Everyone now is aware that responding to emails from ‘Nigerian princes’ requesting ‘loans ‘is a bad idea because these scams are old news. Since then, con artists have had to transition to more modern tricks. One just revealed is ‘out of this world’. A 65-year-old Japanese woman was defrauded between August 19 and September 5 of almost $30,000, or 4.4 million yen, by a guy posing as a Russian cosmonaut.
According to Kyoto News, the woman, who is from the Shiga Prefecture, met the con artist on a social media website before they started corresponding on the Line messaging app. According to the authorities, the male repeatedly offered marriage and expressed his love for the woman.
He then began to ask her for money to pay for a rocket to take him back to Earth from orbit. When the guy started requesting more money, she notified the authorities after transferring almost $30,000 to his bank account. According to MSN, the individual claimed to be a cosmonaut on the International Space Station and posted several images of space on his Instagram profile.
His ‘romance fraud’ is currently being looked at by the police. These scams are actually rather prevalent in today’s world. Before stealing money from their victims, con artists use social media to get to know their targets, become close to them, and then use falsehoods about love and relationships to convince people to believe them. These frauds multiplied during the epidemic as people turned to social media in place of face-to-face encounters.
