Investment scams have been popping up on dating and chat sites, with one man losing NT$4 million (US$127,971) after falling for someone he met online, the Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) warned yesterday.
A businessman surnamed Wang (王), 53, was befriended by an unknown woman on Facebook, bureau officials said, adding that the married Taipei resident began conversing with her daily after becoming enamored with her beautiful photograph.
“It was love at first sight with you,” she reportedly wrote to Wang. “I prefer a mature man with broad social experience.”
Wang continued the online relationship, believing it was true love, the officials said.
The woman told Wang that she worked in the Hong Kong financial sector and that she earned good money making foreign currency trades online, the officials said, adding that Wang wired an initial US$10,000 investment before he received small incremental profits that persuaded him to transfer more.
Wang withdrew the last of his bank savings, which he wired to the woman, only to receive a message from her a few days later that the trades were duds and all the money was lost, they said.
Wang tried to contact her, but when she disappeared, he realized that it was a scam and that he had lost NT$4 million, his entire life savings, they added.
Love traps designed to defraud people of money have been on the rise, with a 30 percent increase from 2017 to last year, the officials said, adding that many cases involved female scam artists claiming to work in Hong Kong or Macau as traders, bankers or lottery executives.
The scams are typically run on dating or chat sites, where the scammers befriend adults romantically, talk of easy profits and disappear after receiving a large sum of money, they said.
Officials warned the public to be careful on social media, saying that that the scam can entrap lonely women equally well.
TOO TIRED: Investigators found that the pilot’s lack of alertness could be attributed to a lack of sleep the previous night, when he had slept with his child It was a copilot’s inappropriate operation of the aircraft and the pilot’s insufficient alertness that led to a hard landing of a China Airlines cargo flight on Dec. 13, 2018, the Taiwan Transportation Safety Board said yesterday. Flight CI6844, a Boeing 747-409 which departed from Hong Kong International Airport, landed on the pre-threshold area of runway L5 at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, about 21m before the head of the runway, an investigation report said. The hard landing damaged three runway lights, but none of the personnel on board sustained any injuries, the report said. When approaching the runway, the copilot failed to maintain
DISTRUST WARRANTED? The WHO is under China’s control and has become a useless organization, while data from China cannot be trusted, a Control Yuan member said China’s demand that the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, Hubei Province, not be referred to with names like the “Wuhan pneumonia” betrays its lack of confidence in itself, Premier Su Tseng-chang (蘇貞昌) told lawmakers yesterday. Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tsai Yi-yu (蔡易餘) asked Su, during a interpellation at the Legislative Yuan in Taipei, for his view on China’s attempts to redeem its national image in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. These included China’s efforts to “bleach” its image, including having WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus publicly praise its handling of the COVID-19 outbreak, and thanking it for buying time
Taipei residents who stay at hotels in the city during their 14-day mandatory quarantine period are eligible to apply for the city’s NT$7,000 subsidy, with online applications to be launched next week. Taipei Deputy Mayor Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) on Monday said Taipei residents who have COVID-19 Health Declaration and Home Quarantine Notice dated after March 19 and a quarantine hotel receipt for the dates covered by the quarantine period, would be eligible for the subsidy. The Taipei City Government on Sunday told the Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) that so many city residents are under home quarantine that about 90 percent of
REPEAT OFFENDER: The man went outside for exercise on Wednesday and then left his home on Saturday with his girlfriend, officials said A New Taipei City man has been fined NT$400,000 (US$13,221) and ordered into government quarantine after breaking home quarantine for a second time on Saturday. The 25-year-old man, surnamed Chen (陳) returned to Taiwan on Sunday last week and was ordered to home quarantine until Sunday. He was seen leaving his home on a scooter with his girlfriend on Saturday, three days after he was fined NT$200,000 for going outside to exercise, police said. Chen has now been placed in a quarantine center arranged by the district office and health center of the district where he lives, police said. Police warned the public
RSS