A 66-year-old single woman CBS News is calling “Sue” had saved more than $2 million for her retirement and hoped to travel the world — but she wasn’t done looking for love.
“It’s like, man, I really would do better if I had a male companion,” Sue said.
So she turned to the dating app Match.com and quickly connected with a man who used stolen photos, claiming to be a private equity investor in the United Kingdom and called himself Santos.
After weeks of nonstop romance, Santos said he needed help renewing a professional license and asked Sue for $40,000 dollars.
“I was in a position, I could help a person. Why not? I never thought he was stealing or scamming. There was no reason,” Sue said.
But from then on, Sue says, it was full-speed into an elaborate and relentless stream of lies, deception and emotional abuse that drained her of the $2 million she had saved.
More than 64,000 Americans were taken for over $1 billion in romance scams last year — double the $500 million just four years earlier, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
About half of people who are using dating sites say they’ve come across somebody who’s tried to scam them, according to Rep. Brittany Pettersen, a Colorado Democrat who says tech platforms need to do a better job of protecting their users. Republican Rep. David Valadao of California echoes those concerns.
The two lawmakers introduced the Online Dating Safety Act, which would require dating apps like Match.com to notify users if they’ve been in contact with a scam account.
“No matter how advanced you think your ability to understand what’s out there, they’re gonna deceive so many people and we really have to get in front of this,” Valadao said.
After passing the House, the bill didn’t get a vote in the Senate, so they’ll try again next Congress.
Meanwhile, Sue says she wouldn’t have lost all of her money if she had been informed the man who contacted her was a known scammer.
In a statement, Match Group said they’ve already begun rolling out fraud notifications and will work with senators to finalize the bill.
Although new laws are too late for Sue, she’s not done fighting.
When asked why she’s telling her story, she said, “Because I don’t want anyone to go through the hell that I’ve gone through. I don’t want anybody to be in the hell hole that I dug with the help of a criminal.”
