From cliched schemes to elaborate setups, online romance scams continue to grow, with over 1,000 reported victims losing more than NT$400 million last year
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By Han Cheung / Staff reporter
Between January and April, fake online lovers defrauded at least 415 people in Taiwan out of more than NT$73 million. And that’s just the reported cases, according to the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CBI).
Three near-misses made the news on consecutive days this week. On Monday, a Chiayi man tried to wire NT$300,000 to his “girlfriend,” who said she urgently needed the money to renovate her house, when he was stopped by post office staff, who notified the police. The man later said that he met her on a dating app, but never in person. He didn’t know her real name or what she looked like, but they would chat all day long.
The following day, the police stopped a 68-year-old Taoyuan woman from falling into a similar trap — she was about to wire NT$1 million to an “engineer” she met through Facebook who needed money to launch a business. They had never met in person.
Photo: File photo
On Wednesday, a 36-year-old Taichung man…
