Scammed, by love, again, from the Front Page Sections, translated…
The American Peace Corp General scammed the cougars here in Taiwan, and, there had been, many cases, the Seventh Protective Squad’s First Unit stated, that there had been, at least ELEVEN cases of scam, using the calls of, “looking for someone to marry”, and had the women fall deeply in love, then, the man had, used the excuses of sustaining injuries, being kidnapped, and other reasons, to scam the women.
Based off of the estimates by the police, there were, scam artists using the name of American army officers to scam in Banciao, Sanchong, Hsinchu, Miaoli, Pingdong, and Taidong, and other regions here. The investigative officers pointed out, that the IP addresses of these cases were most international, with a huge proportion of it coming from Indonesia, and it was very difficult, to freeze the bank accounts, even harder, to get the money the victims lost back, and, there would be, breaking points in the chase, and, the police suspected, that there’s a ring of scam artists behind it.
The measures was often using friendship software, Facebook, IM, or e-mails, sending out the messages, to various addresses; if someone replied, then, the individual used an assortment of excuses, to demand the transfers, and once the transfers were made, the individual vanishes, off the surface of the planet.
A man claimed to be “Perez” of the Peace Corp, that he was attacked by ISIS while patrolling in Syria, and was in dire need for money to save his legs, and, asked Chen, who lives in Miaoli, to wire about $50,000N.T. to Malaysia, and promised to marry her, that in the future, he was planning to set up an orphanage with her in Taiwan.
A woman, Chang in Hsinchu met a self-proclaimed peace corps officer, “Steven”, he claimed that the Afghani president agreed to pay $2.5 million U.S. in damages in the war, but the money was confiscated locally, and there need to be a person he’d trusted, to help pay the $8,000U.S.D. as the charges for the wire transfers, so the American diplomats will be able to get the transferred amount, and this “General” also “promised” to take the money to Taiwan and propose to her.
There was a woman, Tseng in Kaohsiung, who’d met a self-claimed four-star admiral from Afghanistan, the two started referring to one another as “honey”. Joseph wanted to come to Taiwan to be with her, but he’s stuck in the deserts, and asked Tseng to wire some money for his discharging fees, she’d wired a total of over $300,000N.T. to him, and, although the police stopped her, she’d still wanted to keep on sending money, to “save” “Joseph”.
The police found these cases, and reminded the victims that they are scam artists, and, the victims normally didn’t believe, and the police needed to use a marathon style of reasoning with the victims, to finally get it through them.
“The internet was a means, and, it’s the hearts that got cheated”, the head of the tech scam squad in Kaohsiung, Kuo said, the scam artists made the connections, and started making up an assortment of reasons to scam the victims, to make the victims invest in all their emotions, and money too; there are those scam artists who claimed to be abroad, and used webcam, and took shots of the victims naked, and threatened that if the victims don’t pay, then, they are going to send the photos viral.
Yeah, and this, is still, only a small TIP of that huge ICEBERG, and, there would be, more and more victims, because there are always going to be people who are too desperate for love, who can’t think straight, as those scam artists sweet-talked to them, and, there are going to be, more and more cases of these sorts of love scams in the world.