Victimology and the Overlooked Victims of Romance Fraud As a branch of criminology, victimology focuses on both systemat

Victimology and the Overlooked Victims of Romance Fraud

As a branch of criminology, victimology focuses on both systematic and objective investigation of the victims of crime. In contrast to the previous methods in which the focus was on offenders in most cases, victimology provides academic and applied considerations to these matters of experiences of the victims, and the ramifications of the victimization, and broader social systems that either support or contribute to additional harm of the affected (Karmen, 2021). Traditional victimology has looked at very diverse groups of people starting with the victims of violent crime, the victims of domestic abuse and victims of sexual assault. However, irrespective of the advancements in the area, there still exist groups of victims that have yet to be fully rediscovered and included into the mainstream effort of studying victims. Victims of online romance fraud is one of the representatives belonging to this category--people who have been misled using the digital space to commit financial, psychologically, and socially harmful acts based on their naivete and in the interests of the emotional appeal of individuals who have fallen on life. In this essay, this underrepresented group is defined and critically analyzed, the wide range of ills they are subjected to and the way other people can potentially benefit by it are contemplated.

Romance Fraud victims: a neglected group

Romance fraud is otherwise called romance scam or relationship fraud and occurs where individuals use online dating sites, social media or other online means of communication to develop false romantic relationships with unknowing victims. Without the consent of their victims, the perpetrators manage to make them supply money, gifts, or confidential information on false pretexts (Button, Nicholls, Kerr, & Owen, 2014). In comparison with the victims of physical crime, victims of romance fraud are more attached to a dark side or a marginal group as, in part, their experience takes place in the virtual world and, in part, the social stigma does not allow many victims to report the crimes.

Two-fold reasons explain why this category of victims has not yet been completely rediscovered at the level of mainstream victimology. To begin with, traditional criminology has always laid the stress on those offenses where the exact physical evidence and the damage can be observed by the perpetrator personally like robbery, assault etc. Second, romance scam disrupts traditional notions of victimhood: the tactic includes deceiving, emotional abuse, and psychological control of finances but does not manifest itself in the form of obvious manifestations of physical violence (Cross, Dragiewicz, & Richards, 2018).

Types of Harm Experienced by Romance Fraud Victims

Responses of romantic scam victims range along the continuum of harm far beyond financial loss. These harms may be categorized into three sets interconnected domains; psychological harm, economic harm and social harm.

Psychological Harm

It is psychological impact that can be the most severe one. It is common when the victims express sense of betrayal, humiliation, shame, and depression when they realize that this seeming marriage is a sham act (Rege, 2009). The emotional manipulation causes great sorrow in many as it is very similar to loss of a loved one as the victims were made to believe they had established an honest romantic attachment. The feeling of self-blame can be cumbersome, whereby the victims can internalize the social messages which make them look foolish or careless. It has been found that, in some victims, there is the presence of the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), such as hypervigilance adversion to digital interaction. It is a rather dangerous game (Cross et al., 2018).

Financial Harm

The most measurable of consequences is financial damage. Criminals usually demand money on false excuses, the most popular of which are a medical condition, a trip or an investment. The losses may also vary between several hundred dollars to hundreds of the thousands of dollars and a number of victims lose retirement savings or take loans. The federal trade commission (2022) reported that more than 547 million dollars is lost in prerequisite romance scams by United States consumers in 2021, which is a big rise as compared with what it was in previous years. Notably, these numbers are most likely an underestimation of the actual magnitude of victimization since underreporting occurs.

Social Harm

Social effects of victims are also enormous. Among the most widespread evils, perhaps stigma is the most obvious, where friends, family, and even the law enforcement can address the plight of the victim as ignorant, further contributing to feelings of isolation. Moreover, once the trust in the interpersonal relationships is lost, the effect usually spreads to all future interactions, including online and offline social behaviors because the victims can easily develop withdrawal tendencies. Such betrayal of trust may affect not only professional engagement but also friendship and even actual romantic relations contributing to the accumulated social drain of the fraud further in time.

Profiting from Victimization

Romance fraud is the perfect example of the use of victim sufferings to make profit by the offenders, among others. The scammers are the most evident gainers as they take huge monetary and valuable amounts of information out of the victims. Yet not only the single individuals are exploited.

Crime Gangs

Fraud is commonly assisted by organized transnational crime networks that have complex schemes across borders (Interpol, 2020). They will recruit people to become their money mules, employ technology savvy personnel to open false accounts, and by utilizing networks around the world will launder stolen cash. The gained profits will not only be beneficial to the individuals, but also to fund their way of other organized crimes like drug and human trafficking. In this respect, criminal organizations are financially supported by the victim losses that directly fund the larger criminal enterprises.

