Incredible, but true: a 65-year-old Japanese woman lost $30,000 in a scam to help an “astronaut stranded in space.” The story was reviewed by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun.
Two criminals contacted the person through Instagram, last June, explaining that one of them was a Russian cosmonaut from the International Space Station. The woman resides in the town of Higashi-Omi.
The fake astronaut said he wanted start a new life in Japan, declaring his “love for the victim”, and that he would marry her upon his return to Earth.
While one pretended to be the cosmonaut, another received the money.
The scammer sent messages like “I want to start my life in Japan,” and “Saying this a thousand times won’t be enough, but I’ll keep saying: I love you.”
Moved, the woman sent between August 19 and September 5 a total of 4.4 million yen through five separate bank transfers. However, her suspicions grew with the passage of time, until he cut off communication with the scammers and contacted the local police.
There are no arrests at the moment.
It is not the first time that there has been a scam with false astronauts
The most curious, as the portal points out The NY Journal, is that it is not the first space-themed online scam. A similar one occurred in 2016: someone claimed to be the cousin of “Nigeria’s first astronaut, Abacha Tunde.”
The mail that was sent to the possible victims is that “Tunde had stayed on board a Soviet space station when the USSR dissolved” in the early 1990s.
“Abacha Tunde” does not exist, and no Nigerian has traveled to space either. It is unknown how many people were scammed by this situation, but it is still a tremendous case.