‘Using our tragedy to profit’: A Gold Star spouse’s fight against cybercrime is personal
This picture of the late Army Sgt. First Class Collin Bowen was used in multiple online romance scams. (Ursula Palmer)
Army Sgt. First Class Collin Bowen, 38, was injured by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan in early January 2008.
His wife, Ursula Palmer, had created a website to provide updates to family and friends as he remained in the hospital. She later maintained the site to honor her husband after he passed away from his injuries two months later.
But the photo she had used on the website was later stolen by cybercriminals and used under various profiles on Match.com to lure women into romance scams.
Palmer recounted the experience on the Episode 65 of The Spouse Angle podcast: “Here I am at home with a small child missing this person who I thought I was going to grow older with, and on the other side of the world somewhere, someone is using our tragedy to profit.”
Reports made to the Federal Trade Commission show that service members, veterans and their families lost more than $420.5 million to cybercrime between 2016 and 2020. Additionally, the FTC found the median financial loss due to fraud is 44 percent higher for veterans than that of other civilians, according to the Cybercrime Support Network, a nonprofit with a mission to support and serve individuals and small businesses impacted by cybercrime.
Experts have seen a rise in cybercrimes impacting the military and veteran communities at disproportionate rates.
Aside from romance scams such as the ones Bowen’s photo has been used in, real estate scams are also big in the military community: people posing as landlords post photos of a property, then ask for a down payment before the family is allowed to see inside.
Kristin Judge, Cybercrime Support Network founder, said many scammers take advantage of multiple aspects of military life, including regular deployments and relocations, high use of social media to stay in touch with loved ones, and accessing their government programs and benefits online.
And the internet is rife with fake military and veteran charities, Judge said.
Palmer is now the executive director of military and veteran programs at the Cybercrime Support Network. And, she’s leading CSN’s Partnership to Fight Cybercrime, an initiative with more than 20 military and veteran-service organizations, including Army Emergency Relief, the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, Disabled American Veterans and more, to educate their members to spot and report cybercrime.
Ursula Palmer (left) and Kristin Judge of the Cybercrime Support Network
Cybercrime Support Network has a website called ScamSpotter.com that has “three golden rules,” Judge said — slow down, spot check and research, and stop, don’t send (money to strangers).
There are more resources, including ways to report a crime, at FightCybercrime.org.
“There’s a lot of power behind coming together with these nonprofits and private sector who care about this issue, and so I believe we’re going to see really a change in the security posture of our military and veteran community because of this in the next year.”