The world celebrates "Valentine's Day" on February 14, with the business of flowers, chocolates, greeting cards, and other gifts thriving as sellers in all countries await this occasion to boost sales beyond regular days. However, some exploit this romantic event to ensnare their victims, often becoming active online just before the day to steal from them, turning Valentine's Day into an opportunity for the theft of millions of dollars.
The FBI announced that romance scammers have been active online ahead of Valentine's Day, using cryptocurrencies to trap their victims by enticing them to invest or trade these currencies to steal their financial data. They added that their Internet Crimes Unit has reported that romance scams this year have reached $64 million in Northern California alone, nearly double what was recorded last year.
There has been a recent increase in scams involving cryptocurrencies. At the end of last year, a Canadian teenager was arrested for allegedly stealing cryptocurrencies worth $46 million Canadian (about $36.5 million) from an American victim, marking the largest theft in the cryptocurrency sector by a single person, according to Hamilton police near Toronto. The police stated that the victim was targeted through a phone scam known as SIM swapping, where a scammer hijacks a wireless customer's phone number to intercept two-factor authentication requests and gain access to the victim's accounts. They also seized cryptocurrencies currently valued at over $7 million Canadian.
