AN 80-year-old Japanese woman ended up sending around 1 million yen ($6,700) to an online scammer who posed as an astronaut stuck in space and in need of money to buy oxygen.
Hailing from Japan’s northern Hokkaido Island, the hapless octogenarian reportedly met the scammer on social media back in July. They claimed to be a male astronaut on a mission in outer space, and the woman apparently believed them.
After earning the trust of their victim, the scammer told her they were “in space on a spaceship right now” but were “under attack and in need of oxygen.” Obviously, the only way the 80-year-old woman could was to send money to a bank account, so the astronaut could buy more oxygen and survive the ordeal.
Newsmen reported that the elderly woman lives alone and started developing feelings for the fake astronaut as their conversations progressed, so when they asked her for money, she was more than willing to help, despite the absurdity of their claims.
She was instructed to deposit the money using prepaid systems at five different stores between July and August, and she only told her family about it when she started realizing that something was off.
After discussing it with family, the woman reported the bizarre case to the police. She was told that this was a common type of online romance scam, and that getting her money back was virtually impossible.
The police decided to make the woman’s case public as a warning to other vulnerable people who might be targeted by scammers at some point.
“If a person you met on social media ever demanded cash from you, please be suspicious of the possibility of a scam, and report to the police”, a police official said.
As strange as it sounds, this type of astronaut scam is not unheard of in Japan. Back in 2022, another elderly woman paid $30,000 to a scammer posing as an astronaut stuck in space to help them return to earth.
