Fraud in the name of online dating: The story of a man who solicited money from prison by tricking women into love on the Internet.

 "Look, the truth is, it's one of the easiest ways to make money.  If you have a girl who works and likes you, why not ask her to send you money?  Of course, lawyers are the best.

 Jamie (pseudonym) is just over 20 years old.

 Over the years, he has made money by cheating on women.  

These women were much older than him and were looking for love. 

 He did so while in prison for another crime.  He had hidden an illegal phone for this purpose.

 He has recently been released from prison and has spoken to the BBC's File On Four program.

 He says he will not commit fraud again and wants to expose some of his methods to warn other people, which is also to compensate for his crime.

 "It was like work for me."

 "It was like a last resort, I just could see how easy it was," says Jamie.  

The most money I ever took from a girl was 10,000.  She used to send me 100 to 200 pounds every week.  

I forgot his name now, I see it not as a relationship but as a work. "

 He says his accounts were blocked when the girl reported him, but he was never punished for his fraud.

 He says people who use dating apps should be wary of self-contact men who are much younger or 'handsome' than them, who immediately start asking for money, especially if they  Never met in person.

 Jamie says he chose his goals in such a way that he thought these women would be lonely and would lose the attention of the people on the apps. 

 The idea was that these women were more willing to 'do anything' for fear of breaking up.

 And he says he used his original pictures.  He was confident that his appearance would attract his prey.

 He says: "I would choose older women and look for impatience in them."  I was very nice in the beginning and if she talked back I knew she was interested in me just because of my pictures.

 "At that time I would start playing my game and show them dreams like, I want to have a baby with you," he says.  

Tell her what she wants to hear until she falls in love. '

 Unless Jamie realizes that his victim is emotionally attached to him, he won't tell her he's in jail.

 He claims that he used to send messages to women for many months and seduce them before informing them of the truth.

 And even when he did say that, he would lie that he had been imprisoned for violating driving rules instead of committing a violent crime.

 "It simply came to our notice then.

 In 2020, there were about 7,000 reports of this so-called 'romance fraud'.  

Last year it cost the victims around کروڑ 70 million.  

And bank transfers linked to romance fraud have increased by 20% during the global epidemic, according to the UK-based trade body.

 D-Pogson, a 69-year-old widow, gave her life savings to a man she met on a ہزار 40,000 dating app.  

It turned out to be a hoax.  The man they fell in love with did not really exist. 

The man was the creation of three novices who targeted vulnerable women in southern England.

 "I always thought I could never be deceived, I was very smart," she says.  

But then Kevin came and he was so enchanting. 

 He was interested in me.  It all started when he asked for 500 500 to pay the vet and then the amount gradually increased.

 "When I ran out of money, he gave me different names, he stopped picking up his phone," she says.

 She says she felt foolish.  "I told my children.  It was a bad feeling to tell them that I had given so much money to someone I had never met. "

 Police Constable Bernadette Lowry, a financial crime protection officer in the British police, says most of the cases reported to police last year came during a lockdown when people were feeling more alone than usual.

 She says victims often find themselves fooling around when criminals do not come to visit despite easing lockdown restrictions.

 She says that the police department should follow the advice of action fraud. How to identify fraud?

 The following attitudes may indicate that a person is not what they claim to be:

 They ask you many personal questions about you but are not interested in telling you much about yourself.

 They come up with ideas, and to see them flush it out, it's really fun.

 Your relationship with them continues because you keep sending them money

 Her pictures are full of professionalism and glamor.  It could be a model or an actor.

 One way to check images is to reverse search by uploading the image to Google Images, Bing Visual Search, Tiny Eye or any other similar service.

 Twenty-five British police forces provided data on a Right to Information request filed by the File on Four program.  

The data reveals that the country's most popular dating apps, Tinder, Plenty of Fish, and Grinder, are the apps that reported the most crime between 2018 and 2020.

 And this dataset is partial. 

 The country's largest police forces, such as the Metropolitan Police, Greater Manchester Police, PSNI and Police Scotland, did not provide data, which means that the actual crime figures would be much higher.