Alice, 39 years old, recently got divorced from her horrible marriage and was living on her own. But the good part was that she owned a business in the food line, so financially, she was quite strong.
After a couple of years, she was ready to come back to the dating life, as she was living all alone and had very few friends. She made her profile on the Boo dating application, and there she met with Andrew, an army officer who is also new to the platform and looking for love as he was off duty for a while.
They connected on Boo and got along very well; they used to talk all day. Days turned into nights, but the topics never ended. But after some months, he got a call-up from the army, and he got busy with his duties.
They did make plans to meet, but that was not possible because of his workload. They used to talk on calls and do occasional video calls. But suddenly Andrew mentioned his ill mother, and how he’s not able to access his bank account because of technical problems, so he asked for some financial support from Alice.
Alice did help him, but the series of requests for more money started from here. Andrew sometimes asked for money in the name of medical bills or other bills and did mention repaying loans.
He did send the receipts for the bills, and many times Alice did cross-check whether the place he was asking for was legit. But every time, it turned out to be real. But the conversation slowly became less frequent, and upon asking, Andrew revealed he has a loan of $200,000 that he took for the business he wanted to start, but he is not able to pay, and the lenders are torturing him.
He asked again for the money from Alice, and day by day he used to talk about how lenders tortured and humiliated him. Alice didn’t have that much money to give, so she thought to get help from a fundraiser on Facebook and reach out to her friends.
The post was shared by many people, and at the end, it reached out to Laura. Laura messaged Alice about the photo used in the fundraiser and said it was her husband’s photo. After talking and having conversations for days, it turned out Andrew used the photo of Laura’s husband.
Alice was shocked; she loved him from the bottom of her heart, and it turned out to be a scam. She didn’t believe it. Alice said she used to video call him, and Laura explained about the AI technology used to dupe people. But the problem was that Alice had already sent some of her money, and the fundraising amount was directly sent to his bank account.
She did lodge a complaint and report the crime, but again, she had the horrible experience of falling in love with someone. She lost faith in love and lost trust in everyone. She took the help of Financial Scams Recovery; she lost around $70,000, and the FSR team helped her recover all the funds.
Financial Scams Recovery gave their best, put Alice on top priority, and assigned a dedicated team for recovery. They went through the case and even reported it to the local police. Financial Scams Recovery did recover all the funds, but the faith in love she lost is quite difficult to recover.
- Published By Team Hongkong Journalist