The
other day, I came across this story of a 47 year old businesswoman.
She is a divorcee with a 13 year old son and runs a successful
restaurant business. Let us call her Rachel. She met a man who called
himself as “Andrew Terry” on a China matchmaking website called
Jiayuan.com. He claimed that he was a 45 year old British
businessman, dealing with oil rigs, based in the middle east.
Rachel
and Andrew fell in love with each other. They talked on phone almost
every day. He sent her photographs of himself and send e-mail
messages, expressing his love for her and addressed her as his wife.
They planned to get married by end of 2012. Rachel thought that she
has found the love of her life and adored the idea of starting her
life afresh in a new country after her marriage. They continued their
web and phone relationship for almost 5 months, after which this
Andrew made his first demand for money. He told Rachel that his
business was facing problems and he needed money to buy equipment and
chemicals in order to complete a $7 Million contract.
Blinded
by her new found love, Rachel totally trusted this man and sent him
$10,000 that month. Next month he asked for more. She used her
savings and borrowed from credit companies, to raise an amount of
$1,20,000 and sent it to her love. She had to sell two of her
restaurants to pay back.
Rachel
was very lucky because before she was to send another tranche of
money to Andrew, an alert customer service supervisor of the company,
through which this money transfer was being done, smelled a rat and
called Rachel to warn her about sending more money and told her that
she was probably being cheated. Rachel, in her first reaction, got
extremely angry with the service manager and scolded him. But when
the supervisor told her that she personally had nothing to gain by
stopping her and on the contrary would loose her commission, Rachel
quietened down and started thinking. She soon realized that she has
become a fresh victim of internet swindlers, who cheat through hearts
of the women. Rachel now in fact, warns that for any internet
relationship, if the other person demands money, you should realize
that he is trying to cheat you and close the relationship.
The
usual “modus operandi ”
of internet swindlers these days is to hack an e-mail address and
capture all his e-mail contacts and then send the contacts, bogus
mails describing phony situations, mostly getting stuck abroad, and
demand immediate transfer of money, has become rather well known. The
internet thieves therefore are now concentrating on other tricks to
cheat innocent people on the net.
In
United states, this love scam is being called “soldier scam” as
internet scammers are now posing as members of US military. Jeff
Manning, spokesman for the Oregon Department of Justice says that
internet
swindlers have conned people out of millions of dollars, including a
Hillsboro, Oregon, woman who recently lost more than $750,000. Oregon
Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has a warning for people looking for
love online: That soldier who’s been professing devotion via email
may actually be a con artist looking for cash. She has this advice
for people who look for love on the internet.
“ The
anonymity of the Internet means that you cannot be sure of the real
name, age, marital status, nationality or even gender of your new
“heartthrob.” The con artists are often from foreign countries
using untraceable email addresses. Once these “soldiers” make a
connection, they begin asking for money for transportation, medical
bills, cell phone and Internet charges ,even the cost of a wedding.
They route accounts through numerous locations and use pay-per-hour
Internet cyber cafes, which makes finding the scammer and recovering
the money extremely difficult.”
Coming
back to our “Rachel story,” the money transfer company, “Western
Union”, through which, Rachel had sent her money, has now decided
to do something about this and have a launched a new campaign to
educate young people about dangers of online dating. This company
apparently receives regularly requests from female customers to
transfer money overseas to foreign men they met on line and whom they
consider as their boy friends.
The
company thinks that after listening to painful real life experiences
of women who have been cheated by net swindlers, these prospective
target women of the swindlers, would become aware of this dangerous
scam, that can shatter the life of the individual young woman. The
company wants to join the female advocacy groups to organize events,
where these unfortunate love victims would narrate their experiences
with so called boy friends, whom they never have met in person but
ended up loosing thousands of Dollars. Company also wants to put up
posters and distribute pamphlets at their offices to make future
target women aware of the dangers in sending money, to men, whom they
have never met.
There
is no doubt that the swindlers and scamsters of the internet have
found out a very effective method of cheating here. Unfortunately,
people tend to trust anyone they meet on internet, because the true
identity of the other person is hidden behind his communicating
skills. If he or she is a superior communicator, he would be able to
hide his
real name, age, marital status, nationality or even gender
effectively from the victim. Any one, who is lonely in his personal
life, can be easily trapped.
24
May 2013
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