Retired Woman Scammed of $14,000 by Fake FB Boyfriend Even When Police Told Her It’s a Scam

By
Goh Yi Ling
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Last Updated on 2023-08-22 , 11:35 am

You probably have heard the idiom “falling on deaf ears” at some point.

Sometimes, you ignore the advice of others to little or no consequence. At other times, you may pay a hefty price for turning your nose up at what others have to say for your good.

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A retired woman fell into the latter category as she lost more than $10,000 to a love scam even though she was told it was a scam.

What’s worse is that she was not scammed once but twice.

Here is what happened.

Woman Lost $1,300 to Online Love Scam Involving iTunes Gift Cards

This real-life scam involves a retired woman who met a man called “Andy” on Facebook sometime in June last year.

Zaobao reported that after the duo chatted for about five months, “Andy” asked the retired woman to buy an iTunes card worth $50.

The retired woman, who goes by the moniker Ms Wang, was unfamiliar with iTunes but still decided to proceed with the purchase.

Then, “Andy” then asked for more gift cards, this time worth $250.

During one of the times that Ms Wang went to purchase iTunes gift cards for “Andy”, “Andy” told her that the card purchased was expired.

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Ms Wang was outraged and went to the shop (located at Orchard Road) to kick up a fuss with the shop attendant.

The shop attendant was alarmed by this behaviour and called the police, who informed Ms Wang that this was a scam.

However, Ms Wang refused to believe the police and continued to give “Andy” more money.

Eventually, Ms Wang realised she was a scam victim when her beloved “Andy” constantly delayed their face-to-face meetings.

By then, Ms Wang had given “Andy” over $1,300 worth of gift cards.

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Woman Was Scammed a Second Time This Year

Unfortunately, it seemed that Ms Wang did not learn her lesson and became more vigilant when talking to online characters.

This May, Ms Wang again met another man through Facebook. This man claimed to be “Alvin” living in Sydney. He said that he had a Korean father and a mother from Penang.

Ms Wang said that “Alvin” was gentle and well-mannered. He also paid a lot of attention to her.

This led Ms Wang to tell him about her previous experience of being scammed and said that if they started to talk about money matters, she would cut off all contact with him.

“Alvin” also shared that he was the victim of an investment scam, and after the two got to know each other better, Ms Wang fell in love with “Alvin”.

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Later on, “Alvin,” asked Ms Wang to help find out the prices of polycarbonates for a project that he had in Thailand.

After Ms Wang did what she was told, she helped to contact a company there to order 200kg of polycarbonate. “Alvin” was to pay for the order.

After two more orders, “Alvin” said he needed to buy another 100kg of the material, but he only had about $47,000 on hand, which was not enough to meet just half the required payment.

Ms Wang decided to help him and paid $6,155 to him.

Unfortunately, this turned out to be a scam again.

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Goh Yi Ling
Email: [email protected]