Beware: The love scam

Meeting a goodlooking foreigner who can rescue you out of whatever rut you find yourself in and bring you abroad to live happily ever after? It’s the dream of many Filipinos.

Unfortunately, there are very many dodgy people who know of this dream, and in the digital age, would ruthlessly take advantage of your pangarap.

Meet Remelyn and her younger sister Noveline.

One day, the married Remelyn received a friend request from a handsome foreigner called “Joe.”

Joe happens to be British, a pilot, and persistent in his chase. He would call Remelyn, chat her up, and despite not being able to do video calls because of a blasted phone camera, would occasionally send her photos.

And then he admitted to Remelyn that he’s in love with her.

Remelyn didn’t want this opportunity to go to waste; Joe could be their ticket out of their hard life in Nueva Ecija. So she introduced Joe to her sister Noveline, who pretended to be Remelyn.

Noveline quickly fell in love, too.

“Lagi siyang nag-a-I love you. Sobrang sweet. Syempre po, nadadala ka dun sa feeling na ganun. Parang napamahal na rin po ako sa kanya,” Noveline said.

Remelyn’s idea – that Joe could be the solution to their difficult lives – seemed to be true, when Joe said he was sending a package full of goodies to the Philippines worth USD20,000 or P1.8 million! He even sent them a tracking number for it.

A day before the package was set to arrive however, Joe told them they needed to pay some tax worth P50,000 for it. He gave Noveline a number she could call to iron out the details. Her family smelled a scam but Noveline believed her boyfriend.

She and her family borrowed money, made the transaction, and thought everything was settled. But the person Noveline was in touch with said there was another problem that needed another P250,000 to solve.

Her family borrowed money and was only able to send P50,000. It wasn’t enough, Joe insisted, so they went out to borrow another P100,000.

But while, they had already given P200,000 in total, the package still would not be released.

Joe tried to appease the angry Noveline by sweet-talking her with promises; how this was for them and for their future, how there was a surprise for her in the package, how the package really was a total of 10 boxes.

And then…Joe ghosted her. Remelyn and Noveline couldn’t even find him on Facebook.

Apparently, it was a love scam. According to the National Bureau of Investigation, scammers usually use a goodlooking person’s photo, poses as that person, and get their victims to fall in love with them. Often the victims are women, but there has been a number of reported male victims, too.

In Remelyn and Noveline’s case, Joe used the identity of a real German pilot named Patrick Biendekapp. According to Patrick, he gets a lot of calls and messages about how his photos have been used for such scams.

At the moment, Remelyn and Noveline have filed a complaint in the NBI Cabanatuan office to recover the P200,000 that they borrowed.

All this trouble for the promise of a better life. — LA, GMA News