Police are looking into whether a woman in central Japan was tricked into transferring $30,000 (about 4.4 million yen) to a con artist who claimed to be a Russian astronaut working on the International Space Station who needed money to come back to Earth to wed her.
Woman Pays For ‘Russian Astronaut’ To Return To Earth In Alleged Scam
By
Haider Ali in
Bizarre
On 10th October 2022
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A man allegedly tricked a Japanese woman into paying for his return flight to Earth while pretending to be a Russian astronaut in space and promising to marry her when he returned.
In June, the man discovered the 65-year-old unnamed victim on Instagram. He claimed to work at the International Space Station, where astronauts have limited access to phone service, and posted random photographs of space there.
(NASA via AP)
Their bond grew stronger very quickly. He repeatedly declared his love for her and made a marriage proposal on the Japanese messaging service LINE.
He sent her messages like “I want to start my life in Japan” and “Saying this 1,000 times won’t be enough, but I’ll keep saying it. I love you,” news outlet TV Asahi reported.
(NASA via AP)
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But he claimed that in order to get married, he would need money to fly back to Earth. He said that in addition to the cost of a rocket to get there, there were landing fees to pay once in Japan.
According to the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun, the woman paid her supposed prospective fiancé 4.4 million yen (about $30,000) over five installment payments between August 19 and September 5.
However, when his requests persisted, the woman got suspicious of his motives and reported him to the police, who are now looking into the incident as a romance scam, according to local media.
In Japan, the number of romance scams—where a con artist develops a fake online identity to win over a victim and trick them into giving money—has been rising.
The number of fraud cases, which includes romantic scams, increased from 8,693 in 2012 to 14,498 last year, a roughly 67 percent increase over the previous ten years, despite the fact that the Japanese police do not collect data specifically on romance scams.
While the police have documented an increase since 2020, the number of reports seems to have decreased after reaching a peak in 2017 with 18,212 incidents.