Sunday, February 27, 2011

Illinois man sends $200,000 over 2 1/2 years to fake Internet 'girlfriend'

A long-distance Internet-only relationship turned out to be a long-distance Internet scam, the Chicago Sun-Times reported on Friday.

A 48-year-old Naperville, IL man called Naperville police earlier this week. He believed his online girlfriend had been kidnapped. Unfortunately, police informed him his online girlfriend didn't really exist.

Obviously there was someone at the other end of the Internet connection. He told police he started the relationship 2 1/2 years prior, and over that time he had wired about $200,000 to "her" in several different bank accounts in Nigeria, Malaysia, England and the United States. The Nigerian bank alone should have set off red flags.

It turns out that the ID card that the "woman" provided him (after all, it could have been a man, or even a group on the other end of the relationship) was a sample driver’s license from Florida. Police said that when an officer told the man the “woman” he was sending money to didn’t exist, he was "in disbelief.”

Via: Chicago Sun-Times

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