– The perpetrators, who most often have many fake accounts/profiles, present themselves online, among other things, as American soldiers. They create their online identity from scratch in order to gain the trust of potential victims and ultimately extort money from them – says asp. Przemysław Ratajczyk from the Press Section of the Lower Silesian Provincial Police Headquarters in Wrocław. – A resident of Kłodzko County lost tens of thousands of zlotys in this way.
How do the criminals operate?
The spokesperson adds:
The fraudsters correspond with women, gain their trust, become friends with them and then—under the pretext, for example, of wanting to come to Poland—invent all kinds of stories whose common denominator is that they need to borrow money…
Many women, in order to help a “soldier” or “doctor,” are even willing to take out a bank loan, just to obtain the necessary amount of money.
This was also the case with a resident of Kłodzko County who fell victim to an online scam. The woman met a man on a social networking site who claimed to be an American soldier on a mission.
The fraudster wrote to the victim that he was a widower and had no one close to him.
During one of their conversations, the “American soldier” asked the woman to accept a package he had sent. However, he needed to borrow money to pay for the valuable parcel, which was supposedly to contain a large amount of dollars.
Officers say:
The woman wanted to help the newly met man and believed the story he told her. It turned out that the fee for the parcel amounted to tens of thousands of zlotys. To obtain such a large sum, the woman took out a bank loan. Once she had obtained the required amount, she sent the money to the indicated account. The contact then ceased. Because of her gullibility, the woman lost PLN 37,000.
And they warn:
Let us not deposit money into the accounts of strangers, regardless of what they promise in return. Let us remember that only our caution, as well as maintaining distance from the information provided and carefully verifying it, can protect us from losing our savings or sensitive data!