Dear Computrix: Catphishing: Pawsitively Clawful

Dear Computrix, my cousin, who lives in North Carolina, shared a local news story on Facebook about a man who had been arrested for scamming women on online dating sites. Here is the story: http://www.wral.com/fake-millionaire-tycoon-gets-prison-for-online-dating-scam/17234727/ This is scary! My daughter has recently started doing some online dating and I’m worried she will run into one of these criminals. Why isn’t the government doing something about this? Signed, Worried Mom.

Dear Worried Mom, several other community members have expressed alarm related to the news that John Edward Taylor, the man in the WRAL news story, was charged with stealing “money, credit, and personal information from more than a dozen women”, according to the US Attorney’s Office (see a link to their formal release at the end of this article). People have been deceiving each other since the beginning of time – the ancient Romans were doubtless plagued by confidence tricks. In fact, “confidence” is where we get the word “con” from. Romance is an area where confidence schemes thrive, because it’s hard to think straight when one’s heart is involved. Confidence schemes manipulate emotions, such as compassion, but also vanity and greed; they find someone’s buttons and push them, to the benefit of the con artist and the detriment of the victim. What the man in the article did has a name – not a legal name, but a popular name: catphishing. It sounds just like “cat fishing”, but it has nothing to do with cats and fishing poles. It is a scam that is (pardon the pun) pawsitively clawful in its effect on victims.

Catphishing as a term comes from the cybersecurity world and the sport fishing world: a “phish” is a deceptive email using an emotional lure to obtain information, and catfish can be caught by dangling a hand in the water and patiently waiting for a catfish to grab on, at which point the catfish is dragged into the boat. You might also see it spelled as catfishing. Some catphishers use their own identities and then deceive the people they date into giving them money or information. A catphisher can also take photos they find on the Internet – typically someone conventionally attractive – and use those to create their fake dating profile, from whence they execute the same scam. There are multiple victims in that case: the innocent person being impersonated and the people the catphisher is trying to lure in. Here are some things your daughter can keep in mind that should set off alarm bells in her mind:

  • The person does not want to meet face to face or through a video chat service like Skype.
  • The person is too good to be true: too attractive, too charming, too wealthy.
  • The person is difficult to find on social media or through an Internet search.
  • The relationship escalates quickly into talk of love and long-term relationships.
  • The person wants a home address to send gifts to.
  • The person asks too many personal, financial-related questions early in the relationship.
  • The person has sudden, strange financial difficulties.

Last, you asked why the government isn’t doing anything about this. Catphishing is not a federal crime – the perpetrator in the WRAL story was charged with wire fraud, bank fraud, aggravated identity theft, and threatening communication, not catphishing. Oklahoma is the only US state that has made catphishing (they use the catfishing spelling) illegal and its law protects only Oklahomans who are impersonated, not catphishing victims.

I hope this gives you and your daughter something to think about. Catphishing is a risk on online dating sites, but not everyone on those sites is a catphisher. Good luck to you both! – The Computrix


Sources

Malwarebytes Labs. (2017). Bad romance: catphishing explained. Malwarebytes.com. Retrieved from https://blog.malwarebytes.com/cybercrime/2017/11/bad-romance-catphishing-explained/

Neumeister, L. (2018). Fake millionaire tycoon gets prison for online dating scam. WRAL.com. Retrieved from http://www.wral.com/fake-millionaire-tycoon-gets-prison-for-online-dating-scam/17234727/

United States Attorney’s Office Southern District of New York. (2018). Alleged confidence man charged with luring victims through matchmaking and networking sites to commit fraud and identity theft. United States Department of Justice. Retrieved from https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/alleged-confidence-man-charged-luring-victims-through-matchmaking-and-networking-sites