Washington is No. 6 of top 10 states where people are most likely to fall for a romance scam

Reported today on The Seattle Times

For the full article visit: https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/washington-has-the-sixth-most-victims-of-online-romance-frauds-known-as-catfishing-heres-how-to-avoid-getting-scammed/?utm_source=RSS&utm_medium=Referral&utm_campaign=RSS_business

Washington is No. 6 of top 10 states where people are most likely to fall for a romance scam

For crying out loud, Jon Louis was even teaching a class on fraud when he got taken in - hook, line and sinker - by the dreaded internet species known as catfish.

Looking back a year or so later the scam is obvious to him, but oh my, how joyful it was to feel his heart flutter again.

"It felt so good to have this beautiful young lady in love with me and wanting to be with me that my heart got in front of my brain," said Louis, an 82-year-old former Seattleite who now lives in Spokane.

Even though he had doubts when the person asked for money, he told himself: "If I was dating, it would cost me more than $2,500. It seemed like a reasonable investment in a long-term relationship."

Louis is among hundreds of Washington residents who admit to having been taken in by a catfish, a scammer who creates a fake online profile to lure victims on social-media and dating sites, feigning romantic interest to earn trust before asking for money and/or valuable personal information. In 2019, Washington state had the sixth greatest number of victims of what the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Internet Crime Complaint Center classifies as "confidence fraud / romance" scams.

Americans lose more money to romance scams than to any other type of consumer fraud, according to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Victims are commonly between the ages of 40 and 69, but those over 70 lose the greatest amount of money to the cons, the FTC reports.

Those numbers may be lower than reality because they don't include people who didn't lose money or those too embarrassed to report the crime.

"Romance scams can bring about some of the most devastating victimizations," said Jason Erskine of AARP Washing