How to Conduct Your Own Dating Fraud Investigation

Learning how to conduct your own dating fraud investigation is essential if you are planning to join the online dating community. Due to the growing number of online dating fraudsters, many people in the dating community are now beginning to conduct their own fraud investigation in order to confirm the intention of their prospect partners.

By combining the available resources online, you too can check whether your prospect online partner is genuinely interested in you or is just trying to gain your trust in order to scam you. Online dating fraudsters primarily capitalizes on your romantic attachment with them in order to take advantage of you. They try to appeal to your emotions so they can subtly ask for money or other valuable favors. Once they are done getting money from you they begin to lose interest and stop communicating, leaving you penniless and traumatized by the experience. In order to avoid becoming one of the victims of these malicious schemes, it is best to learn how to conduct online dating fraud investigation. To give you some idea on how to conduct online dating fraud investigation of your own, see the details below;

Tips on How to Conduct Your Own Fraud Investigation

   

●   The primary step will be to check the truthfulness of the profile of your prospect online date partner. One of the best things about conducting a fraud investigation is you just need to uncover a single lie and all the rest of the illusion created by the fraudster will begin crumbling down. The profile of the fraudster is usually where their dubious scheme begins. Most of these fraudsters use a stolen identity or a fake dating profile to make themselves look attractive to their target victims, so by checking the validity of their profile you can immediately determine if your prospect online date partner is lying or not. To do this, all you have to do is copy paste the profile picture they are using Google image search engine. The result should automatically reveal where else online can you find the same picture. Based on the results, you can check whether the similar picture is indeed who they say they are in their online dating profile.  If there are some inconsistencies, then, chances are you are dealing with a fraudster.

●     Use the profile information of your prospect online date to search online. Conduct online fraud investigation by using the name of your prospect. Check out whether the same name is associated with any reported dubious scheme online such as online dating scam forums, blog sites and websites. You may also look into the social sites such as Facebook. If you find that their Facebook profile is too generic or without any trace of their origin, affiliations or friends, then chances are they may be hiding something.

●     Another tactic that you can include in your fraud investigation is to ask for a video chat session. If they are really who they say they are then they should be able to talk to you live. During the video chat, check out the background or ambient noise to confirm their location. A fraudster who would say yes to a video chat would likely be in an unnaturally quiet environment with nothing but plain walls in the background. This is because they do not want to give any indicators that might give away their location. 

The details provided above are just some of the online dating fraud investigation that you can easily conduct before you decide to emotionally invest on a prospect partner. 

3 Basic Steps For A Comprehensive Fraud Investigation

Fraud cases are unique in the sense that no other crime requires a more circumspect fraud investigation. Investigators always need to be clear about the questions they need to put forth, whether you consider ID theft, insurance fraud, identity fraud or government benefit fraud.

Where it occurred is equally important as well as whether it was perpetrated online, using a phone or through the official postal service. Another important aspect to consider while conducting a fraud investigation is whether it occurred in another jurisdiction or country and the manner in which it has occurred. Be clear about whether it is an organized fraud or a quickly conceived confidence game. Consider if the financial institution or agency involved as the caretaker took adequate precautions.

For fraud investigations to be successful, two qualities that are prevalent include determination and consistency. At the time of fraud investigations, these attributes need to be tested across time. Investigators need to rely on some basic steps to ensure that the case progresses.

A fraud investigation must be efficiently carried out to prevent further victims from falling into the snare. Scammers can initiate financial havoc on the person or company, losing you millions of dollars in the bargain.

• Identify the Fraud

The initial stages of fraud investigation are always critical– one can build an investigative hypothesis used to launch the exploration. The first step in fraud investigation is to assess the kind of fraud that was carried out. So many different types of frauds are there and scams can range across a wide spectrum. As a fraud investigator, assessing the category in which the fraud has occurred will help to find the right contacts to assist the process. Fraud crimes can fall under local, state or federal agencies. Each provides critical expertise and important data to become part of the fraud investigation team.

