Tinder Romance Scams Sweeps Treasure Valley; Beware of these Profiles

Being Catfished is already hard enough as it is, but imagine having your heart broken and being out $5,000!

Just before New Year's, my friend Andy came to visit us in Idaho for the first time.  A little less than a year ago, he ended a really bad four year relationship and it's been really rough on him. My fiance and I had the brilliant idea to have him sign up for Tinder as a bit of a confidence boost.  I was lucky enough to have found Nate before having to resort to Tinder, so I'd never seen the app in action until Andy was swiping left and right on New Year's Eve.  I was amazed by the number of blatantly fake profiles he kept coming across! Luckily, Boise's a close knit enough of a city where I could spot the fakes and tell him to swipe left.

But now a new and way more convincing scam is hitting Tinder in the Treasure Valley.  According to Channel 2, the Better Business Bureau is telling people in the Northwest to be on the lookout for profiles impersonating members of any branch of the United States military. The scammers behind the fake military profiles pray on the heart's of innocent daters by telling them they need money for transportation or medical care while on deployment. (One woman lost $5,000 this way.)

With the Mountain Home Airforce Base so close to home, it's certainly harder to tell who's the real deal and who's not in the Treasure Valley. The BBB says one of the biggest red flags is if they refuse to communicate by voice over the phone or in person. It's good to be on the look out for users that type fast and give super generic responses in conversation.  That's a sign that the user is probably a computer generated bot.

If you think you may have been caught up in one of those scams, you can report your experience to the BBB at 208-342-4649.