With love scamming, scammers pretend to be interested in a romantic relationship. The online fraud cost one woman 100,000 euros.
Kassel – Great love, quick money or a dream job are promised, but this often hides so-called scamming. With love scamming, scammers take advantage of people looking for love - there's a lot of money at stake.
Love scamming is on the rise: the fraudulent game of love
In the digital age, many people rely on online dating services. You can create a profile and look for love on online dating sites. With love scamming, however, there is a fraudster behind a profile who tries to get money from lovers with compliments and keen interest. The love scammer often quickly overwhelms his victims with fake photos and stories about strokes of fate.
These stories are intended to persuade lovers to transfer money to their new acquaintances. What sounds absurd to many people is not always easy to recognize. People should pay attention on dating sites if the conversation quickly turns to a shared future and transferring money. If a person on a dating site seems too perfect to you and tells you about true love after a few messages, you should be careful. A Baltic Sea resident also fell for a perfidious scam.
Woman is cheated out of 100,000 euros by a love scammer
In an interview with NDR 1 Radio MV, a woman reported on her experiences with love scamming. This took place via the LinkedIn network. As she said, she had a friendly relationship with a man there. She wrote to the alleged cocoa dealer over a longer period of time. She didn't think it was a scam because her contact regularly sent pictures from business trips. Then the fraudster started his work: He stated that there had been problems on one of his trips and that she urgently needed to transfer money for him.
Without thinking too much, the 59-year-old transferred 7,000 euros to the man because he promised a quick repayment. Even when the man continued to tell the story, she didn't become suspicious: "Everything agreed with his stories," she said after she received photos of authentic-looking documents from him. In the end, the 59-year-old transferred 100,000 euros because the love scammer blackmailed her so that she could otherwise forget her original 7,000 euros.
Only after this transfer did the woman start researching on the Internet and became aware of fake passports with the signature she knew. Then she realized that she had been a victim of fraud and filed a report. She has not yet lost hope of getting the money back. The police also say that this is extremely difficult. The perpetrator behind the fake profile would first have to be identified. (
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