A Swiss woman fell in love with a doctor from Great Britain and kept sending him money. The equivalent of 690,000 francs! Supposedly to help the doctor with his ventilator company in the corona wave. Only: none of it was true. Behind the story was a gang of scammers.
It’s a well-known scam: Internet scammers take advantage of loneliness and the all-too-human desire for love to rob their unsuspecting victims of large sums of money. They pretend to be in love and empty their victims’ accounts. “Love scamming” is the name of this perfidious scam that a 60-year-old Swiss woman also fell for in the fall of 2020.
Two men were tried in London last week. With the verdict: four years in prison.
Schweizerin had no idea until the end
According to the British newspaper Evening Standard, the crooks stole the equivalent of about 750,000 francs from five different victims – the bulk of which would come from the Swiss victim.
The Swiss woman was convinced of the authenticity of her online love affair until the very end. The fraud was only revealed after a phone call from the white-collar crime department of the British police.
After the two internet crooks were arrested in late 2020, cell phones and bank statements were seized during a search, helping to identify other victims. Most of the money is probably gone. But: The British authorities are currently trying to secure the assets of the gang of scammers in order to be able to repay at least part of the money to the victims. (bbs)