Online Marketplaces and technology firms

Another, more oblique, but ethically questionable side exists as well the technology platforms used to host the like of a fraudulent activity can in turn profit off of said activity. Companies facilitating online dating, social media, and communication apps earn their money by user subscriptions, advertising, and data but most of the companies are criticised by being improperly invested in fraud prevention or victim support (Whitty, 2019). They might not actively seek to harm its victims, but the model of their business has an indirect impact on keeping high numbers of users, even on those accounts that may be fake. This poses some questions to ethics of corporate responsibility in the prevention of victimization.

Secondary Exploiters

Lastly, there is the risk of secondary exploitation of the victims by the so-called recovery frauds where close relatives of the scammers present themselves as law enforcement officers or even a private investigator and promise to help a victim retrieve their lost money at an extra cost. These plans also add to the losses experienced by the victims as well as add to their psychological trauma.

Why This Group Remains Marginalized in Victimology

There are multiple reasons related to why the victims of the romance fraud are marginalized in victimology. To begin with, their experiences are concealed by victim-blaming discourses in society. The victims are regarded as naive people or greedy, which is contrary to the sympathetic context in which the victims of violence crime are commonly placed (Cross et al., 2018). Second, the physical evidence of not seeing any injuries in romance fraud makes it more difficult both for the general and criminal justice systems to think of romance fraud as a real crime. Third, the fast dynamic of the technological development poses difficulties to the research institutions and policymakers as they may not be able to keep with the current technological ways of committing digital fraud.

Invisibility of this group is also enhanced by the fact that there are no effective legal remedies in place. Financial fraud may at times be resolved by the consumer protection legislation, but the romance scam cross-border bring up issues of jurisdiction. A victim does not have many options and this further instills the notion that the victimization is not traditionally related to criminality.

Critical Evaluation and Policy Implications

The establishment of a new victim category called romance fraud victims, has important policy, prevention and support implication. To start with, more scholarly interest may lead to the shift in the discourse towards admission of the structural and the psychological dynamics of victimizing people rather than finding excuses in their characters. To illustrate, isolation that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic boosted online dating, which led to even more chances of fraudsters (Whitney, 2021). Contextualization of victimization in the larger social and technological structures helps researchers bring out the weaknesses of the system as opposed to the deficiencies of individuals.

Second, it is necessary to increase victim support services focusing on the specific needs of the romance fraud victims. The component of financial literacy should not be the only line adapted in counseling programs concerning financial matters, but also grief recovery, trauma counseling and recovery of social trust. Stigma reduction and report promotion through community outreach would contribute to better numbers that result in improved collection of data by the researcher and policymakers.

Third, more accountability of corporations in the sphere of technology platforms is urgently required. Online dating and social media companies ought to be mandated on stricter checks and balances in place, fraud sensations, and even coming to the aid of victims, as is required of financial institutions that deal with anti-money laundering checks and balances. This would reward their duplicity in making money off fraudulent activity whilst instituting systemic protection against victimisation.

Conclusion

The victimology as a discipline keeps evolving in its own acceptance of different and numerous populations of victims of crime. One of such sections of society which has not been fully brought into the criminological study of criminals is the romance fraud victims. This causes great psychological, financial, and social damages to these people, with the criminals and others, including organized criminal groups and technology platforms, benefiting off the victims. This is added to by their invisibility that is exacerbated by stigma, legal difficulties, and the narrative society has on their suffering. The acknowledgment and solution to the situation of the victim of romance fraud would not only broaden the boundaries of the victimology but will also help implement a more demographically equal and more effective reaction.

References

Button, M., Nicholls, C. M., Kerr, J., & Owen, R. (2014). Online frauds: Learning from victims why they fall for these scams. Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 47(3), 391–408. https://doi.org/10.1177/0004865813510349

Cross, C., Dragiewicz, M., & Richards, K. (2018). Understanding romance fraud: Insights from domestic violence research. The British Journal of Criminology, 58(6), 1303–1322. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjc/azx045

Federal Trade Commission. (2022). Consumer Sentinel Network: Data book 2021. https://www.ftc.gov

Interpol. (2020). Romance scam investigations. https://www.interpol.int

Karmen, A. (2021). Crime victims: An introduction to victimology (10th ed.). Cengage.

Rege, A. (2009). What’s love got to do with it? Exploring online dating scams and identity fraud. International Journal of Cyber Criminology, 3(2), 494–512.

Whitty, M. T. (2019). Do you love me? Psychological characteristics of romance scam victims. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 22(2), 105–109. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2018.0144