• Create A Fraud Investigation Plan

Creating a plan is critical and often not considered as part of the fraud investigation. It takes time, but investigations need to be oriented and organized around documents influencing fraud cases. What is measured is tangible. The fraud investigation team must locate chronological events associated with real fraud. Steps can uncover victim vulnerability and how culpable the crime is. Identification and documentation of missing ends in the witness's narrative is only possible when the fraud investigation plan is in place. Scammers commit fraud while investigators look at the timeline and corroborate the  points at which the scheme was carried out.

• Get Inputs from the Victim

The fraud investigation must make every effort to check what is important and conducting background checks is a good start. Due diligence can yield rich dividends and once the interview is started with an open ended query, rich details can be obtained as a result of this. As cases are complicated, details cannot be missed out on.  Details are critical in a fraud investigation. Key questions that need to be asked are when, where, what, how and why. How did the loss get discovered and how was the notification made? Follow up points for the fraud investigation must follow.  Contact and interview the victim to see if additional evidence is in place. Fraud investigations involve the critical step of collecting and preservation of evidence. Copies of credit statements, emails, phone records, social media posts and bank accounts are critical for collection, especially if the crime was committed using the internet.

The Fundamental Stages of Fraud Investigation

The success of a fraud investigation depends on the ability of the fraud investigator to effectively conduct a proper and informed investigative process. Like any other discipline, investigation also follows a specific which can be customizable depending on the industry and type of investigation being conducted. This form serves as a guide for the investigator that helps validate all the information gathered during the process of investigation.

Familiarizing yourself with the different stages and processes utilized in an investigation can help you conduct and conclude an investigation faster without missing any crucial information. All the different stages in the investigation play a major role in establishing your case, missing any of these crucial pieces can cause your case to easily crumble down. To give you an idea about the different stages of investigation, check out the details below;

• Interview

One of the first tasks that you need to do in fraud investigation is to validate the issue  or allegation. Conducting an interview will help you address this task and provide you with a clearer picture regarding the severity of the fraud that has taken place. An interview fraud expert can draft a list of guide questions that can help you get the information that you need from your interviewees. The interview usually starts by calling on the complainant and then followed by the third party witnesses.

• Collection of Evidence

After you establish that there has been a malicious intent and that a fraud has indeed been committed, the next step will be to provide proof. Gathering of evidence is similar to creating documentation for the fraud that is being investigated. The evidence should back all the claims stated during the interview. This may include phone calls, emails, messaging, pictures and other forms of acceptable evidence that will back up the story of the complainant and the witnesses.

• Analysis of the Evidence

Analyzing the evidence means making sense of all the information that you have so far. Using the evidence from the fraud investigation you can finally begin constructing or simulating your own if and then scenarios. This is the testing process. You can try out all your hypothesis and find out which ones will make sense and has the highest probability. During this process, you may need more information or require more evidence that will help validate your final conclusion.

The conclusion of the fraud investigation will then be utilized to move on to the next step. In some cases, the next step will be reporting to authorities. The local authorities can look into the fraud investigation papers that you prepared and counter check all the evidence that led you to the conclusion to file a formal complaint. If there’s enough compelling evidence the police can then assist you to file a case against the fraudster so they can make an arrest.

This information makes up some of the basic parts of fraud investigation. Using these stages as a guide during a fraud investigation does not only help you get accurate results, but can also speed up the process of putting a fraudulent activity to a stop.

How to Conduct a Dating Fraud Investigation

Having basic fraud investigation skills is a good idea for people who want to try online dating. Statistics show that dating fraud is one of the major online concerns in many countries. Online dating gained more popularity through the years as Internet and mobile devices became globally accessible, giving more people a convenient way to connect to each other. Many people use dating sites and other social platforms to meet more people in the hope that one of these people is actually the special someone that they can spend their life with. 

