“Love” or “romance scamming” – i.e. cheating on love – does not stop at dating apps.
The scam is particularly perfidious because it causes a lot of emotional stress for the victim and often ultimately results in a large loss of money.
This is also shown by a current case from Erfurt:
A woman from Erfurt looked for true love on the Internet and ended up falling for scammers. The 60-year-old woman from Erfurt met a man in June via a dating app. After the two had been in contact for several months, the man asked the woman for help. Due to a misunderstanding by the police, he was imprisoned in Türkiye.
In order to lift his detention, he needed a deposit of more than 40,000 euros. The Erfurt native was helpful. She took out a loan and transferred the requested amount to the man. When he later demanded another tens of thousands of euros, the woman became suspicious and filed a complaint.
How to recognize a “romance scammer”:
- When making contact: A brief email in English (including broken German) inviting you to chat serves as a lure.
- About the language: The scammers usually communicate in good English.
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- About the pictures: Scam women prefer to lure their victims with beautiful photos in which they can be seen scantily dressed; Scam men often use photos of men in uniform.
- The content of the emails: After the first contact, scammers bombard their victims with long letters full of bombastic vows of love. Scammers often want to know everything about their victims. The scammers soon refer to their new partner as “wife” or “husband” and make marriage plans.
- To requests for money/visa/parcels or sending letters/joint account.
The police advise:
Enter the name of your internet acquaintance with the addition “Scammer” into Google, for example. In many cases, the search engine can confirm suspicions. If you were sent an image, you can use the reverse image search to get additional information.
Use an alternative email address for online contact exchanges or for digital correspondence with strangers.
Don't respond to demands. Under no circumstances transfer money. Don't cash checks or forward letters or packages - don't keep them either.
Save all emails and chat texts on a storage medium as evidence. If you can't do it yourself, have a computer-savvy friend read out the so-called email header for you. This tells you where the email was sent from.
Report it to the police if you have fallen victim to a scammer.
You might also be interested in: How to recognize fake accounts on dating apps
Source: Erfurt State Police Inspectorate
Article image: Shutterstock / By Tanya Antusenok
Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )