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Woman loses thousands of dollars to romance scammer posing as astronaut in distress, police in Japan say (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 4 days ago by bytesonbike@discuss.online to c/nottheonion@lemmy.world

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

After some exchanges, the scammer one day told her he was "in space on a spaceship right now" but was "under attack and in need of oxygen," the official said.

The scammer then urged her to pay him online to help him buy oxygen, and successfully hoodwinked around 1 million yen ($6,700) out of her.

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[–] rozodru@piefed.social 8 points 4 days ago (2 children)

reminds me of stories of when they would target wrestling fans. Like they would pretend they were WWE wrestlers and talk to fans and get them to send them money cause they'd be broke. Then one time of the fans actually went to a show to confront one of the wrestlers about paying them back. jumped the barricade and everything.

Just blows my mind that it always seems to be mentally ill individuals that have a ton of money and they can just easily hand it out like that.

[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 3 points 4 days ago

If you're sufficiently mentally ill you can just give your rent money to them. But also many of them are retirees losing their minds and living off savings

[–] celeste@kbin.earth 2 points 4 days ago

A lady I know got facebook scammed by someone pretending to be like a favorite actor of hers. She had brain damage from diabetes.