Romantic attachments often put people in a vulnerable position, which is why many fraudsters find dating fraud a convenient and promising way to scam people. In order to protect yourself against these fraudsters, you must learn to conduct online dating fraud investigation. You can use your investigative skills to find out whether you are dealing with someone who is genuinely looking for a romantic attachment like yourself or someone who will only break your heart once he's done exploiting your resources. Here are some tips to give you an idea how to conduct preliminary online dating investigation;

Preliminary Online Dating Fraud Investigation

●   Check out reliable resources that can give you tips about the common indicators of online dating fraud. Fraudsters often follow a pattern when launching a fraudulent scheme. Every fraudster uses a different scheming pattern, whichever works for them. Educating yourself about the most common fraud schemes can help you establish key indicators of fraud which you can use during your fraud investigation. 

●    Join online dating forums. The best way to conduct an investigation is by asking around. Forums usually include discussions about the first hand experience of the people in the online dating community. This is where you can get the latest and the most relevant information that you may need during your investigation.

●  Find tools and technologies utilized by online dating experts when confirming the identity of their prospect online dating partner. Since online dating fraudsters use false identities, one of the primary things you should look for are technologies that can help verify the identity of the person you are investigating. One example of this is the Google image search, which you can use to check whether the profile picture of the person you are investigating can be found elsewhere. 

●   You should also include observing cultural nuisances and consistency. Reviewing text discussions or taking note of any important information that was mentioned to you by your prospect online partner should be a part of your preliminary fraud investigation. This should reveal the truths and lies about his personal life, location, educational background and even financial status. Use this information when deciding whether to emotionally invest or disengage on an online prospect relationship.

Clearly conducting a preliminary fraud investigation is a practice that you shouldn’t skip when dealing with the online dating community. Maintaining this practice will not only save you from incurring unnecessary financial losses, but can also help save you from a broken heart.

Fraud Investigation – Advantages of Hiring A Private Investigator

Most fraud investigations are conducted by government authorities. However, the significant increase in the number of fraudulent cases created a bottleneck, since the government does not have enough manpower or resources to conduct an investigation into all the pending complaints. This problem soon created the need for third party fraud investigators. Victims who have resources prefer to expedite the process of catching the offender or the process of recovering their losses by launching their own fraud investigation. Soon more fraud investigation services began to surface, and now we even have investigators who specialize in a specific type of fraud investigation. 

Although the government authorities are still the best option for conducting a fraud investigation, you should also be open to hiring a private investigator. Hiring a fraud investigator has its own perks. To give you an idea, here is a list of advantages of hiring a private fraud investigator;  

Fraud Investigation by A Private Investigator:

●     You get to choose the investigator who will handle the case. The ability of the investigator in terms of analysis and resourcefulness has major effects on the success of an investigation. Getting a private investigator gives you the chance to scrutinize the credentials of the investigator. It also allows you to find the most suitable candidate for the type of fraud you want to be investigated.

●     As mentioned earlier, hiring a private fraud investigator helps save you time. Instead of filing a complaint to local authorities and waiting for your case’s turn to get investigated, you get an investigator who can dedicate more time working your case.

●     Not only can hiring a private investigator save you time, it can also save you from incurring further losses. By having more time to investigate your case, a private investigator has a higher chance of catching the culprit faster. Catching the culprit prevents them from continuing with their fraudulent activities against you or other potential victims.                       

●     Private investigator offers additional tools and resources for the investigation. Private investigators usually provide added resources to help in the investigation. These resources may not be accessible to the authorities. This gives the case better coverage in terms of finding evidence and conducting more accurate investigation results.

●     Better controls in terms of confidentiality. Unlike when you submit a fraud report to local authorities, the details of your case remain between you and the investigator. Fraud cases filed through government agencies are usually accessed by different departments, which mean you have less control regarding the people accessing your case. With private investigator, you know the people or group of people who are reading through your files.

There are many ways you can launch a fraud investigation against someone or a company. Choosing to hire a private fraud investigator definitely offers various perks. However, this option also has its own disadvantages. Depending on your budget or the type of fraud you want to investigate getting a private fraud investigator may not always be the best option. To conclude, the success of fraud investigation relies on what you want to achieve with the investigation and your ability to identify the best course of action that can help you realize these goals.