Those who read news reports on love scams might believe that victims would tend to be, well, on the older side.
However, young people have been known to fall for love scams too.
A 27-year-old man lost close to S$45,000 to a scammer he met over Instagram.
Source: Markus Winkler on Unsplash
The “woman” convinced him to review luxury products and earn a commission by transferring money.
The victim, a private university student named only as Mr Lim, met someone over Instagram on 14 Oct, he told Shin Min Daily News.
She followed him on the platform first, and he reciprocated seeing that she was a “beautiful woman” named Anna.
They started exchanging messages, and she told him that she was a fashion designer at a luxury brand.
Later, she said she was a Malaysian working in Singapore.
They ended up chatting over the phone for an hour or two daily and exchanging messages frequently.
After just three days, she initiated a relationship, saying they had a common language, i.e. Mandarin. He agreed.
Soon, the ruse deepened. Anna asked Mr Lim to help her with her sales.
All he had to do was write reviews on her products, then — for some reason — transfer a sum of money.
She said he would eventually get back the funds he sent, along with some “commission”.
Source: Shin Min Daily News
From 10pm on 18 Oct to 1am the next day, Mr Lim made 14 transfers totalling S$45,590.
Two of the transfers were made from his mother’s account.
The first two times, he separately received back S$116 and S$735. He also got S$41 in “commission”.
However, he didn’t get anything back after his next 12 transactions.
The last few times that he transferred money, he was told that he needed to keep on transferring money to get his commission.
After Mr Lim finally realised that it was a scam, he refused to make any more transfers.
He also contacted the boutique that Anna allegedly worked in and they told him there was no such person.
That was when he made a police report.
Unfortunately, the police said it would be difficult to get his money back, Mr Lim said.
This made him depressed for two weeks after the incident, he added, lamenting,
The money was saved up from years of working. I was going to use it to pay next semester’s school fees, but now I have nothing.
By sharing his story, he hoped people would learn from it and remain alert and avoid falling for scams.
The police confirmed to Shin Min that a report had been filed over the incident, and investigations were ongoing.
Also read: Elderly Man Targeted By Love Scam Attempts To Transfer S$3K, POSB Staff Calls Police
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Featured image from Shin Min Daily News and Shin Min Daily News on Facebook.
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