We’ve talked about online love scams for a long time. Where scammers target lonely people and scam them out of their money.
In fact, we even did a video on it with our resident beauty and the ghost who apparently goes to the gym as well.
(Since you’re here, subscribe to our YouTube Channel for more informative videos lah)
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Unfortunately, not everybody’s lucky enough to get a handsome dude like Xiao Qiang who you can see and touch in real life.
Like the lady that we’re going to talk about.
Businesswoman in Hong Kong Realised She Was Scammed After 4 Years of “Relationship”
According to a news report on South China Morning Post (SCMP), a 66-year-old businesswoman found herself scammed out of S$31.5 million (HK$180 million) over four years.
She is believed to be a widow and runs a real estate investment company in Hong Kong.
The scammer posed as an engineer based in Britain and met her through the platform, Lovestruck, back in Apr 2014.
Although they had never met in real life even once, she decided to help him when he asked for financial help with his business.
Throughout the four years, she allegedly transferred cash to bank accounts in different countries including Hong Kong, mainland China, Malaysia, Japan, Taiwan, Britain and Germany.
All in all, it was reported that she made over 200 transactions.
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She only realised something was wrong when her boyfriend went M.I.A and talked to her family.
Taking Advantage of Lonely Individuals
Scammers typically depend on internet platforms to befriend potential victims and get their trust. After they get your trust, that is when they will ask victims for money to their bank accounts.
Typically, they could ask you to solve their financial problems. If not, it could be for you. They trying to send you a gift that got stuck at customs.
Then, they’ll ask for some money to get the item through immigration to you.
And if you think that this doesn’t work, think again. After all, victims might’ve heard of such cases in the news, but when it happens to them, they’ll still fall for it.
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Yes, the scammers are damn good at being “considerate and trustworthy”.
S’pore Internet Love Scams On The Rise
If you think this is a problem that solely belongs overseas, think again. Singaporeans had also lost money to such con artists.
In fact, it was reported that Singaporeans had lost S$37 million to such online love scams in 2017.
With the largest amount being a record S$6 million.
And if that’s not scary enough, the amount of money lost jumped by 50% from S$24 million in 2016, and the number of cases jumped by 30%.
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Plus, you can’t be sure that the number of cases reported is representative of the entire situation. There’ll definitely be people who are paiseh about getting scammed.
The police have warned the public to stay vigilant against such scams. They said that the borderless nature of such online crimes makes it difficult to investigate.
They urge people to be careful about making friends with strangers online and ignore requests for payment or personal information.
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