NW woman burnt by $380k romance scam

[Wayne]

http://www.theadvocate.com.au/news/loca ... 29410.aspx

A NORTH-West woman has lost $380,000 in an elaborate online scam involving romance.

A family home is likely to be lost and a family member is now likely to end up as an age pensioner renting rather than a self-funded retiree.

That is according to Burnie- based Detective-Constable Mark Johnston, who says sophisticated romance scams - preying on loneliness and emotion - are on the rise.

Another Coaster lost about $60,000 in recent times.

"It becomes so difficult to convince people they are in a scam because they fall so deeply for these people," said Det-Const Johnston, one of two officers on the Coast dedicated to fighting fraud and electronic crime.

"People shouldn't be calling their friends and relatives silly for doing these things; they are well-rehearsed and well-planned scams."

He was speaking in the wake of Australian Bureau of Statistics figures showing Tasmanians were increasingly being conned by scammers; particularly Tasmanian men.

The woman who lost $380,000 was lured to Malaysia following an online "relationship" developing. She was conned into giving up money after being convinced there was $5.8 million only she could access.

She was convinced to pay for dye to remove ink from cash to make it usable and was given $US5000 in cash to help convince her it was for real.

"She fell in love and it wasn't the greed," Det-Const Johnston said.

He said these incidents usually started when people were on romance, dating or social networking sites.

"They get usually an unsolicited approach, start conversing and it develops into online romance.

"Then come requests for money, phone cards for Internet access ... and when the person is caught up in the whole whirlwind of romance is usually when the larger sums happen."

Often, police only became aware when friends or relatives of victims contacted them.

Police often had their work cut out to convince the victims they were even being scammed.

He urged family and friends worried about such things to contact police.

One thing to watch for was people spending much time online in private and turning off screens when other people came into the room.

"The key police message remains if it seems too good to be true and it's on the Internet it probably is (too good to be true)."