because the platforms do little to pull fake profiles down, let alone punish anyone putting them up. Romance scammers use social media to exploit the best human traits — compassion, generosity, the desire for connection — and heist the rewards of a lifetime of hard work, leaving deep and lasting scars. And yet, incredibly, there is no law against identity theft on social media and no penalty for hosting it. Two birds, one stone, no justice…
…Until now.
Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL-16) understands first-hand how devastating the experience can be, since his images have been stolen and repeatedly used by scammers for more than a decade. Now he’s in position to fight back. At the end of April, Kinzinger introduced two bills designed to hold scammers responsible, as well as the social media platforms that facilitate their crimes. The Social Media Accountability and Account Verification Act (HR 6586) and the Social Media Fraud Mitigation Act (HR 6587) are carefully drawn pieces of legislation intended to make the creation, use and hosting of fake profiles illegal, requiring social media companies to pull them down and holding those who use social media to commit fraud criminally liable. The bills also empower victims by allowing them to file formal complaints about erroneous responses from the platforms, putting these crimes under the purview of the Federal Trade Commission. HR6586 and HR6587 are an important first step in regulating how social media platforms engage with law enforcement when their products facilitate illegal activity and we urge Congress to pass them into law.
But we must do more. We hope Congressman Kinzinger and his fellow lawmakers will go further, making hosting any illicit activity a painful and expensive liability for tech firms. Romance fraud is one of many crimes that find fecund soil on social media platforms. Without real over-sight or regulatory consequences, tech giants will continue to let predatory criminals operate unchecked on their platforms, facilitating the financial, emotional and physical devastation of ordinary people. Over the past decade, tech firms have spent nearly half a billion dollars on lobbying and PR to make regulating them unappetizing to law makers. We have no lobbyists, but we hope the $473 million drained from American communities by romance scammers on social media last year can command the attention of congress members, standing as stark evidence of failure of social media self-regulation and why that experiment must now end. Please sign our petition to join us in encouraging congress to hold social media companies accountable. We have been sitting ducks long enough.
Petition: https://www.change.org/advocatingforu
