Lydia Zagarova on Bulgarian TV – February 2024

Lydia Zagarova on Bulgarian TV

“Romantic” scams on the Internet – how to protect yourself from fake lovers

SCARS Board Member and Psychology Advisor Lydia Zagorova was on TV in Europe for Safer Internet Day last week speaking about the dangers of romance scams online. Fake profiles of some military doctors were shown through which a number of Bulgarian women became victims of love scams. She made a direct appeal to Bulgarian women not to allow themselves to become victims of romаnce scams and to keep their safety online following concrete tips for secure communications on the Internet.

More and more Bulgarian women are becoming victims of romantic scams. What does it mean? Not only are the schemes with fake lovers increasing, but there is already a tendency for them to be quite successful for the scammers themselves. We want money sent by bank transfer, cryptocurrencies, shopping vouchers. Lies are becoming more credible and scammers more and more experienced. It is quite possible to chat with a man who claims to be a military doctor in Syria and he wants to marry you. There are also many other scams and schemes.

For comparison, in the United States, it is estimated that 70,000 people reported a romantic scam on the Internet in 2022. Total losses amount to a billion and 300 million dollars, or an average of four thousand and four hundred dollars per person. The most common lies are: “I or someone close to me is sick, injured or in prison”, “I can teach you how to invest”, “I am on a military mission abroad”, “Help me with an important delivery”, “I inherited money or gold”.

In Bulgaria there are no such detailed statistics, but there are deceived people. What are the new schemes, how to protect ourselves and why are we being deceived at all. To these questions we are looking for answers with psychologist Lydia Zagorova. See in the video.

NOTE: The statistics above are incorrect. Number of actually scam victims in the U.S. in 2023 was 21 million, as reported by the Gallup Organization.