Lax student visa laws and a high-tech bank operating system has made Malaysia a worldwide hub for online frauds, relating to U.S. officials, with cash being swindled away from unwitting Americans and Europeans by racketeers prowling online dating sites.

The conmen typically hail from Nigeria or Ghana and dupe lonely, middle-aged gents and ladies through the U.S. and Western Europe through matchmaking solutions like Match.com, reports Reuters. A dozen cases that are new reported into the U.S. embassy in Kuala Lumpur each week, with scam complaints developing four-fifths of brand new work with duty officers.

“This is a significant problem harming numerous People in the us economically and emotionally,” said a U.S. embassy representative. “We would hope that through promotion more People in the us will be made conscious of these frauds.”

These tricksters are more sophisticated, and slowly build trust as a budding romance ripens while most Internet users have received — only to swiftly mock and discard — some crude Nigerian scam emails. Then your ask for money comes, ordinarily a fairly touch at first; but after the hooks come in, the target struggles to make down subsequent heftier needs without admitting to presenting been hoodwinked.

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“Some victims find it very difficult to split from the connection, also when they’ve been told it is perhaps perhaps not genuine,” says Professor Monica Whitty, a specialist on Internet fraudulence therapy. “So the unlawful admits to scamming the target but claims at the same time frame, and so they return back to the exact same scam. they additionally fell so in love with them”

However it is not merely lovelorn People in the us who’re being swindled; other international embassies in Kuala additional info Lumpur are working with comparable complaints, reports Reuters. Whitty claims that at the least 500,000 U.K. residents have actually dropped victim to such “sweetheart scams” because the occurrence was reported around 2007.

Somewhat more guys than ladies are duped by fraudulent fans, but guys are less inclined to look for recompense away from embarrassment.

“Some individuals mortgage their homes to pay for these criminals,” Whitty says, “but usually the devastation they feel is much more concerning the loss in the connection compared to cash — of realizing they’ve been duped.”

And worryingly, such frauds seem to be growing more prevalent; this past year, U.S.-based IT security developer SOPHOS rated Malaysia as sixth globally with regards to of cyber crime danger dangers, while the total cyber crime bill topped $300 million. The simplicity of acquiring visas, starting bank reports and organizing cash transfers are typical an element of the nation’s appeal that is criminal.

“Scammers are increasingly utilizing targeted engineering that is social against their victims as a result of very high rate of success,” Ty Miller, an Australian protection specialist and founder of Threat Intelligence, tells TIME. “This not just impacts individuals, but additionally companies.”

Understanding and technology are foundational to to tackling this scourge, claims Miller, that is operating a fraud-prevention program in Kuala Lumpur in October. “Techniques may be deployed that enable malicious people to be tracked,” he says, “which as time goes by will build cleverness to reveal the identification associated with the perpetrators.”