No doubt a scam can happen anywhere, anytime to anybody even the most savviest among us. We are especially vulnerable when our emotions are out front leading the charge. You meet someone online or off that really revs your motor. Not just the attraction factor but you feel like that a real connection has been made between the two of you.
With online dating it can really take on a whole new dimension. You have never actually met the person so you are putting a lot of trust out there. You hope they are who they say they are. Yes the chats are terrific but in reality you still don't know.
Probably many of the people in Tokyo who got scammed felt the same way. They trusted and were rewarded for their trust by having their money stolen.
According to a story in The Tokyo Reporter close to a million and half people over a five year period were swindled out of two billion yen. It seems the crooks set up a series of online dating membership sites and hired male actors to play the roles of women looking to meet that special someone.
After making the initial contact the actors would persuade customers to move from a chat room to a virtual site. Registering the victims to a virtual site is where this criminal organization made their money. Signing up to these virtual sites automatically signed them up for the company's pay sites all without the customer's knowledge.
Apparently the thieves even built a customer service department to handle the inevitable complaints. This scam came to end recently when law enforcement in Miyagi Prefecture and Tokyo arrested the leader of the organization as well as a number of his cohorts.
Hopefully when it comes to online dating you will never experience anything of that nature. But whether it is an elaborate criminal organization or just a lone individual looking to make a fast buck the point is to be careful in cyberspace because you never know if the person on the other side of monitor is who they say they are.