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AUSTIN, Texas – The FBI is warning people about a surge in romance scams with Valentine\u2019s Day around the corner.\u00a0<\/p>\n
One man said a scammer, posing as a man in Texas, manipulated his wife, costing their family thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
Watch out for romance scams <\/p>\n
Local perspective:<\/p>\n
“I wouldn’t wish this upon anybody,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
For Rob, those words carry the weight of five months that nearly cost him his marriage and his family\u2019s financial future. It started this past August with a TikTok account.<\/p>\n
“Immediately within the next few days, she had 16 friend requests, and she unfortunately accepted one,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
The man claimed he lived in Texas. Rob and his wife live in Pennsylvania. What began as casual conversation, quickly escalated.<\/p>\n
“With my wife, he used all kinds of language, like \u2018I will take care of you to the end of the world,\u2019” Rob said.<\/p>\n
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Rob said the messages were constant. He called it “love bombing.”<\/p>\n
“I can clearly see that this person was dropping a so-called love bomb on my wife,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
Then came the requests. The man claimed he had two young daughters being cared for by the military on a base in Texas. He said he needed money to call home in order to speak with them.<\/p>\n
“He used his two kids to guilt my wife into sending him money,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
He also promised packages were on the way.<\/p>\n
“No package ever came,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
Suspicious, Rob did something he said he never thought he would.<\/p>\n
“I had to do things that I wouldn’t. I don’t do this normally. I don’t break into my wife’s phone and emails and whatnot, but I had to find out what was going on,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
What he discovered: “In five months, she gave $18,000,” Rob said.<\/p>\n
Rob said it wasn\u2019t just traditional transfers, either. It was through gift cards as well.<\/p>\n
Rob said his wife finally cut it off two weeks ago.<\/p>\n
“It affected our marriage a lot,” Rob said. “It can end a marriage.”<\/p>\n
Rob said they have been counseling and are still together to this day.<\/p>\n
Dig deeper:<\/p>\n
Experts said stories like this are becoming increasingly common and more convincing.<\/p>\n
“Often, we see that individuals are being reached out via dating apps or social media or online. These folks are luring them in, trying to make them feel romantic feelings,” former FBI Cybersecurity Agent and Head of Public Sector at cybersecurity firm, Black Kite, Megan Rolander, said.<\/p>\n
Rolander said with the use of AI, it is becoming even more realistic and harder to tell it is a romance scam.<\/p>\n
“They can use AI to try to make the language look, make them look like they’re a fluent English speaker. I know oftentimes you can use AI for pictures, you can use AI to build out an entire social media platform and make it look like it’s a real person with all of these connections,” Rolander said.<\/p>\n
Some red flags include refusing to meet in person, always traveling abroad, or insisting on moving conversations off the original platform.<\/p>\n
“If you have not met them in person, do not send them money,” Rolander said.<\/p>\n
Once the money is sent, it is very hard to get it back.<\/p>\n
The FBI\u2019s Internet Crime Complaint Center reported Texans lost more than $57 million to romance and confidence scams in 2024.<\/p>\n
The Source: Information from interviews conducted by FOX 7 Austin’s Meredith Aldis<\/p>\n
CrimeWatch<\/a>Austin<\/a>7 On Your Side<\/a>Artificial Intelligence<\/a>Crime and Public Safety<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AUSTIN, Texas – The FBI is warning people about a surge in romance scams with Valentine\u2019s Day around…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":162359,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[30362,3436,132,134,133,1046,20826,223,1726,3621,394,216,393],"class_list":{"0":"post-162358","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-austin","8":"tag-7-on-your-side","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-austin","11":"tag-austin-headlines","12":"tag-austin-news","13":"tag-crime-publicsafety","14":"tag-crimewatch","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-series","17":"tag-technology","18":"tag-travis-county","19":"tag-tx","20":"tag-us"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162358\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/162359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}