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Updated Friday, July 1, 2011 11:48 pm TWN, The China Post news staff

Scammer cons woman out of NT$10 million

After successfully cracking down on a case of the Nigeria 419 Scam in May, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) once again teamed up with Malaysian authorities and, on June 23, busted a similar group luring women to transfer money after posing as eligible men online.

Authorities arrested a Nigerian man and a Malaysian brother and sister of Indian descent in Perak, Malaysia. In their Taiping apartment, local police impounded cash, PCs, Internet modems, cell phones and fake identification documents, which was enough for police to charge the suspects with fraud and send them to the prosecutors' office.

The suspects had allegedly conned a female victim surnamed Chen. Chen logged onto the popular matchmaking website, “Match.com” around April this year, where she met what she believed was an English man named “George.”

George hotly pursued Chen, showering her with praise and even asking her to marry him. Enamored by the prospect of an intercontinental relationship, Chen did everything in her power to help George, especially when he claimed to be working on signing an agreement on a disease prevention campaign with people in Malaysia.

George claimed that he needed funds to cement the deal and directly asked Chen for financial support. After her dream man promised to visit and marry her in Taiwan after the deal, Chen eagerly made 10 separate transfers between May 5 and June 1 to two bank accounts in Malaysia and England. The total amount of all transfers: up to NT$10 million.

When Chen told her friends about her marvelous boyfriend, the friend got suspicious and advised her to contact authorities. By June 22, investigation was underway between the CIB and Malaysians authorities. The suspected culprits were caught shortly after.

Many women have fallen victim to Nigerian scammers. The CIB pointed out that in Taiwan, the majority are women between 25 to 55 years old, with a high-school education and English-language ability. The bureau pointed out that over 10 million similar scams were reported within the last three months in Taiwan.

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Comments

July 1, 2011 sorinradio@

there are tons of army scams going around. Apparently, Apple released an iPhone app a few days ago called Scam Detector. According to them, it exposes over 350 of the most notorious scams in the world. It might be worth checking it out, if you have an iPhone...

July 4, 2011 piawliangjohny@

this scammer.. ..women should watch out many are crazy out there....

July 6, 2011 elumpen@

Good grief. I wish I could meet a woman with $10m in the bank and nothing but fluff between her ears. It's a mystery to me how someone so gullible can make that much money in the first place.


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