Resolving fraud and scams involving romance fraud
Dating Apps, social media and messaging platforms are a primary target for criminals to conduct romance scams. Scammers use advanced technologies to conceal their location and identity, making it increasingly difficult for Apps to authenticate profiles.
We fully understand the impact of romance fraud. The deceitful nature of the crime can have devastating consequences, both emotionally and financially, as well as adversely affecting health, wellbeing, personal relationships and employment.
Scammers develop relationships and trust over time, initially requesting small amounts of money to pay for travel expenses or family medical bills, for example, which appear to be entirely genuine. However, victims are often lured into fake investment opportunities or into transferring large amounts of money in cryptocurrency. How money was transferred is the primary focus of our investigations.
Using ‘police method’ investigation techniques the investigation phase, carried out by an IYE lead investigator with a research team aims to understand the transaction process and prove criminality to a police prosecution standard. Proof of criminality is important as it places a culpability issue on any ‘legitimate’ agents who aided the process, for example banks, trading platforms or digital currency exchanges.
Our investigators work with law enforcement agencies to gather evidence about the crime. Our legal team then present legal challenges against any culpable entities who aided the transfer process. If required we work with financial regulators to conclude the recovery process.
We conduct pre-investigation research to understand the precise resources required to achieve a successful outcome.
Our analysis takes into account how funds were transferred, including through which bank, App, broker, website, trading platform, exchange, digital wallet or financial institution to identify precise points of culpability.
Insights obtained during our pre-investigation assessment allow us to map out the entire investigation with pinpoint accuracy.
Banks have a legal duty to keep client’s funds safe and an obligation to undertake due diligence on any transactions proposed by a client to an acceptable standard. It is an obligation banks consistently fail to perform. This leaves banks open to claims for compensation based on negligence, a position the Financial Ombudsman Service across jurisdictions have consistently supported.
We can hold banks accountable even if your money passed through several different payment providers or cryptocurrency exchanges, before reaching the scam.
Recovering money from banks and financial institutions is always our first point of attack as it offers the quickest means of redress.
Authorised Push Payment (APP) or bank transfer scams are where a victim knowingly transfers money to an individual they have developed a relationship with online. You would never knowingly transfer money to a criminal. Our investigation will therefore prove that you were a victim of criminal deception and were not responsible for the outgoing transfers issued by your bank.
In 95% of romance fraud cases we investigate, funds are recovered directly from culpable financial entities, such as banks or intermediary payment providers, without the need to locate the criminals.
To give clients both comfort and protection, the recovery of all client funds is handled by our legal department (IYE Legal) which is regulated by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority (SRA).
Find the probability of recovering your money and receive a no obligation proposal for your consideration.