Love Scamming: Woman (57) from Western Pomerania loses 90,000 euros and becomes the perpetrator herself
From victim to perpetrator - that's what happened to a 57-year-old from near Ribnitz-Damgarten. It all started innocently and promisingly for her more than two years ago with an online acquaintance. The woman is now being investigated for money laundering.
Ribnitz-Damgarten. A woman from near Ribnitz-Damgarten lost around 90,000 euros through love scamming. According to police, she met a man who allegedly came from the region on a dating platform more than two years ago. They exchanged personal data and wrote to each other regularly and several times a day via a messenger service. But there was never any personal contact.For the 57-year-old, it was still a relationship; she was in love.
Just a few months after the first contact, the man explained that he had to go abroad for work. He would need financial support for alleged documents so that he could later import diamonds into Germany. In return, the woman kept sending him money. First she used her savings and later she even took out loans. To pay off this, she ended up mortgaging her house. In total she lost around 90,000 euros. At some point she told her online acquaintance that she no longer had any money. No problem for him. The fraudster wrote that she shouldn't worry and continued to maintain contact.
Fraudsters use victims for illegal money transfers
In the spring of 2023, when their relationship had already lasted more than a year, the man needed financial support again. However, this time he didn't ask for money. Instead, there was talk of a middleman, also German, who wanted to transfer money to the 57-year-old's account. The woman should then pass on the money via the online payment service PayPal. That's what she did - and from that point on she made herself liable to prosecution. She repeatedly received different amounts of money transferred and was supposed to send them in smaller, split amounts to different email addresses. Now the person who was actually defrauded is being investigated for money laundering.
She is said to have transferred a total of almost 100,000 euros on behalf of the love scammer. In the past two years there have been more than 90 love scamming cases reported in the Neubrandenburg police headquarters alone. The damage amounts to more than 700,000 euros. Women and men aged 50 and over are often affected. The perpetrators operate on various online platforms and social networks and later usually switch to private messenger services.
The police are therefore once again warning against disclosing personal data to unknown people. Even if everything sounds seemingly plausible, you should not make any transfers or give bank details to people you have never met in person.