Relationships are notoriously difficult, a hard truth that\u2019s been both an ongoing trauma for people in search of love and an ongoing goldmine for everyone from divorce lawyers to dating sites. One of the biggest and most successful of those dating sites has been eHarmony, with its comforting focus on serious relationships and its much-hyped grounding in solid psychology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The company points with pride to its vast numbers of success stories, and indeed there are worse places to go looking for love. Unfortunately there are also a great many eHarmony scammers, looking to mine the site for emotionally vulnerable victims. Here\u2019s how to recognize the site\u2019s shady players, and protect yourself against being victimized. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Every dating site has its own unique personality. Tinder, for example, famously became a billion-dollar startup by making it easy for twenty-somethings to find quick hookups. eHarmony is very different, almost the \u201canti-Tinder\u201d (actually eHarmony came along several years earlier, so perhaps it\u2019s fairer to call Tinder the \u201canti-eHarmony\u201d). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
eHarmony has arguably the best, and certainly the most wholesome, backstory imaginable for a dating site. Founder Neil Clark Warren<\/a> is a theologian who also holds a Ph.D. in psychology, and spent years in a marital counseling practice. The idea for eHarmony grew out of his clinical experience: Many of the couples he counseled simply had too little in common, he felt, to build a successful relationship. In response, he created eHarmony, with its famously\/notoriously detailed questionnaire, in an attempt at bringing science into affairs of the heart. In many interviews, including this one from 2005<\/a>, he explicitly described his work as an attempt at improving the quality of marriages and reducing the divorce rate. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The company\u2019s advertising has always focused on a desire to help people make deep connections and form serious relationships. Unfortunately, that very focus is why eHarmony is like catnip to scammers: A successful scam requires victims to commit to the relationship, and eHarmony is all about commitment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Fans of jazz or classical music (or for that matter, the Grateful Dead) know that a skilled musician can craft a nearly infinite number of variations on a musical theme. Scammers, unfortunately, have that same degree of creativity. There are many versions of the classic \u201csend me money\u201d scheme, but they\u2019re all variations on the same basic theme. <\/p>\n\n\n\n During the first stage, the scammer rapidly builds a relationship with you based on shared interests and attitudes. You\u2019ll be showered with messages, compliments, and maybe even small gifts. Then, once you\u2019re well and truly invested in the relationship, there will be a request for money. It\u2019s often a small amount at first, and the explanation will be entirely plausible and in keeping with the persona they\u2019ve established. A few examples (of thousands!) might include the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you\u2019ve sent money the first time, you cross the line from being groomed to being exploited. From that point, the requests (and sometimes, demands) for money will keep coming. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A variation on the standard money-oriented scam is investment fraud. The setup here is that the scammer either is actively involved in a highly lucrative investment scheme and wants to cut you in on it, or has been offered an exceptional investment but lacks the resources to take full advantage. The latter of those is a simple money grab, like the scams listed above, but the former is both sneakier and potentially costlier. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the investment scheme scam, your crush will be involved with some form of unconventional investment \u2014 often cryptocurrency, at present \u2014 that offers returns at well above market rates. You\u2019ll be coaxed to invest your money, often paying out a few commissions or \u201cbrokerage fees\u201d along the way, and will receive glowing reports on how your money is growing. This keeps up for as long as you continue to send money, but the tune changes once you want to cash out. At that point you\u2019ll be told you need to pay various administrative fees, penalties or taxes in exchange for withdrawing your money. The scammer then disappears, along with the so-called fees and taxes as well as your \u201cinvestment.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This one\u2019s not always a romance scam \u2014 plain ol\u2019 greed can hook people into it as well \u2014 but it works better if you trust the scammer, so it often comes wrapped up in a romance scam. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Not all scams ask for money directly. Some take an indirect tack, and can actually be more costly (and even downright dangerous) than the straightforward \u201csend me money\u201d frauds. Usually these scams are pitched as doing a favor for your online crush.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In one common version, the scammer \u2014 who\u2019s always got a plausible reason for being out of town \u2014 has obligations to meet, and asks you to look after it for him\/her. You\u2019ll receive a check, or a wire transfer, and then transfer money to various destinations. If it\u2019s a check, it subsequently bounces and you\u2019re on the hook for the money. If it\u2019s a transfer, there are a couple of ways it can work: Either the transfer was paid with a fraudulent credit card and was reversed, again leaving you on the hook; or the transfer was legit but the funds were not, and you\u2019ve just helped criminals launder money<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n A second variation of the same basic theme may ask you to ship things out of the country for the scammer, ostensibly either because the seller doesn\u2019t ship outside the U.S., or \u201cit\u2019s just some stuff I left behind,\u201d or perhaps \u201cit\u2019s a box of documents I need for my business\/court case\/whatever.\u201d In reality it might be stolen goods, or gift cards purchased with illicit funds (again, money laundering). In a worst-case scenario, the package might contain drugs or other illegal substances. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That last scenario has a wrinkle that\u2019s especially dangerous for victims, in which the scammer asks you to pick up something in \u201cPlace A\u201d and bring it to \u201cPlace B.\u201d If the contents of that package happen to be illegal, and you\u2019re caught, you could face jail time (or in some countries, the death sentence). <\/p>\n\n\n\n One more type of scammer you\u2019ll often encounter isn\u2019t directly after your money (or at least, not just<\/em> your money). They\u2019ll use eHarmony to build trust with victims for the purpose of phishing and identity theft<\/a>, rather than defrauding you directly. They may send you a link to a malicious website, for example, that masquerades as a legitimate site in order to steal your login and password. Alternatively, they might use a link in a message to infect your devices with malware, which in turn gives them access to passwords, financial information and anything else they can find. