BERLIN: Easy money, a super job, the dream apartment, a huge inheritance and, of course, the love of your life: internet scammers promise them all. If it sounds too good to be true, that’s because it is.
A particularly perfidious and also common form of internet fraud is catfishing, which involves scammers posing in social networks or dating apps and pretending to be in love so to make their victims emotionally dependent on them. A warning sign is that actual face-to-face meetings never happen.
Eventually the moment will come when your great online love claims to have run into money problems and cash is needed urgently to pay for a medical operation for example.
The scammer may also tell a story about stolen suitcases or lost passports, outstanding wages or unpaid hotel bills. There’s no limit to the imagination they apply.
While female love scammers (or ones purporting to be female) often try to wrap their victims around their fingers with photos or sexual advances, male love scammers use a different method.
They often pretend to be successful doctors, soldiers or pilots, the consumer protection website Watchlist Internet has…
