A space romance quickly turns into a nightmare as a Japanese woman gets conned for $30,000 for a make-believe Russian astronaut's return ticket to Earth.
The 65-year-old woman was wooed by the imposter into paying $30,000 after claiming that he wanted to start a new life in Japan after being stationed at the ISS, Gizmodo reports.
Online Scammers Are Taking Steps Out Of This World
Online fraud has escalated to the next level as a modern-day scam involved a woman from Japan and a man pretending to be stationed at the International Space Station (ISS).
The man who claimed to be a Russian cosmonaut started an Instagram correspondence with the elderly woman in June, which quickly turned into a romantic relationship.
Yomiuri, a local media outlet, reported that the man professed his love to the woman, promising marriage once he returned to Earth to start a new life in Japan, but would need a ticket back.
According to Gizmodo, the carefully curated social media account of the fraudster was enough for the woman to believe, along with his extensive knowledge of space agencies.
With this, the woman ended up sending the con artist 4.4 million yen ($30,000) between August 19 and September 5 to cover the cost of a rocket and his landing fee in five installments.
However, soon enough, she got suspicious of his increasing monetary demands and eventually reported it to the police, according to Daily Mail UK.
The police suspect that the woman had been a victim of a romance scam that weaponizes the manipulation of emotions to get money out of someone.
Romance Scams Are Growing In Popularity
According to The Irish Sun, romance scams have introduced a new way of committing fraud and have been at the forefront after the release of Netflix's Tinder Swindler.
Tinder Swindler was a documentary about the scam artist named Simon Leviev, who had been accused of swindling £7.4 million from women on Tinder worldwide.
Unlike the Russian cosmonaut, this international con man targets women with lavish and glamorous lifestyles of private jets and luxury hotels before luring them to handing him money.
In Japan alone, romance scams have risen in number as they amounted to 14,498 cases last year, almost 67% more than the 8,693 cases recorded in the last ten years.
However, IFL Science writes that romance scams involving fake astronauts were already happening even before the 2020s.
Back in 2016, an email scam made its rounds online containing a message from someone claiming to be the cousin of Nigeria's first astronaut.
The hoaxer said that the astronaut left for the space station but would now want to return despite getting paid some amount of $15 million for his solitary service.
The scammer then went on to say that the astronaut would require a larger sum of money to return to Earth, promising victims 20% of the astronaut's money if they gave him $3 million.
At the time being, the case involving the Japanese woman and her fake astronaut lover is being investigated by the authorities, according to The Sacramento Bee.
Connectedly, the director of the Japanese Association for Consumer Policy, Tsuguo Sakai, urged people to report any suspicion of falling victim to a scam immediately to the police.
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