Pearse Doherty (Donegal, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

We touched on some of the types of scams out there. We have the romance scam, which is a difficult one because in some cases a vulnerability is being preyed on. In some cases, there may be an issue of shame because people were defrauded in this way and a reluctance to come forward and explain they were this type of victim. It is good that some people are now coming forward and speaking publicly because it helps others to do that too. We also have other types of scams where people are seeing sponsored advertisements on social media. We will have representatives of Facebook, Twitter, Amazon and all those companies before the committee as well. A sponsored ad on Facebook, for example, could be advertising a weekend away or a holiday for a family in the Canaries for €4,000. People think this is great. They make the payment and then find out they have been scammed. These are termed authorised payments because the people have authorised the payment.