A man allegedly scammed a Japanese woman into paying for his return flight to Earth while pretending to be a Russian astronaut in orbit and promising to marry her when he returned, as reported first by Vice and Interesting Engineering.
In June, the man discovered the 65-year-old unidentified 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 in his account.
Their romance developed swiftly. He proposed marriage to her on the Japanese messaging service LINE several times.
(Photo : NASA)
Astronaut Tamara Jernigan, backdropped against the earth , totes part of a Russian-built crane, called Strela May 30, 1999. Jernigan's feet are anchored on a mobile foot restraint connected to Discovery's remote manipulator sytsem (RMS). Astronauts Jernigan and Daniel T. Barry went on to spend over seven hours on the space walk. Discovery is carrying out maintenance and construction on the new International Space Station.
The man sent her messages such as "saying this 1,000 times won't be enough, but I'll keep saying. I love you," and "I want to start my life in Japan," according to Japanese news outlet TV Asahi.
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 he had to pay in Japan.
Hopeful that the so-called astronaut will be her future fiancé, the woman transferred five installments totaling 4.4 million yen ( $30,000) for less than a month to cover his supposed costs to return to Earth.
However, when his requests persisted, the woman got wary of his motives and reported him to the police, who are now looking into the incident as a romance scam, according to local media.
It's interesting to note that this is not the first instance of a con artist exploiting someone's interest in astronauts.
Another Japanese woman in her 40s was being followed on Instagram by a user posing as a Russian astronaut stationed at the International Space Station, according to the local news outlet Asahi.
The pair communicated over the two days using the app's direct communications function, Asahi noted that the astronaut is likely to have used an app to translate texts into Russian while the woman spoke to him in Japanese.
The woman became suspicious when the man asked to switch to another app, so she immediately ended the chat.
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Romance Scams
Vice claimed that there are likely more cases of romance scams like this that are yet to be reported to the police. Although the Japanese authorities do not keep separate statistics of romance scams like this one, they have seen a substantial increase in online scams over the last ten years.
The number of fraud cases, which includes romance scams, increased from 8,693 in 2012 to 14,498 last year, a roughly 67 percent increase over the previous ten years.
After reaching a peak of 18,212 incidents in 2017, the number of complaints appeared to be declining, but the police have been reporting an uprise since 2020.
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Written by Joaquin Victor Tacla
