.....NNN; Iris Leithold/dpa | 20.02.2024, 11:29 Uhr
Woman pays love fraudster 90,000 euros – and becomes suspected of money laundering
Blind with love: A woman in MV transfers 90,000 euros to an online acquaintance. Then she allows herself to be persuaded to pass on amounts of money. This makes her a criminal offence, say the police.
A woman from Ribnitz-Damgarten in the Vorpommern-Rügen district lost around 90,000 euros in a romance scam and may also have been guilty of money laundering. According to police, she repeatedly transferred sums of money to a man she met online, who claimed to be from the same region, so that he could buy diamonds abroad. As the Neubrandenburg police headquarters announced on Tuesday, she even took out loans and mortgaged her house in order to repay the loans.
Fraudsters are being investigated for money laundering
Finally, the alleged online friend asked the woman to accept money transfers from an intermediary to her
account and forward them via an online payment service. “She did that – and from that point on she made herself a criminal offence,” the officials explained. She repeatedly received amounts of money transferred and was supposed to send them in smaller amounts to different email addresses. Now the person who was actually defrauded is being investigated for money laundering. The woman is said to have transferred almost 100,000 euros on behalf of her.
The police repeatedly warn against so-called love scamming. In this scam, the perpetrators usually contact single people via social networks and try to build an often romantic relationship, officials explained. The aim of the fraudsters is to influence the other person so that money is paid by feigning strong feelings. The perpetrators mostly came from abroad.
90 love scamming cases in two years
According to the information, more than 90 such cases of fraud have been reported in the past two years in the Neubrandenburg police headquarters in the eastern part of the country alone. The damage amounts to more
than 700,000 euros. Women and men aged 50 and over are often affected.
The police warned against disclosing personal information to unknown people. “Even if everything sounds seemingly plausible, no transfers should be made or bank details given to people you have never met in person.” Likewise, no money should be accepted and forwarded to other accounts. This could then be money laundering, which, according to the police, carries a fine or even a prison sentence of up to ten years.