Romance Scams | Too Good to be True

I’m Mike Hackard with Hackard Law. We represent beneficiaries in California estate, trust and elder financial abuse cases.

February is the month for Valentine’s Day, and romance scams are back in the news. A new Netflix documentary, The Tinder Swindler, shows how a smooth-talking, jet-setting fraudster conned multiple women out of an estimated $10 million dollars.

While the victims in this case were younger women, it’s worth remembering that the elderly are especially vulnerable to romance scams.

Whether it’s you or an elderly loved one, make sure to do your homework on potential romantic interests. Scammers are experts at emotional manipulation and use social media to their advantage.

Once they think they’ve established a relationship, they’ll hit you up with requests for money due to some phony emergency. They’ll want your financial data — because they want to raid your bank account. Or sometimes they’ll seek inappropriate photos of you to extort you out of more money.

Con artists will promise the world, but they can never give you true love. So if it’s too good to be true, that means it’s probably a scam.

Stay safe out there.

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