WATCH ABOVE: New technology and personal awareness are being used to weed out online predators. Christina Stevens reports.
TORONTO – Scam artists are finding prey through online dating sites, but new protective measures are helping people avoid fraudsters.
One Toronto woman spoke with Global News on the condition of anonymity. After watching a Global News report on online romance scams, she reached out saying she had interacted with the same suspected scammer.
“I just jumped up and said oh, that’s David and he had sent me so many pictures,” the woman said. “I didn’t know what to do I was so boggled.”
The woman received a friend request through Skype from a man who identified himself as `David Green’ in February, 2014.
“There was something about this face that got to me. So I waited for several weeks and then I thought well okay, go ahead.”
READ MORE: Online romance scams bilk Canadians out of nearly $14M in 2014
After chatting for a week, the woman says she began flagging bizarre behavior.
“He started calling me ‘my queen’ and ‘oh, you are my queen, and my dear, and my love, and I love you’, and I thought, that’s really weird.”
The Toronto woman said David Green claimed to be a doctor with the United Nations working in Syria. He also said he had a son living in Spain who was in need of a kidney transplant.
“He started with this needing a transplant and wanting the money and I said, well David, my money is tied up and I have a financial advisor and I just can’t get to it right now.”
The woman said it didn’t take her long to realize she was speaking with a potential scam artist.
“I wanted to find out how far he would go with this and I was really hoping I could catch him, I really was, because when it dawned on me, ‘oh my god you’re being scammed’, I thought, ‘oh no, no, no, you’re not going to scam me. I’m going to get you.’”
Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC) says romance scammers often steal photos off social media sites and use dating sites to lure potential victims. The centre claims over $13 million dollars was lost to romance scams in 2014.
John Maitland, a police officer and creator of PhotoVerified.com has developed a new app to help people avoid suspected scam artists.
The app creates an authenticated photo of the user’s online account.
PhotoVerified.com plans on connecting with major online dating sites to help verify the photos of its users.
“People can look for that logo and if it’s not there, they can start to question and say, ‘wait a second, this is a free application that you could be using to verify to me who you are,’” Maitland said. “If they are not photo verified, then you have to ask yourself, ‘why not?’’
Photoverified.com is launching a crowd funding campaign on Monday Mar. 30, through Kickstarter.
“For us, the priority is getting the system out there and making it available for anyone to use on basic level, for free.”
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