A scammer took the life savings of an 80-year-old woman in Japan after they pretended to be an astronaut and begged the woman for money to buy oxygen, according to the New York Post.
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Scammer Poses As Astronaut And Convinces Victim To Give Money For Oxygen
The swindler met the woman from Hokkaido on a social media app in July. As the two began chatting, the scammer was feigning a romance with the woman.
Sometime during their false relationship, the grifter eventually told the elderly woman he was “under attack and in need of oxygen,” Sky News reported.
The woman believed him when he told her he was “in space on a spaceship right now.” Believing this was true love, the victim transferred the scammer around one million yen, roughly $6,700 USD, to the supposedly dying astronaut.
The police firmly believe this was a scam. This is pretty typical for fraudsters to do, pretend to be someone else, and romance a victim. Eventually, they get close enough to persuade them for money.
Scammers also more often than not target older people, like this 80-year-old woman. Now that her life savings are gone, police are warning others not to give money to someone they met online.
Scammers Getting Smarter
In a similar situation, an older woman was scammed by someone using a deep fake AI. The fraudster presented themselves as a soap opera star and sparked a romance with a woman with mental health issues.
Due to 66-year-old Abigail Ruvalcaba being vulnerable, they eventually persuaded her to give them so much money that she sold her condo for them.
“I thought I was in love,” said Ruvalcaba. “I thought we were going to have a good life together.”
The videos the scammer sent her looked so real that she was convinced they were real. This led her to hand over $81,000 in cash. She then sold her family’s condo for $350,000, much below the market price.
“It happened so quickly, within less than three weeks,” said her daughter Vivian. “The sale of the home was done. It was over with.”