Being the victim of a sentimental crook is a painful experience. Even though when people ask for our help in this kind of situations they say that they are only thinking about the financial part of the problem, our experience has shown that their real problem is actually a sentimental one and the financial side is just a small part of this equation. Anybody can fall victim to a sentimental crook, male or female, rich or poor, middle class, lower class, upper class, it makes no difference. We all can fall in love with the wrong person, with a person that will try to capitalize on our “weakness” and try to make a profit out of this situation.
A sentimental crook can operate on his own, team with another person (that is usually a spouse) or be part of an organized crime group. The crook can be a webcam model, a person that seeks victims thru online dating sites or he might use any other ways for finding new victims. The internet made it a lot easier for these kind of individuals to operate and sometime make huge profits out of these scams. In this type of crime it makes no difference if the crook is part of an organized crime group or if he operates on his own. In my experience I’ve seen very well organized groups that made 20 – 30 000$ per victim out of these scams and I’ve also seen “amateurs” that made close to half a million euros from only one victim.
Usually the Private Detective comes into play when the potential client starts to think that he might be the victim of a sentimental crook and first alerts the crook by telling him about his suspicions. In most of the cases the crook convinces the victim that all the suspicions that he has are only in his mind and he keeps on playing the game. However once the thought comes into the victims mind, he wants to get it out from there and that’s when he thinks that maybe it would be better if a private detective will investigate his lover and see if he is telling the truth or if he is the victim of a sentimental crook. Sometimes the victims send a lot of money to the virtual lover that they never even met, but to which they come to be very attached and believe in very strongly.
As a general pattern, at some point, they start to have second thoughts about hiring a private detective, first of all thinking that they might “cheat” their virtual partner and sometimes they really do think that 300-500 euros (the cost of an ordinary background check) is a large amount to spend basically for something that they almost know for sure that it will not reveal anything wrong. So even if they decide to proceed with the investigation, they continue to give away thousand or even hundreds of thousands of euros.
Our main advice regarding on how to approach this situation is to delay whatever payments the potential crook is asking until you will receive the report from your private investigator.
If you engaged in this type of relation with a person that you don’t know anything about and you feel that he or she might hide certain things from you, hiring a private detective to check on him or her would be a must. This will most likely save you the time that you were planning to put into this relationship and also a lot of money.
A Romanian Private Detective Agency must be licensed by the police therefore the confidentiality of the cases is guaranteed by the 329/2003 law. Don’t wait any longer and live in doubt, no matter what you will find out, the truth will set you free.