Romance Fraud: The Honeytrap Scandal at the Heart of the UK Government

No one is safe from romance fraud

It started with a WhatsApp message from a woman called Charlie. Her profile pic – in the little circle next to the text – indicated that she was young and attractive. She explained that they had swapped numbers a few years earlier at a charity event but she’d never heard back and had belatedly decided to get in touch. She dropped a few details that appeared to confirm she did indeed know him and his circle.

Then the messages started to get flirty…

This, we know now, was the modus operandi of the perpetrator or perpetrators of what’s become known as the Westminster honeytrap scandal.

What we still don’t know was who was behind it or what its goal was. Was it spies from Russia or China trying to weaken the UK’s governance? Was it a mischievous or disenchanted parliamentary researcher – or a rogue hack?

We may never find out – although Scotland Yard and, I suspect, MI5 are currently making every effort to do so.

Charlie, it transpired, could be all things to all people. To the straight, male political journalist who later revealed his experience as reported above – she was a woman. To William Wragg MP, Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party’s 1922 Committee, she was a he, a man Wragg had purportedly encountered some time before on the gay hook-up site Grindr.

What Wragg did in response to male Charlie’s flirtation would cost him his job: he not only engaged with him, but, incredibly, he supplied other MPs’ private mobile numbers, at his request. And Wragg was not alone in falling into the trap: another male MP also sent intimate pictures back to flirty Charlie or her alter ego Abi.

It has by now emerged that at least 15 people, all men, and a mixture of MPs, journalists and Whitehall fixers, were targeted in the incident.

What was notable about all this from our perspective, as fraud experts at TMD ID, was that it was the best illustration yet of quite how widespread the menace of romance fraud has become. It has now penetrated the heart of the UK government.

True, the scammer or scammers here do not seem to have been motivated by money so much as by creating an embarrassing compromise or perhaps blackmail. But that doesn’t mean that this episode was not on the same spectrum of fraud that ruins the lives of thousands of ordinary people outside the corridors of power every year.

A second honeytrap

Just last week the case emerged of a woman from Colchester, Janet, 62, who was chatted up online by a man purporting to be Gary Barlow, of Take That fame – but who turned out to be a catfisher from Nigeria. The story received widespread media coverage because it was so preposterous. It gave everyone a laugh that anyone might think this really was a multimillionaire popstar randomly serenading a provincial retiree ten years his senior.

But, in fairness to Janet, she was a lot smarter than William Wragg in that she quickly deduced her flirty contact was a fake – and didn’t compromise herself in the way he did.

And both stories, though at opposite ends of the scale of sophistication, together tell the tale of how common this has become – deceiving people with the lure of love or just sex into parting with their money or integrity. And illustrates how many forms it can take.

A recent study from Lloyds Bank found the number of recorded romance frauds went up by 22% last year alone with the average loss to each individual victim now calculated at almost £7,000.

So what can we do about romance fraud?

Well, the single best defence against romance fraud is scepticism. In practice, this means that if you hear from someone you don’t normally hear from – even if you do think you may dimly recollect them- you should never simply accept what they say as true. Especially if they become flirty.

Apply scepticism.

Don’t believe the back story they offer until you have thoroughly checked it out.

And, as well as doing this ourselves, we must continually remind our loved ones, particularly our older loved ones – as they are the most likely to be targeted – to do this too.

If you’re a private individual then these remedies and protections are likely to be your only defence option. That’s a frustration for us at TMT ID because we do have the ability to consistently identify the fraudsters and stop their scams – via the data around the mobile phone that is used for that WhatsApp message or linked to that Grindr account.

All of these romance frauds link back to a mobile number and none of them are immune to our attention: we are able to get instant, live intelligence on any number in the world. Which means, in turn, that we are able to spot the fraudsters at once.

The warning signs are multiple. Almost all scam numbers are pay-as-you-go or pre-paid so the perpetrator is harder to identify and catch – burner phones if you will. The number usually will have only been recently activated and will have no history attached. It will often be attached to an account or network overseas from its target. Putting together all these probable fraud indicators, we can give an instant risk assessment score to any number used in any transaction or exchange in some 60 countries.

It’s a source of regret that neither we nor any of our sector rivals are yet able – for various industry reasons – to offer these protective services to private individuals though we hope one day we may.

But until we are able to protect everyone, everyone needs to be vigilant to protect themselves.

And that means, above all: be a Janet, not a William Wragg.