The FBI is raising alarm over the rise in so-called “romance scams” in which victims, typically women, are targeted by cyber criminals masquerading online as potential romantic interests.

The scammers usually target older divorced or married women on dating and social networking sites, develop relationships with their victims online without meeting in person, and eventually ask for money.

According to a new article from the FBI warning of the rise in such scams, many of these criminals are members of crime organizations in Nigeria and are difficult to catch.

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The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received nearly 15,000 complaints designated as romance scams or confidence fraud last year alone, an increase of about 2,500 from 2015. Victims of these scams in Texas, one of the states in which it was most prevalent in 2016, reported over $16 million in losses last year, according to the bureau.

“The perpetrators will reach out to a lot of people on various networking sites to find somebody who may be a good target. Then they use what the victims have on their profile pages and try to work those relationships and see which ones develop,” Christine Beining, a fraud investigator in FBI’s Houston Division, says in the article, which was published in timing with Valentine’s Day.

Beining also said that victims are often placed on a list denoting successful scamming operations and as a result may be targeted by criminals again in the future.

“This is a very difficult crime to prove,” Beining said. “When someone is using a computer to hide behind, the hardest thing to find out is who they are. We can find out where in the world their computer is being used. It’s identifying who they actually are that’s the hard part. That is why this individual remains a fugitive.”

The Department of Homeland Security has issued security recommendations for individuals using social networking sites to safeguard against phishing scams or other types of cyber crime, warning users against publishing too much personal information online and recommending the use of up-to-date and anti-virus software.