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This opens the door to a number of unpleasant possibilities. One, of course, is that they\u2019ll gain access to your accounts and loot them. A farther-reaching danger is that they\u2019ll combine your ID with personal information they\u2019ve gleaned through their conversations with you, or your social media accounts (you friended them, right?) to steal your identity. With enough personal information, they could get credit and make purchases in your name, use your accounts to phish your friends and family, and ultimately sell your information forward to other scammers for a final profit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n While the bad news is that scammers can work thousands of variations on a given theme, there are just a handful of recurring themes that they return to over and over again. That means the good news is that informed eHarmony users can learn to recognize and avoid them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Most scammers share a number of distinct behaviors and characteristics in common. A few of these include the following: <\/p>\n\n\n\n This relatively brief list barely scratches the surface. For a deeper dive into which scams are out there and how to recognize them, you can turn to a number of sites, beginning with eHarmony\u2019s own safety tips<\/a>. The AARP has an excellent page<\/a> about romance scams, so does the FTC<\/a>, and the BBB\u2019s Scam Tracker<\/a> (choose \u201cRomance\u201d as the scam type) is hair-raisingly instructive. We\u2019ve covered romance scams repeatedly on this blog as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Educating yourself is just the first step in protecting yourself from scammers on eHarmony (or any other dating or social media platform, for that matter). Most of us are attuned to the risks of sales offers that seem too good to be true, but we don\u2019t apply the same degree of skepticism to the people we meet online<\/a>. That doesn\u2019t mean you need to be paranoid, because most people are not,<\/em> in fact, out to get you. The best way to sum up a good balance might be \u201ctrust…but verify.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n The photos on a dating profile are a good starting point, because of course most scammers won\u2019t post a real selfie. Photos on a fake profile are often professional shots from a stock photo agency, or outright stolen from someone else\u2019s social media accounts. It only takes a moment to paste those profile photos into Google\u2019s reverse image search tool<\/a>, and see if they\u2019re out there on the Web. If they turn out to be stock photos, or if they show up on someone else\u2019s social media accounts (or a bunch of dating sites, under different names) that\u2019s the biggest and reddest of flags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Verify the person (or perhaps, the persona) as well. At the very least, you\u2019ve got a name and a putative location, and if you\u2019ve been communicating off-site you might have a phone number and email address as well. Look those up with Spokeo\u2019s people search tools<\/a>, and verify that the information you\u2019ve got corresponds to a real person in that same location. If your eHarmony \u201cmatch\u201d claims to own a business, search the business as well. If it appears to have no online or legal presence, or if its website looks like something a high-schooler could have thrown together in 15 minutes, that\u2019s also grounds for plenty of sober second thoughts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Oh, and one last point: eHarmony will email you if someone you\u2019ve been in contact with is removed from the platform as a potential scammer. You might want to make a point of reading their mails, and not simply assuming they\u2019re promotional.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you suspect you\u2019re in contact with a scammer, or that you\u2019ve already been scammed, you\u2019re (sadly) in good company. The FTC reported<\/a> a record-high $304 million in losses to romance scammers during 2020, an increase of about 50 percent over 2019. Furthermore, all age groups were affected: Twenty-somethings were the fastest-growing group in the report, the 40\u201369 age bracket was the likeliest to lose money, and the over-70s had the highest losses per incident. Even worse, those numbers are almost certainly understated<\/a> because many victims are ashamed to admit they\u2019ve been taken in. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Twelve-step programs like to say \u201cadmitting a problem is the first step to fixing it,\u201d and that certainly applies here. If you\u2019ve been scammed, your money is probably gone for good, but reporting the fraud can help make it at least incrementally harder for scammers to swindle people in the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Start by reporting your match<\/a> to eHarmony itself, along with any evidence you\u2019ve gathered. If scammers have used the same profile to contact others as well, being blocked by eHarmony might save them from being victimized. If you\u2019ve suffered a financial loss, report the fraud to the FTC<\/a>, the FBI\u2019s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)<\/a> and your own local law enforcement. If you used a wire transfer, gift cards or similar mechanism to send money, alert those companies as well. Finally, sharing the details of the scam on the BBB\u2019s Scam Tracker might help someone else recognize and avoid a similar trap. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve been hoodwinked by a romance scammer, whether money has changed hands or not, it can be hard to think about going back to eHarmony or another dating site. It\u2019s completely understandable: Romance scammers aren\u2019t going to disappear tomorrow (though researchers are trying to automate the process of identifying them<\/a>), and the idea of being fooled again can be almost too much to bear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n That doesn\u2019t mean you should quit trying, any more than a bad meal means you should stop eating at restaurants. There\u2019s a popular saying that \u201cit\u2019s only a mistake if you don\u2019t learn from it,\u201d and that certainly applies here. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The need for companionship, to love and be loved, is perhaps the deepest of all human needs; and dating sites are a useful tool in meeting that need. Just remember to treat it like any other tool: If you hurt yourself, learn the hazards and the corresponding safeguards before using it again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking for a partner is an act of optimism and faith in yourself. Never let a scammer quell those permanently. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Relationships are notoriously difficult, a hard truth that\u2019s been both an ongoing trauma for people in search of love and an ongoing goldmine for everyone from divorce lawyers to dating…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":25243,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[616,614],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dating-advice-how-to","category-safety"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Classic \u201cMoney Sting\u201d eHarmony Scammer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Investment Scammer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Dangerous \u201cDo Me a Favor\u201d Scammer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cGone Phishing\u201d Scammer<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Recognizing eHarmony Scammers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Protecting Yourself from eHarmony Scammers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
What To Do Next<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Getting Back in the Saddle<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Sources<\/h3>\n\n\n\n